Women Archivists Roundtable

SAA 2005 - New Orleans, LA
 

Speaker, Emilie Leumas

The Women Archivists Roundtable speaker for the 2005 Society of American Archivists' Conference is Emilie "Lee" Leumas, CA, archivist for the Diocese of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Lee is a New Orleans native, a member of the SAA section on Religious Collections and is currently pursuing her PhD in French at Louisiana State University.

Lee became a professional researcher traveling to hundreds of repositories searching for documents dealing with Louisiana history. She also worked for a number of authors, performing primary research for upcoming books and novels. Her graduate work has taken her to the Centre d'Archives d'outre mer in Aix en Provence and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris in search of colonial Louisiana documents.

Now as an archivist in a Catholic Diocese, Lee has had the opportunity to witness the change of women's roles in the Church. As more women hold positions such as Chancellors and Vice-Chancellors, the role of women is increasing within the Church administration.

Lee's perspective as both archivist and researcher, here and abroad, will provide a unique glimpse into user services, international research, and religious collections. This, along with her photographs of Aix en Provence and remarkable stories of authors spoken with her lilting Louisiana accent will make this talk "The Big Easy" for all who come to listen!
 

Distinguished Fellow Nominee, Helen R. Tibbo

From Archival Outlook, September/October 2005, by H. Thomas Hickerson, Cornell University, pp.12-13.

Helen R. Tibbo is a professor in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her principal achievements are as a scholar and an outstanding educator of new archivists, librarians, and information scientists. Armed with a PhD in Information and Library Science from the University of Maryland, she accepted an initial appointment at the University of North Carolina in 1989 and was promoted to full professor in 2003. At UNC, while contributing to the building of a top-ranked academic program, she has served as Assistant Dean and as Associate Dean of the School of Information and Library Science; she has served on numerous academic and administrative bodies, including two terms on the Graduate School's Administrative Board; and she was elected as treasurer and chair of the UNC-Chapel Hill Chapter of the American Association of University Professors.

Tibbo's research focuses on the users of archives and their discovery and use of archival holdings, particularly in today's networked environment. Her university courses range across a broad spectrum, from archival administration and record management to information technologies and digital preservation to information retrieval and use and user evaluation. She is a dedicated teacher who infuses her students with a passion for research, writing, and the archival endeavor. And she's an enthusiastic mentor, committed to insuring the professional success of her students, thirteen of whom have published and won awards. In fact, since its establishment in 1997, one half of all the recipients of SAA's Theodore Calvin Pease Award for superior student writing have been Tibbo's pupils, which is a remarkable record.

At SAA, she has served in a variety of leadership capacities, including election to the governing council and to the Nominating Committee; as Chair of the Archival Educators Roundtable and the Task Force for the Future of the American Archivist; and as a member of the American Archivist Editorial Board. She has also appeared on fourteen of the last sixteen SAA Annual Meeting  programs. In 1994, she received SAA's Fellows' Ernst Posner Award for her outstanding essay in American Archivist, "The Epic Struggle: Subject Retrieval from Large Bibliographical Databases."
 

Proposed by: Bernadette G. Callery
Institution: Carnegie Museum of Natural History
Mailing Address: 4400 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15213
Phone: 412.622.8870
Fax: 412.622.8837
E-mail: calleryb@CarnegieMNH.org

1. SESSION TITLE

Beyond the Obvious: Finding Social History in Institutional Records

2. TYPE OF SESSION

Traditional

3. PARTICIPANTS

This proposal is not generated by an SAA group 

Chair
Name: Marisa Bourgoin
Contacted/Agreed to Participate: Yes
SAA Member: Yes
Institution: The Corcoran Museum of Art
Mailing Address: 500 17th Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20006-4804
Phone: 202.639.1721
Fax: 202.639.1778
E-mail: E-mail: mbourgoin@corcoran.org

Participant 1
Name: Bernadette G. Callery
Contacted/Agreed to Participate: Yes
SAA Member: Yes
Institution: Carnegie Museum of Natural History
Mailing Address: 4400 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15213
Phone: 412.622.8870
Fax: 413.622.8837
E-mail: calleryb@CarnegieMNH.org
Title: Plaster and Dynamite: Using Field Records and Correspondence from the Carngie Dinosaur Expeditions as Evidence of Paleontological Rivalries in the Early 20th Century

Participant 2
Name: Sarah Demb
Contacted/Agreed to Participate: Yes
SAA Member: Yes
Institution: International Records Management Trust
Mailing Address: 21 John Street, London WC1N 2BP, UK (England)
Phone: 44.2078314101
E-mail: sdemb@irmt.org
Title: The Rebel Record: Anthropological Fieldnotes Documenting the Victorian Iconoclast

Participant 3
Name: David H. DeVorkin
Contacted/Agreed to Participate: Yes
SAA Member: No
Institution: National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 37012, Washington, D.C. 20013-7012
Phone: 202.633.2425
Fax: 202.786.2947
E-mail: devorkind@nasm.si.edu
Title: Beyond the Obvious in a Museum Context: The Changing Role of Women in Astronomy

Participant 4
Name: Kristin Parker
Contacted/Agreed to Participate: Yes
SAA Member: Yes
Institution: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Mailing Address: 280 The Fenway, Boston, MA 02115
Phone: 617.278.5173
E-mail: Kparker@isgm.org
Title: Transported by Travel: How the Travel Diaries of Isabella Stewart Gardner Captured her Fascination with World Culture and Led to the Creation of her Museum

4. PROPOSAL DESCRIPTION

A. Content Description
Beyond the Obvious: Finding Social History in Institutional Records

While institutional records of museums have evidential value as documentation of the activities of the organization, these records also have informational value in that they reveal the development of the scientific or artistic discipline practiced and the cultural evolution of the researchers, collectors, curators, and donors involved in acquiring the collections. Museum visitors often see only the results of activity by curators and other museum staff, not the process or personalities revealed in the supporting archival record. Speakers will examine anthropological and archaeological fieldnotes that reveal the relative social freedom of Victorian anthropologists, discuss travel diaries that record both a spiritual as well as a physical journey in the formative period of amassing great and eclectic art collections, discover the women missing from the public record of astronomy, and explore the field records of paleontological expeditions as a source of information about the scientific rivalry between competing museums.

B. Role of Each Speaker

Chaired by an art museum archivist, a curator of astronomy and archivists serving art, anthropology and natural science collections will present brief papers on the uses of the institutional record beyond that of serving the immediate needs of the institution. Speakers will examine such diverse records, as travel scrapbooks, anthropological fieldnotes, a major exhibition on the history of astronomy and expedition correspondence, as resources for the discovery of the social context in which these records were created, used and interpreted.

C. Audience for the Session

The audience for this session is museum archivists and curators serving all types of museums and other cultural institutions, historians and exhibition planners.

D. Purpose of the Session

The purpose of this session is to illustrate, through case studies, that institutional records are a rich resource of cultural information about all those who contributed to the accumulation and interpretation of museum collections - be they donors, curators or the subjects of study.

5. AV REQUIREMENTS

Computer projector and attached PC supporting use of Microsoft PowerPoint
 

Agenda

I. Introductions 5:00-5:15

Co-Chairs Andrea Sheehan & Karen Walton Morse

A. Remarks from our Council Liaison, Elaine Engst
B. WAR Current Projects & Plans for Next Year, Co-Chairs
C. Report on the Standards Portal Project Working Meeting, Karen Morse

Co-chair, 2005-2007
Steering Committee member (if there is interest)

Emilie Leumas, Diocese of Baton Rouge
Talk (approx. 30 minutes)
Q&A (approx. 15 minutes)

A. Sessions for next year's annual meeting
B. Issues & Advocacy
 

Meeting Minutes
Wednesday, August 17, 2005 from 5-7:00 p.m.

Roundtable leadership in attendance
Andrea Sheehan, Co-chair (2003-2005)
Karen Walton Morse, Co-chair (2004-2006)
Kathleen Feeney, Steering Committee Member
Christine Schmid, Steering Committee Member

I. Introductions

Led by Andrea Sheehan

The deadline for session proposals for the 2006 Annual Meeting is October 7th. Tips for writing session proposals are available on the SAA website.

Program Proposal form: http://www.archivists.org/conference/dc2006/proposals2006.rtf

Because next year's Annual Meeting is a joint meeting with NAGARA and COSHRC / COSA Sessions and Roundtables will not be able to endorse session proposals.

Due to a change in SAA policy, starting in 2007 Sections and Roundtables will only be able to endorse two session proposals for each Annual Meeting.

Elaine Engst, our current Council Liaison, is ending her term on Council. Our new Liaison is Sheryl Williams (swilliam@ku.edu).

Explanation of the role of Council Liaisons.

Led by Karen Morse

Explanation of WAR's mission and leadership.

Ms. Leumas discussed how she came to be archivist for the Diocese of Baton Rouge.

She disagreed with the perception that women working in male-dominated arenas (like the Catholic Church) are disenfranchised because of their gender. She pointed out that in her experience being a woman was less important than being intelligent and educated in terms of earning the respect of her male colleagues/patrons/donors (although the advice of an outside consultant didn't hurt).

She also discussed her experiences researched abroad (primarily in France) and how they have changed her views on her job particularly with regard to access and researchers' rights.

General discussion about access in our archives.

Ms. Atkins spoke about the Diversity Committee and their mission and goals and how we (as a Roundtable) can help.

We noted that WAR, in its charge, is essentially concerned with diversity in the profession (at least in terms of gender diversity)

Specific discussion of the "Diversity Initiative" section in annual reports.

General discussion about diversity.

Kathleen Feeney (University of Chicago) was elected Co-chair for the 2005-2007 term

WAR pages maintained by Jennie Thomas