Upcoming Events

Hello all,

A few reminders: our next meeting will be this Wednesday, October 3rd at 3:30 pm in the Draper Hall lounge.  We will be finalizing details for our upcoming two events - the Book and Bake sale, which will take place on Tuesday, October 9th, and the NYS Archives trip which will be on Friday, October 12th (morning or early afternoon, the time is not yet confirmed). 

We're starting some preliminary work on planning the new website, and we will update you with some of our ideas on here.  Feel free to comment if there's anything in particular you'd like to see on the new site - either comment on this post or drop us a line on the chapter email (albanyscsaa@gmail.com). 

  See you on Wednesday!

Fall 2012: First meeting on Wednesday, 9/5, at 3:30!

Hello all,

Welcome back!  Hope you're all adjusting well and back into the swing of things for this fall semester.  Just a quick reminder that our first meeting is this Wednesday, 9/5, at 3:30 PM in the Draper Lounge.  For those of you who need directions, the Draper Lounge is in the middle section of the first floor of Draper, adjacent to the Coca-Cola machine.  At our first meeting we hope to lay out or plans for trips and other activities this semester, so we hope to see you! 

Keep an eye on this blog for more updates and a lot of changes, as the blog and the chapter's website (currently inactive) will be undergoing some renovations. 

Hope to see you all on Wednesday!

Wiki Completed

After many months of work, the wiki is now completed.   Click on the link to view it.   You may also go to the information resources section to find the link.   If there are any questions or comments, please feel free to e-mail us. 

Our Wiki

As some of you may know, the current and former officers of SCSAA have been working on a wiki. It purpose is to provide a continuously up-datable resource for future officers and anyone else interested in the group. After months of work and collaboration, we have finally decided to make it public. The actual unveiling will be this coming Sunday, March 18th.

In terms of content, the wiki contains information about group activities, the duties of officers, places SCSAA has visited, and much more! Upon its official unveiling, a post will be made and a link to the wiki will be provided. Enjoy your Spring Break!

-Mike Paulmeno, SCSAA Webmaster

Meeting Minutes for 3/6/2012

Hello all,

This week's meeting was a fairly short one, but we discussed a number of things, primarily the NYC trip and our two upcoming bake sales.

Regarding the NYC trip, we will not be going next week and we have decided to aim for April 20th (though the 13th is also a possibility).  We intend to visit some combination of the following: the Frick Art and Reference Library, the Morgan Library, and the New York Public library.  If you have any thoughts on which of the above dates works best for you, or any other sites you would like to visit, please let us know at albanyscsaa@gmail.com.

On other news, we will be having a bake sale at the uptown campus during the ASIS&T Open Source Festival on March 29th between 2:00 and 8:00 PM.  More specific details will be forthcoming.  We will also be having a book and bake sale at the downtown campus some time between now and the NYC trip (ideally).  If you have any books to donate, let us know! 

Finally, we discussed some possible future ideas for trips, including an archivist panel which was planned for last semester and had to be cancelled, and perhaps a visit to the Arkell Museum in Canajoharie. 

 

Meeting Minutes for 2/21

Hello all,

At this meeting we discussed a few things, chiefly:

We debriefed the Rensselaer Historical Society visit for those who were unable to come along.  We visited the Hart-Cluett House and the Research library in downtown Troy, and we learned that the Historical Society loves (and wants) interns.  If anyone is looking for a place to do their archival internship(s), Rensselaer Historical Society would be a great place to do it.

We discussed plans for the Book and Bake sale at the downtown campus, which will happen sometime during the month of March.  If anyone has books to donate, please let us know here on the blog or through email at albanyscsaa@gmail.com.  More firm details on the bake sale will be available shortly, and it seems that we may do another bake sale at the uptown campus during the ASIS&T Open Source Festival - so check your email / this blog for more updates soon. 

We discussed the upcoming New York City trip for April - we had been aiming for March, but it seems more likely that we will be heading down in April.  More details to come.

That's all for now, the next meeting will be on Tuesday the 6th at 3:30 in the Draper lounge, as per usual.

Rensselaer Historical Society Visit

Hello all,

We've finalized our plans for our visit to the Rensselaer Historical Society - we'll be going on this Saturday (2/18) at 11 AM, where we will get tours of the Cluett House, the Research Library, and the Joseph Carr House.  For those who are going and those who are looking for carpool plans, watch your email inboxes (if you are interested in going and have not yet said so, email the group account at albanyscsaa@gmail.com).  

Hope to see you all there.

New UAlbany SCSAA Email and First Meeting Reminder

Hello all,

I hope your Spring Semester is off to a good start!  Just a short update today, we have a change in the UAlbany SCSAA email address, and a reminder of the first meeting for this semester.  The new email address for the SCSAA account is albanyscsaa@gmail.com. 

Also, a reminder that our first meeting for this semester will be on Tuesday, February 7th, at 3:30 PM in the Draper Lounge. 

More updates to come!

New Trends in Computing and Informatics Research Conference 2012

Hello all,

I hope your winter break is starting off well. Mike recently mentioned the New Trends in Computing and Informatics Research (NCTIR) Conference coming up in 2012, and thought it might be worth a mention on the blog. This conference will be taking place on April 27th, 2012, at the College of Computing and Information Assembly Hall at the Campus Center. The conference is largely an opportunity for Masters and PhD students to present the progress and products of their research, with a focus on research in Informatics and Computer Science. The deadline for signing up for presentations, papers, and talks is February 15th, 2012 - more information can be found on their website, here.

Rockefeller Archives Trip

On Friday the 29th of October, somewhere around 11 of us drove down for our planned Rockefeller Archives / other stuff in Sleepy Hollow trip. The drive took around 2-2.5 hours, and our first stop on the trip was the Headless Horsemen diner (no archivists heads were lost, thankfully)!

After we all ate, we took what should have been an extremely short and straightforward drive to the Rockefeller Archives center. However, some navigational mistakes might have been made in the course of the next 15 minutes. Adventures were had, and we made it to the facility. At the facility, we first took a tour of the museum portion of the facility and then we were taken to the underground archival vaults. We were able to see a workspace where non-traditional archival materials were maintained (films, random art projects, etc.), a large amount of unprocessed materials, and then more traditional stuff (boxes, boxes everywhere!).

After the archives center, we elected to take a trip to the Old Dutch Church cemetery (the massive Sleepy Hollow cemetery), which was a short drive from the Rockefeller facility. Though we didn't have too much time to linger at the cemetery, we had a lot of fun poking around at various graves (famous people and otherwise). Washington Irving was one of the many in residence. From the cemetery, we took a short (actually quite long due to traffic) drive over to Washington Irving's house.

At Sunnyside, we were taken on a special guided tour by the director herself! As we were taken through the house, we were educated on the history of Irving, the development of Sunnyside, and the stories of those who often lived there with him. Unfortunately, we could not take pictures of the inside of the house, but there were many of the outside of the house.


Finally, we headed to a quick dinner and then took our various vehicles back towards Albany.

For those interested in looking at some pictures, I've posted a link to my flickr for the photos taken here.

If anyone has any other pictures they would like to contribute, let me know and I can add a link.

Hello!

My name is Kevin Robbitts, and I've recently been added as the assistant webmaster for this student chapter of the SAA - and this is my brief introduction post. This is my first semester at UAlbany, and I am in the LIS track of the M.S. Information Studies program, though I am also completing the archives track coursework. I received my undergraduate degree at the University of New Hampshire with a B.S. in Environmental Conservation Studies, a minor in Forestry, and I also studied the Japanese language for three years. While there, I worked at the UNH Main library and storage branch for four years, which eventually led me to seek this degree.

I don't have too much else exciting to say, other than that I would like to develop my skills of web design (thus my seeking of this position). Hopefully I can become an asset to this blogging project. Like Mike did before me, I intend to find a general posting schedule (current plan is to post weekly, though I have not yet decided on a day) and to hopefully post some enlightening and hopefully pertinent material. I look forward to working with and/or entertaining you.

Slater trip recap

For those of you who were not able to make the Slater trip, here is a recap.   About 10 people attended.   We started off with a tour of the ship.   After that we were treated to a tour of the Slater's museum.  Their collection includes military uniforms, photographs, and various other artifacts.   This is not something that the public is normally allowed to see so it was a real treat.   The curator of their collections was on hand to answer questions as well.    Even if you were able to attend the Slater is always undergoing restoration so it is worthwhile making a return visit. 

Two More Announcements

I have two announcements to make.   The first is that the trip to the USS Slater has been booked.   As of right now it will take place on Sunday, September 25th at 1 PM.   The Slater has a sizable parking lot (with overflow space if that is needed) so carpooling is not strictly necessary, but could be arranged if desired.   There is no fee to park.   Unfortunately I will not be able to make the next few meetings so if anyone has any questions, please feel free to e-mail me at mpaulmeno@albany.edu.  

The second announcement is that our poster from this year's SAA Conference is now online.   You can view it by going to our website.  For those of you who do not know, SCSAA got the opportunity to take a behind the scenes tour of the Yale University Manuscripts and Archives as well as the Cushing Center, which is a combination museum/archive/rare book collection that displays a number of artifacts including the brains of some of Dr. Harvey Cushing's patients.   We decided to make a poster out of it and it was well received. 

Announcement

On behalf of all the SCSAA Officers it is my pleasure to announce that we have a new assistant web master, Kevin Robbits.    In the future he will be posting in this blog and eventually taking over as webmaster after I graduate next year. 

Two pieces of business

There are two announcements from SCSAA. The first is that I have posted a few pictures taken from our trip to Chicago. Most are of the city itself, particularly Millennium Park. However there is one picture of an Emmy that I was able to take while at DePaul University. Click on the link to view them.

Also, I mentioned that I learned of a conference put on by the SAA Student Chapter at the University of Indiana at Bloomington. They have a website where you can find more information about the group and their previous two conferences. There is also a blog, which was recently created. The next conference is planned for March 2012, with a call for papers being in October. While Indiana is a bit of a hike from Albany, this conference sounds like a great way to network with other students and recent graduates.

Conference Summary

The 2011 Annual Meeting is now officially over. For us, it ended Friday night when we left Chicago. Our last day was a but different than the other two. I chose to skip the panels in the morning and get some sleep before checking out. In the afternoon, we had a bit of a treat. Amber was able to arrange a behind the scenes tour of the Archives and Rare Books department of DePaul University. For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, DePaul University is a small Catholic University in Chicago. Their Archives and Rare Books collection contains a wide variety of material from University records to the papers of a number of prominent Catholic priests and nuns, to a theater collection. They even have an Emmy Award, a picture of which I will post online soon.

Overall I found the conference an enjoyable experience. Simply being surrounded by people with similar interests made the trip worth it. Admittedly it was a but awkward being a student since most of the professionals tended to ignore us. So this year was a trial run of sorts to help prepare for future meetings. It has been my experience that one must go to a conference several times to really get comfortable with, and take advantage of, the experience. I have also noticed at other conferences that there is usually a group of "regulars" that attend every year and SAA is probably no different. So I look forward to being able to attend next year's annual meeting in San Diego.

On a different note, the officers spent some time discussing the upcoming semester. Due to scheduling conflicts, the meetings for this fall have been moved from Tuesday to Wednesday. They will still be held at 3:30 PM in the Draper Student Lounge. Our first meeting will be on September 7th, which is in the second week of classes. We are also planning on having roughly one event a month. For the upcoming semester we have planned a trip to the USS Slater, a trip to the Rockefeller Archives Center and Sleepy Hollow, and a panel session with some local archivists.

Conference Day 2

The second day of the conference is over. It was a lot more exciting than day 1, primarily because this was the first day of actual programming. The day started out with a panel session. I went to one about participatory archives. There were three presentations that focused on ways to involve users and the general public involved in archives for the purpose of adding knowledge or content. One example that came up several times is What's on the Menu, which is a project at the New York Public Library. Its goal is to transcribe the library's menu collection to make it searchable by dish. Click on the link to check out its website.

In the afternoon I attended a second panel session. This one was about copyright. It was a fascinating look at ways to deal with copyright and privacy issues in digitizing collections. There were three presentations, the best of which was one by Cornell University Senior Policy Adviser Peter Hirtle. The gist of it was that we should be respectful of copyright laws and not afraid of them. A close second was a presentation by Barbara Aiken who works for the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art. The focus here was on issues concerning privacy and appropriateness of materials for digitization. For the AAA, this can be an issue since they have a lot of material that contains nudity and even some personal information.

However the day did not end there. The evening began with the graduate student poster session. We had an entry, which focused on our trip to Yale University last year. Look for this poster to be on the website, hopefully by next week. While there I found out about a conference put on by the University of Indiana at Bloomington for graduate students and recent graduates. I will post more about this at a later date. An alumni reception followed. Turn out was good. It was fascinating to see how widely spread UAlbany alumni are. The event was also a great opportunity to network with those already in the field. The night ended with a trip to a local bar. Tomorrow I should be able to make a final post about the conference summarizing the entire experience.

Conference Day 1

The first day of the 2011 Meeting of the Society of American Archivists is officially over. Technically speaking the conference itself has been going on since Monday, however the SCSAA officers did not arrive in Chicago until this morning. Monday and Tuesday consisted of various council and committee meetings. There was also the 2011 SAA Research Forum which consisted of presentations of current and ongoing research. This was yesterday and included presentations by UAlbany Professor Donghee Sinn and past webmaster Eugenia Kim.

The program for today was mostly roundtable meetings. Unfortunately we were not able to attend many of these since our train did not arrive until 11 AM Central Standard Time. The one that I went to was for the Visual Materials Cataloging and Access roundtable. There were two presentations. The first was on visual literacy, which is the ability to understand and interpret visual images. The presentation focused in where it has been, what the current state of visual literacy is, and speculations about future developments. The second was about the upcoming Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Graphics) standard for describing visual materials such as photographs. Tomorrow there will be a number of panels and a UAlbany Alumni mixer.

Progress Update 4

Since last post a great deal of work has been done on the wiki. The Officer Duties and Chapter Activities sections are mostly filled out and there is now a bit about our chapter's history up as well. The Chapter Activities section is new. Much thanks needs to be given to past webmaster Eugenia Kim and past President Kerry Lynch, both of whom contributed heavily to the wiki since the last progress update.

Next week's post will focus on the 2011 Annual Meeting. I may post during the conference itself if time permits. After that focus will turn towards fall semester activities, though updates on the progress of the wiki will be given when needed. We have a number of events planned for this fall so stay tuned for more information.

Progress Update 3 and some news

Work on the wiki has begun in earnest! We now have content in four sections: club history, officer duties, chapter activities, and web presence/social media. There is no set goal for completion. However we have achieved my personal goal of creating something before the conference. Content creation and edits will likely continue into the fall semester. However with the wiki itself created, I can safely say that the hard part is over.

There is also an update available on the hotel labor dispute in Chicago. According to SAA, there has been no agreement as of July 29th. While they do not expect a strike to happen during the conference, there is the possibility that the Union might picket the Hyatt. Click on the link for more information.