News & announcements

Ever wonder what do NWA Board Members do?  

Or, thought that reading the bylaws that define the responsibilities of being a board member is boring. What is it REALLY like being a board member?  

Or, Wow! Those Board Members look like they’re having fun! I wonder if I should run?  

Well, Northwest Archivists is going to get you some answers. We’re holding a virtual event to Meet the Board on March 12^th, 2024. Please join us as we meet current and past NWA Board members and learn about what they did as a board member and their experiences taking on the role. There will be trivia!  To Meet the Board, sign-up here: http://bit.ly/NWAMeetTheBoard2024

P.S. It will be election time soon! This year, the roles up for election are Vice-president/President-Elect, Secretary, Idaho Representative, Montana Representative, and Oregon Representative. You can read about the various roles in the By-Laws of Northwest Archivists. If you are considering running, please feel free to contact the Head of the Nominating Committee, Robert Perrett at rperret@uidaho.edu,with any questions you may have. More information on how to sign up to run for a board member position will be out soon. 

The NACR Scholarship Committee is extending the application deadline for the NACR Scholarship to Monday, February 19.

For more information on the scholarship guidelines, please visit the scholarship website at: https://northwestarchivistsinc.wildapricot.org/nacr-scholarship

Any questions about the scholarship may be directed to nwanac@gmail.com.

The NWA Archivist-in-Residence (AiR) committee is pleased to report that, based on the success of our pilot years, NWA officially adopted AiR as a permanent offering! The 2024 AiR application is now open and the application deadline is April 1, 2024. We are also very pleased to report that we have the capacity to raise the award ceiling to $7,000. This increase was necessary in order to keep pace with the rising cost-of-living and maintain a robust residency experience. I hope you'll all join us for a little celebratory dance at our desks for achieving this milestone, especially in the times we're in. Thank you so much to NWA membership for helping us reach our fundraising goal! And thank you especially to our sponsors who have contributed to this residency program from the beginning! This residency would not be possible without you!

Archivist-in-Residence Applications are OPEN

Northwest Archivists, Inc. is offering a $7,000 stipend for one graduate student (or recent graduate) to receive an Archivist-in-Residence opportunity. The purpose of this residency is three-fold:

• To offer upcoming and new professionals with paid career development opportunities to apply knowledge in archives, libraries, museums, or a related field
• To teach new archivists how to accurately calculate the value of their education, experience, and overall value as an archivist
• To provide an opportunity for archival organizations to work toward the long term goal of eliminating unpaid work within the field.

The residency may last up to 12 weeks to be completed by the end of the current calendar year. The resident will receive a one-year complimentary membership to Northwest Archivists.

For more information and to apply: http://northwestarchivists.org/archivistinresidence/

The NWA AiR Committee would like to thank NWA membership and our Platinum-level sponsor: Relicura; and our Gold-level sponsor: Permanent.org! We would also like to thank our Bronze-level sponsor:.The Winthrop Group

Thank you,

The NWA Archivist-in-Residence Committee
Alex Bisio, City of Portland Archives (Chair, Oregon)
Dulce Kersting-Lark, University of Idaho (Idaho)
Chloe Nielsen (Oregon)

We are very excited to share the 2024 draft Guidelines for Accessible Archives for People with Disabilities with you and welcome your feedback! Please submit your suggestions and comments primarily within the comment-enabled Google Doc. Optionally, if you would like to fill out a Google form to share your feedback, we welcome that as well. 

 

The Guidelines for Accessible Archives for People with Disabilities is a standard of the Society of American Archivists, last approved by Council in February 2019. A Word doc and PDF showing the tracked changes between the two versions is in this Google drive.

 

Gathering community input on this draft is the final step before submitting the revised version to the SAA Standards Committee for review and, subsequently, SAA Council for final approval.

 

The deadline for feedback is March 1, 2024. If you have any questions, please contact us at robert.dirig@artcenter.edu.

Through a collaborative effort of the Ivan Doig Center for the Study of the Lands & Peoples of the North American West, the Archives and Special Collections (ASC) department of the MSU Library, and the Friends of MSU Library , Montana State University offers a $3,000 annual award to facilitate research into collections held by ASC.  

The award is intended to defray the costs of either travel to Bozeman to conduct research; to facilitate digitization of portions of a collection to allow a researcher to work remotely; or a mix of the two. Recipients may be academics (including graduate students) or independent scholars. We are unable to pay for any costs above the award amount. 

Applications are due April 1, 2024. For full details, see https://www.lib.montana.edu/archives/news-and-events/dcta-award.html.

The NWA Archivist-in-Residence Committee is now accepting applications for the 2024 Archivist-in-Residence is a $7,000 stipend for one graduate student (or recent graduate within two years of Mach 13, 2024).  The purpose of this residency is three-fold: 1. To offer upcoming and new professionals with paid career development opportunities to apply knowledge in archives, libraries, museums, or a related field; 2. To teach new archivists how to accurately calculate the value of their education, experience, and overall value as an archivist; and 3. To provide an opportunity for archival organizations to work toward the long term goal of eliminating unpaid work within the field. The residency may last up to 12 weeks to be completed by the end of the current calendar year. The resident will receive a one-year complimentary membership to Northwest Archivists.

For more information and to apply, visit the Archivist-in-Residence page. 

The Northwest Archivists 2024 Program Committee welcomes poster proposals in broad support of the Annual Meeting theme Seeking Balance: Sustainability and Adaptation. The conference will be held in Spokane, Washington, May 8-10, 2024. The theme recognizes the 50th anniversary of Expo ‘74, Spokane’s World’s Fair, the first such exposition to focus on the environment. This theme invites consideration of how issues related to the environment, sustainability and adaptation intersect with archives and allied professions. Students, new professionals, first time presenters, and those in allied professions are encouraged to submit proposals. Posters can be used to convey a variety of outcomes and ideas related to practice, theory, or research. Examples include - but are not limited to - summarizing an internship project, highlighting a workflow, demonstrating the use of a tool or technology, conveying an outreach or advocacy strategy, getting feedback about projects in progress, or sharing research findings. Submit your proposal using the 2024 Poster Proposal Form. Proposals will be evaluated on clarity, originality, relevance to the field, and relation to the annual meeting theme. Deadline for proposals is March 1, 2024. Notification will be made the week of March 11. Questions? Email Program Committee chair Ben Murphy: murphybp@uoregon.edu Best, Members of the Program Committee Terry Badger Becky Butler River Freemont (Native American Collections Roundtable) Alisha Graefe Anna Harbine (local arrangements) Libby Hopfauf Heather Mulliner Ben Murphy (chair) Sara Szobody Jennifer Vanoni

In 2024, AkLA and PNLA will hold a joint conference in Juneau, AK from August 1-4. The conference committee is putting out the call for proposals early so that presenters and attendees can make travel arrangements and reserve hotel rooms before everything gets filled up for the very busy summer tourist season. The conference theme is “Stronger Together: Amplifying Voices, Strengthening Communities”. Please consider submitting a proposal.

 

Proposals are due by January 15, 2024, and the program committee plans to notify proposers by mid-February. Please contact program committee co-chairs Sara Saxton (ssaxton@cityofwasilla.gov) and Claire Imamura (claire.imamura@sos.wa.gov) with questions. We look forward to seeing your proposals!

Here’s the link to the proposal form:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdtZ7cQhvZesUwS9eZiGmeezHWolvrezs92Uf7HmnANF_5dJA/viewform?usp=sharing

The purpose of the Josephine Forman Scholarship is to provide financial support to minority students pursuing graduate education in archival science, to encourage students to pursue a career as an archivist, and to promote the diversification of the American archives profession.  The scholarship is given to applicants who demonstrate excellent potential for scholastic and personal achievement and who manifest a commitment both to the archives profession and to advancing diversity concerns within it.  The scholarship was established by the General Commission on Archives and History (GCAH) of The United Methodist Church and named for Josephine Forman, archivist for 18 years of the Southwest Texas Conference of the United Methodist Church.

 

The recipient of the award will receive a scholarship of $10,000.  Awardees also may be invited to attend the annual meeting of the General Commission on Archives and History and/or the Quadrennial Historical Convocation, with funding provided by GCAH.  Also included is complimentary registration to the SAA Annual Meeting in the year in which the scholarship is received.

Eligibility:

• The applicant must be a citizen or permanent resident of the United States.
• The applicant must be of American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian, Black/African American, Hispanic/Latino, Middle Eastern/North African, or Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander descent.
• The applicant must be currently enrolled in a graduate program or a multi-course program in archival administration, or have applied to such a program for the next academic year.*
• The applicant shall have completed no more than half of the credit requirements toward her/his graduate degree or multi-course program at the time of the award (i.e., June 1).
• The applicant must be enrolled in a graduate program and begin school no later than September 1 or the fall semester/quarter immediately following the award.  Otherwise the award will be rescinded.
• Applicants may have full-time or part-time status.

*The graduate program or multi-course program must offer at least three courses in archival science or be listed in the current SAA Directory of Archival Education.  The applicant must provide proof of the three-course standard by submitting copies of course descriptions from the institution’s current course catalog.

 

 

For further details and application information please visit: http://www2.archivists.org/governance/handbook/section12-forman

 

The deadline to apply is February 28, 2024.

 

 

Sincerely,

 

The Josephine Forman Scholarship Subcommittee

Elizabeth Wilkinson (Chair), Southern Connecticut State University

Dr. Ashley Boggan Dreff, United Methodist Church Archives

Carrie Schwier, Indiana University Bloomington

Lara Taylor, Mississippi State University

The NWA Program Committee has decided to extend the deadline for session proposals to Friday, December 15 at 11:59pm. If you have been on the fence about submitting a proposal, we encourage you to do so! You can read the full call for proposals on the Annual Meeting website. As a reminder, this year we are accepting panel proposals, submitted as a group, and case study proposals, which are submitted individually. If you would like to find collaborators to form a panel, you can use our panel collaboration spreadsheet. If you have an idea to present on your own, you can submit a case study proposal and we will pair you with other presenters. 

Do you have questions? Do you have an idea but aren't sure how it fits? If so, email program committee chair Ben Murphy: murphybp@uoregon.edu.