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Frequently
Asked Questions About
Sections and Roundtables
- I’m a new chair and I don’t really know how things work or what I’m supposed to do. What are my responsibilities?
- What are some activities that our Section or Roundtable could do?
- What organizational structure is required for a Section or Roundtable?
- What calendar dates should I be aware of for my SAA responsibilities regarding Sections or Roundtables?
- We want to build our web page. What are the guidelines?
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We want to start a Section/Roundtable listserv. What are SAA’s guidelines on this?
- We want to raise our own Section or Roundtable funds. What legal restrictions apply to us?
- Can we produce a directory for our Section or Roundtable?
- What communication tools are available for our Section or Roundtable?
- What is the role of my Council liaison? When do I ask questions of her or him and when do I go to the Executive Director? How can I ensure effective communication with my Council liaison?
- When the Council is considering a policy stand on an issue related to my Section or Roundtable, will the Council consult me and my Steering Committee?
- How can I, and other active members of SAA, gain a greater voice in SAA?
- I want to form a Section or Roundtable. How do I go about doing it, and what is required?
- May non-SAA members belong to a Section/Roundtable? Can they hold office?
- Interest in my Section/Roundtable has fallen off. How do I cease operations?
I’m a new chair and I don’t really know how things work or what I’m supposed to do. What are my responsibilities?
In a nutshell, when you are the chair of a Section or the convener of a Roundtable, SAA and the members of the Section or Roundtable are counting on you to lead in building an energetic, focused, and vibrant unit. Normally your first task is to provide the names and contact information for the Section or Roundtable chair, the vice chair, other elected and appointed officers, and Steering Committee members. The SAA office needs a leadership roster by September 30 so that leaders may be added to the SAA Leadership Listserv. A leadership roster is also vital to the functioning of your Section or Roundtable, and the following contact information for each elected or appointed officer should be compiled at the Annual Meeting immediately after your election: name, office, term, addresses, phone and fax numbers, and e-mail addresses. A form requesting this information is available at the Annual Meeting from your Council liaison or SAA staff. If you are unable to obtain or return this information at the Annual Meeting, please e-mail, phone, or fax it to the SAA office before September 30.
Section chairs should consult the Section Handbook, which should be available on your Section website. Similar information is also posted on the Section’s pages on the SAA main website. Roundtables may also have developed a handbook or something similar. In addition, Section and Roundtable leaders should review the SAA Constitution and Bylaws and Guidelines for Sections and Roundtables. These guidelines outline responsibilities such as reporting, organizing a meeting at the SAA Annual Conference, serving as an advocate, encouraging communications, advising the Council, integrating new members, developing leadership, proposing and planning activities and projects, and other matters. Consider activities, projects, or other goals that you think the Section or Roundtable should undertake. Chairs and conveners will be asked to acknowledge that they have read and will honor their responsibilities as elected officers.
Also review SAA’s current policies and procedures. This information is available in Appendix B of the Council Handbook or you may request printed copies from the SAA office. Policies and procedures that you may want to review include:
Consult with previous chairs of your Section or Roundtable about recent activities, projects, structure, and practices.
Review your Section or Roundtable mission statement and any recent publications, minutes and reports, especially the most recent annual report. Note that Sections and Roundtables are required to submit an annual current activity report to the SAA Executive Director within 90 days of the end of the Annual Meeting.
Attend the SAA Annual Meeting, special forums about SAA issues, and the SAA Leadership Forum. Chairs are notified in advance by the SAA office about leadership meetings. Section chairs are required to attend Leadership Forums; roundtable conveners are encouraged to attend.
Consult your Council liaison and the SAA Executive Director about your questions, concerns, and ideas.
Stay abreast of SAA activities, projects, issues, and concerns through Archival Outlook (available to members online as a PDF prior to mailing), In the Loop, the SAA homepage, the SAA Leadership Listserv, the Society's strategic priorities planning document, and other reports and mailings issued by SAA.
What are some activities that our Section or Roundtable could do?
Among the things your group may wish to do are the following:
- Work with your Steering Committee (if you have one) to form a vision of what your Section or Roundtable should be doing to meet today’s challenges relative to your component group. Be sure to review the SAA Strategic Priorities document to determine how your group might contribute to the highest priorities of the national organization.
- Schedule and plan your Steering Committee meeting before the entire Section or Roundtable meets at the Annual Meeting, if applicable.
- If you are directing a Roundtable and it does not have a Steering Committee, consider creating one. Select individuals who customarily come to SAA Annual Meetings. This will become the training ground for future leadership. Even the informal structure of a Roundtable may benefit from a Steering Committee.
- Be sure to understand the cutting-edge work taking place in your functional area.
- Assess the members’ knowledge about that cutting-edge work. This will provide material for Section or Roundtable meetings, newsletter articles, Annual Meeting programs, and Archival Outlook articles from your Section or Roundtable.
- Mentor new members of your Section or Roundtable. Facilitate the growth and development of less-experienced members of your Section or Roundtable - even if those individuals are senior members of the profession but are new to this particular subject area.
- Create a bibliography of work related to your Section’s or Roundtable’s area.
- Consider whether you might develop small publications, such as brochures, related to your Section or Roundtable work that might be of broad interest to archivists or the public (for example, see the brochures created by the Manuscripts Repository, Business Archives, and Acquisition and Appraisal Sections at http://www.archivists.org/publications/free.asp).
- Sponsor and/or strong, complete, and well-organized program proposals for the SAA Annual Meeting.
- Write articles and updates for all SAA members about your Section’s or Roundtable’s key issue(s) for Archival Outlook.
- Work with SAA staff to develop a web page, hosted by SAA servers, on which to post relevant information for your members.
- Meet with leaders of other Sections or Roundtables to discuss shared issues of concern and discuss how your units might work together to address the issue(s).
- Study and assess any pending standards, policies, regulations, or litigation related to your functional area and be sure to communicate your component's issues to the SAA Council. Recommend to the Council, through memoranda or formal papers, an action or position that the component believes would be appropriate for SAA to adopt. Remember that only the SAA Council can promulgate a formal position for the Society.
- Investigate what a comparable international unit, such as the International Congress on Archives, the Association of Canadian Archivists, or the Australian Society of Archivists, might be addressing.
- If there are any administrative issues or concerns among your members, take an active role in resolving them by getting your Council liaison and the SAA Executive Director involved.
- In consultation with the Standards Committee, develop and/or recommend to the Council standards, conventions, best practices, or guidelines that would be of value to your members – and perhaps to other component groups.
What organizational structure is required for a Section or Roundtable?
Sections: The organizational structure of the Section is left up to the Section. There are three rules to follow. First, as stated in the Constitution, all members must be a current Individual member or the designated representative of a current Institutional member of SAA. Second, the Council Guidelines for Sections stipulate that each Section must have a chair, vice-chair/chair-elect, and a minimum of two steering committee members. The officers and steering committee members of every Section must be chosen by election. Third, the Bylaws of the Society of American Archivists require that: “Each Section shall adopt bylaws defining its own governance provided that no Section bylaw may be in conflict with the constitution, bylaws, or guidelines of the Society.” When you become chairperson of a Section, be sure to obtain a copy of your most recent bylaws. If your Section does not have bylaws, you should propose bylaws for the Section to adopt at the next Annual Meeting. If your Section has a web page, a copy of the bylaws should be made available there. If the Section should change its bylaws, revised bylaws should be sent to the SAA Executive Director for review to ensure that there is nothing in the Section bylaws that is incompatible with SAA policy.
Roundtables: The organization of Roundtables is left to the Roundtables; the informality of a Roundtable argues against an elaborate organizational structure. Roundtables are required annually to elect a convener, also known as the chair. No person may serve as convener for a Roundtable for more than three successive years. The convener must be a member in good standing of SAA. Although non-SAA members may participate in Roundtable activities and electronic discussion groups, they may not stand for election for, or be appointed to, any leadership position within the Roundtable. Bylaws for Roundtables are discouraged. Roundtables are intended to be informal, and there is no need to weigh them down with bureaucratic structure. Roundtables may wish to adopt guidelines, however, if for no other reason than to assist incoming officers.
What calendar dates should I be aware of for my SAA responsibilities regarding Sections or Roundtables?
- Always submit items that are to be presented for Council consideration to your Council liaison and to the Executive Director at least 30 days before a Council meeting. The Council customarily meets three times per year: 1) one day before the Annual Meeting (typically in mid- to late August), 2) in late January or early February, and 3) in late May or early June. Materials arriving after the deadline set by the Council may not be acted upon until a subsequent meeting.
- Leadership List (component group steering committee, which could be the chair, vice-chair, newsletter editor, and/or web liaison): Must be completed and to the Executive Director within 14 days following the Annual Meeting.
- Annual reports of Section and Roundtable goals, activities, and plans are due within 90 days of the end of the SAA Annual Meeting.
- Budget requests: Must be received by the Executive Director by March 1 in order to be considered for the upcoming fiscal year, which begins on July 1.
- Meeting room requests for the Annual Meeting: Due by the deadline established by the Executive Director in a notice sent to all organizational units, usually by February 1.
- Program proposals for the Annual Meeting: Customarily on or about October 1. This date is published in the Program Committee’s call for proposals.
We want to build our web page. What are the guidelines?
Detailed guidelines are available in the Uniform Guidelines for SAA Websites and Online Communications. The SAA office provides all Sections and Roundtables with a component group website that may be administered by authorized group leaders via SAA’s content management system. Group leaders are responsible for updating information maintained on component group websites. SAA encourages the development of component websites. Group leaders have primary creative control over the design and content of their component group websites, provided that no website may conflict with the SAA main website or with SAA policies and practices relating to publication, privacy and confidentiality, and ethical conduct. Groups are strongly encouraged to utilize the main website theme (e.g., header, footer, site search utility, and navigation elements) in order to promote usability and effective document retrieval. Groups that elect to design and display a custom theme must display the uniform SAA logo, display prominent links to the SAA main website, and have the appropriate disclaimers to minimize the liability faced by the Society.
We want to start a Section/Roundtable listserv. What are SAA’s guidelines on this?
The SAA office will provide Sections and Roundtables with one or more e-mail discussion lists. Sections and Roundtables will be provided with a private list for use by the Section and Roundtable officers/conveners, steering committee members, Council liaison, and staff liaisons. Active members of SAA Section steering committees and Roundtable steering committees will be subscribed automatically to the SAA Leader List, a moderated announcement list used by the Executive Director to communicate leadership information to the component groups. The SAA office is responsible for managing list software, troubleshooting member subscriptions, and working with officers to maintain accurate subscription lists and policy compliance. As subscriptions to electronic lists aree one of several criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of Sections and Roundtables, SAA staff reports annually on the number of electronic list subscribers, including those subscribers to roundtable lists who are not members of SAA. See Section D. E-Mail Discussion Lists in Uniform Guidelines for SAA Websites and Online Communications for more detail.
We want to raise our own Section or Roundtable funds. What legal restrictions apply to us?
The SAA Council and the Executive Director understand that the good initiatives of Sections and Roundtables are hampered by the shortage of funds. However, according to SAA’s legal counsel, it is critical that each Section and Roundtable chair understand that when Sections and Roundtables raise their own funds, it can put SAA’s 501(c)(6) tax status in jeopardy. Furthermore, donations to SAA or its components are deductible by the donor only as business deductions and not as charitable deductions, unless the donation is made to a special project fund. To protect SAA, its members, and the donors, the procedures outlined in the Fundraising Policy must be followed whenever a Section or Roundtable anticipates soliciting support either in funds or in-kind. Note that Sections and Roundtables are required to secure the approval of the Executive Committee before initiating any solicitation of funds.
Can we produce a directory for our Section or Roundtable?
As stated in SAA’s Policy on Unit Directories, "The SAA office will host and maintain membership lists for Sections and Roundtables. Section membership is included in SAA’s online membership directory."
What communication tools are available for our Section or Roundtable?
The advance of modern communication technology has changed the ways in which Sections and Roundtables reach their members. Electronic lists and websites have become routine for making announcements, planning meetings, soliciting comment, publishing statements, providing member profiles, and building a visible presence within the Society. The SAA office provides support for electronic communication services for Sections and Roundtables. See Uniform Guidelines for SAA Websites and Online Communications for additional details.
What is the role of my Council liaison? When do I ask questions of her or him and when do I go to the Executive Director? How can I ensure effective communication with my Council liaison?
Council liaisons to Sections focus their attention on meeting and becoming familiar with the concerns of the Sections to which they have been assigned. Section liaisons remain affiliated with the Sections to which they are assigned at the beginning of their three-year terms in order to foster continuity of knowledge and communication. Section liaisons will:
- Be the chief point of contact between the Council and the Section membership,
- Make contact with chairs for input before each Council meeting,
- Attend a portion of the annual meeting of the Section,
- Report to the Council observations on the progress, ongoing activities, and concerns of the Section,
- Convey actions taken at Council meetings,
- Monitor and participate in Section electronic list discussions, and
- Alert Section leaders of areas of unmet responsibility.
The Council assigns liaisons to Roundtables to promote the work of the Roundtables and communication with the Council. Council member attendance at annual Roundtable meetings occurs on an as-needed basis. Roundtable liaisons will:
- Monitor electronic lists for key discussions, ongoing activities, and pending issues,
- Convey requests from the Council for advice or input on an issue,
- Alert conveners of Council schedules and annual deadlines,
- Represent the Council at Roundtable meetings when strategic issues may be discussed, and
- Contact conveners for input before each Council meeting.
As to whom you should turn to first with a question – your liaison or the SAA Executive Director – please use your discretion and know that the one will, in all likelihood, contact the other to ensure that we are working closely together. In any event, never hesitate to contact your Council liaison.
As to communications – please know that your Council liaison will contact you at least three times a year, approximately four to six weeks before an upcoming Council meeting. Council liaisons often ask some variation of the following questions:
- What initiatives is your Section or Roundtable working on?
- What points of information, issues, concerns, or recommendations, if any, would you like me to convey to the Council?
- What can the Council and the SAA office do to help you in your role as chair?
- Do you feel adequately informed about SAA and Council activities? If not, how can we assist you?
The information you provide is discussed at the following Council meeting. If there is a particular issue that your liaison is to get back to you about after the Council meeting, your liaison will call you.
For the general outcome of Council meetings, please see the SAA homepage, In the Loop, the Leadership Listserv, and Archival Outlook. Through these mediums all section, roundtable, committee, board, and task force leaders are informed about what transpired at Council meetings so that everyone sees and hears the same information at the same time. To ensure rich and meaningful communication, please contact your Council liaison and obtain his or her assistance on issues or concerns related to your Section or Roundtable.
When the Council is considering a policy stand on an issue related to my Section or Roundtable, will the Council consult me and my steering committee?
The SAA Council frequently assesses and takes a stand on national issues that are relevant to the archival profession. The Council appreciates it when the chairs of Sections and Roundtables alert the Council about policy matters on which the Society should take a stand. If such a matter arises, contact your Council liaison and/or the Executive Director. The Council liaison will discuss what Council knows of the matter, share appropriate documents, and ask the chair to work with the Section or Roundtable Steering Committee to make a formal assessment and then report to the Council liaison. The form of the response and the deadline for the response will be discussed. Comnponent groups should understand – and we all should be reminded – that effective advocacy requires a prompt turnaround that often means decision-making by one or two leaders rather than broad consultation.
How can I, and other active members of SAA, gain a greater voice in SAA?
- Remember that SAA is a voluntary membership organization that requires your participation to grow and succeed.
- Convey your enthusiasm for SAA to your Section or Roundtable.
- Stay abreast of SAA activities, projects, issues, and concerns through In the Loop, Archival Outlook, the SAA website, and other SAA publications, reports, and mailings.
- Encourage and assist your members to stay abreast of SAA activities, projects, issues, and concerns.
- Attend and participate in SAA annual business meetings, special forums, and leadership meetings.
- Volunteer for and accept invitations to serve on committees and task forces.
- Volunteer for and accept invitations to run for office within a Section or Roundtable or within SAA.
- Initiate and participate in discussions about projects, issues, and concerns. Talk with other SAA members, groups, Council members, officers, and staff to determine appropriate approaches and actions to move your ideas forward.
I want to form a Section or Roundtable. How do I go about doing it, and what is required?
The policies on forming each vary slightly.
Sections: The desire for a new Section is most likely to come from a Roundtable that feels that the level of activity it wishes to undertake can best be conducted within the organizational structure of a Section. In that case, the Roundtable may petition the Council to be declared a Section. Because a Section must have a minimum of 300 members, it is unlikely that a petition to become a Section would be considered with any fewer names. In considering the petition, the Council would weigh how closely the proposed area of interest overlaps with other Sections of the Society as well as the economic impact on the Society of the proposed organizational change. New applications for recognition as a Section must be submitted no later than January 1 for Council action before the next Annual Meeting.
Roundtables: The current formal requirements to form a Roundtable are minor, as befits the informal nature of a Roundtable. The first step in forming a Roundtable is to prepare a petition stating the need for the Roundtable. Someone who is willing to run the first meeting of the Roundtable (usually the person preparing the petition) must also be identified. The petition must be signed by at least 50 SAA members in good standing. The petition is then sent to the Executive Director, whose staff checks the names against the current membership roster. After the petition is certified, the document is forwarded to the Council for consideration. In considering the petition, the Council will consider the merits of each request in light of existing SAA groups and the specific statement of intent and goals of the applicant group. New applications for recognition must be submitted no later than January 1 for Council action before the next Annual Meeting.
May non-SAA members belong to a Section/Roundtable? Can they hold office?
As stated in the Constitution and Bylaws and/or in the Guidelines for Sections and Roundtables, membership in Sections requires that the individual be a current member of SAA. Although the core of a Roundtable is composed of SAA members, anyone may participate in the activities of a Roundtable. The convener (i.e., the chair) of the Roundtable must be a current member of SAA, any officers must be SAA members, and only SAA members are eligible to vote for Roundtable conveners, other officers, or steering committee members.
Interest in my Section has fallen off. How do I cease operations?
A decision to disband should be made in discussion with members of the Section, after which a proposal requesting that the Section be disbanded should be submitted to the Council. The proposal should state succinctly the justification for the action, and indicate what measures were taken to discuss and inform the Section membership about this decision. A Section may also decide that the more informal status of a Roundtable would better serve its ends, and may choose to petition the Council for a change in status. Alternatively, Sections that do not maintain an official membership level of at least 300 members for two consecutive years may be dissolved after due notice and an opportunity for section officers to appeal. The Council will offer to designate such groups as Roundtables without re-application
Revised: May 2007, February 2010
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