Submitted by Sheron Sylvestre, recipient of the Anthony R. Dee’s Educational Workshop Award
SGA’s Workshop Series: Rooted in Memory with Dr. Julie Johnson attended on 10/11/2023
An exploratory exercise in movement and how we can work through emotion/trauma through movement, Dr. Johson made a wonderful workshop in which the audience were invited to move together, share nonverbal greetings, and understand the root of Dr. Johnson’s work, Idle Crimes & Heavy Work, through movement.
Her work on the deeply rooted memory of the Black women prison labor for the building of the Chattahoochee Brick yards or prison labor camps is vital for a greater understanding of the labor and trauma these women faced and the passage of this trauma through embodied memory, to their offspring.
With police reports of the atrocities committed against Black bodies from archives, Dr. Johnson painted an excellent picture of the, indeed, heavy work both mentally and “in the body” one may experience while viewing these archives. A bridge between this past and a brighter future was built during this workshop, where the “heavy” work done by archivists to uncover these awful truths, can bring to light a greater understanding for Black women and men of their past and how the hands of their ancestors built Georgia. This workshop was a great connection between a tangible past and future through archives, and through the exploratory exercises conducted with the group, I gained a greater understanding of myself, my body, and my own memories, unleashed through movement.
The Society of Georgia Archivists is now accepting applications for the 2023 Anthony Dees Educational Workshop Scholarship, Larry Gulley Scholarship, and the Taronda Spencer Award. These awards provide funding for individuals to attend the 2023 Annual Meeting of the Society of Georgia Archivists and Pre-Conference Workshop.
Completed applications must be received by August 31, 2023, 11:59 p.m. ET.
This year’s SGA Annual Meeting will take place October 12-13, 2023 at Kennesaw State University with this year’s Pre-Conference Workshop, held virtually preceding the meeting on October 11, 2023.
About the Scholarships:
Anthony Dees Educational Workshop Scholarship – Provides funding to attend the SGA-sponsored Pre-Conference Workshop, “Embodied Memory Mapping,” an Annual Membership to SGA (or 1-year renewal), and a $75 credit to apply to a Society of American Archivists (SAA) class or book purchase in the SAA bookstore
Larry Gulley Scholarship – Provides funding to attend the SGA Annual Meeting, an Annual Membership to SGA (or 1-year renewal), and a $100 credit to apply to a Society of American Archivists (SAA) class or book purchase in the SAA bookstore
Taronda Spencer Award – Provides funding for those currently enrolled as a junior or senior at an HBCU with a demonstrated interest in archives -or- students of African-American, Asian/Pacific-Islander, Latino, or Native American descent to attend the SGA Annual Meeting, an Annual Membership to SGA (or 1-year renewal), and a $150 credit to apply to a Society of American Archivists (SAA) class or book purchase in the SAA bookstore.
Complete applications supplemental materials must be received by August 31, 2023, 11:59 p.m. ET.
Eligibility: Specific requirements are listed on each scholarship award page. Please note that scholarship winners are responsible for submitting their workshop and/or conference registration forms by required deadlines. After the conference, recipients will submit a brief article on their experience for use in the SGA Blog.
As a recipient of the Carroll Hart scholarship from the Society of Georgia Archivists, I was able to attend the Georgia Archives Institute in June of 2023. During this two-week internship, which included daily workshops and a hands-on experience processing a collection and creating a finding aid at Emory University, I gained valuable insight into the archival profession, from the preservation of fragile audio-visual materials to learning more about the newest trends in digitization.
I appreciated the breadth of the topics covered during the Institute, which provided a firm foundation in established professional standards and principles while also speaking to the rapid changes in technology which present both advances and challenges to accessibility. Overall, I also appreciated the chance to meet and converse with other professionals and take home their valuable advice to apply at my own institution.
The three-day internship at Emory was the most enlightening aspect of the entire experience at the Institute since we applied the theoretical frameworks from the class sessions to an actual collection in an existing repository. My two fellow interns and I processed the J. Andrew Lipscomb papers and wrote the finding aid which was then uploaded to ArchivesSpace. Since Emory just recently transitioned to ArchivesSpace, this was a unique opportunity to create one of the institution’s first new finding aids on the platform.
We also toured Emory’s preservation lab which was particularly fascinating since I didn’t previously have a strong background in preservation or conservation. After that tour, I was convinced that not enough institutions are putting an emphasis on the importance of the art of preserving and conserving materials.
Thank you to the Society of Georgia Archivists for providing the means to attend the Georgia Archives Institute.
[MAY 1] DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS FOR THE SAA RESEARCH FORUM
On behalf of the 2023 Research Forum Program Committee, we invite you to submit abstracts (of 300 words or fewer) for either approximately 10-minute platform presentations or 2-minute poster presentations. Topics may address research on, or innovations in, any aspect of archives practice or records management in government, corporate, academic, scientific, or other settings.
The 2023 Research Forum will be conducted as two Zoom-based virtual sessions, each three-and-a-half hours long, on July 12 from 1:00 – 4:30 pm CT and July 19, 1:00 – 4:30 pm CT. In addition, professional posters will be displayed online with presenters’ contact information so that one-on-one discussions can take place.
Presentations on research results that may have emerged since the 2022 Joint Annual Meeting Call for Proposals deadline are welcome, as are reports on research completed within the past three years that you think is relevant and valuable for discussion. Please indicate whether you intend a platform or poster presentation. See the full call here: https://www2.archivists.org/am2023/research-forum-2023
Special topics this year include: global challenges; equity, diversity, inclusion, and social justice; collaboration across GLAM domains (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums); repository-level data; centering users; and building audiences. These topics are detailed in the SAA CORDA Research and Innovation Roadmap (beta version.)
Abstracts will be evaluated by the 2023 Research Forum Program Committee convened by Jennifer Gunter King (Emory University) and Sarah Pratt Martin (Simmons University).
Deadline for submission of abstracts: May 1, 2023. You will be notified of the review committee’s decision by June 1.
Proposals should be submitted here and must include: Presentation title, your name and affiliation, email address, whether your proposal is for a platform or poster presentation, if you are a first time presenter, and an abstract of no more than 300 words.
Best,
Jennifer Gunter King, Research Forum Chair SAA Committee on Research, Data, and Assessment
The Society of Georgia Archivists awards a scholarship for attendance at the Georgia Archives Institute held each summer in Atlanta. The purpose of the scholarship is to enhance archival education and membership. The scholarship is named for Carroll Hart, former director of the Georgia Department of Archives and History, founding member of the Society of Georgia Archivists, and founder of the Georgia Archives Institute.
Individuals eligible to compete for the scholarship are:
Those engaged in compensated or volunteer archival work at any level in an institution in the state of Georgia.
SGA members employed outside the state of Georgia.
Graduate students preparing for a career in archives at a college or university in Georgia, or SGA student members studying outside the state of Georgia.
Preference will be given to applicants who do not have access to institutional support for attending the Georgia Archives Institute.
The scholarship will cover an amount equal to the non credit tuition for the Institute, but not to exceed $500, and a year’s membership in the Society of Georgia Archivists. Please note that individuals must apply separately to the Georgia Archives Institute and pay the application fee to the Georgia Archives Institute. All regular deadlines and requirements for the Georgia Archives Institute apply. After participating in the Georgia Archives Institute, the recipient will submit a brief article on the experience for use in the SGA Newsletter.
This year’s issue is full of professional development opportunities, words from our former and current presidents, a new member spotlight, updates on a couple of institution’s grant projects, and a post on remembering SGA’s first President Edward Weldon after his passing in late 2022.
Habersham Education and Research was founded to collect the history of Habersham County in Georgia and make it more accessible to the public. The history of the county is spread out into the Clarkesville Library, courthouse and local historians residences. The most important project Habersham Education has focused on is the digitization and indexing of local newspapers, a valuable resource for researchers and genealogists. With the help of a SGA Spotlight grant the Digitize Habersham project launched in November of 2022 after two years of work of digitizing and indexing. Peter Madruga from Habersham Education and Research details more about this project in the new SGA Magazine. If you are interested in the Georgia Archives Month Spotlight grant learn more on our website.
Georgia State University in partnership with the University of Maryland received a CLIR Hidden Collections grant to digitize the AFL-CIO Civil Rights Department Southeast Division Records. The department operated in Atlanta from 1964-1989 and was instrumental in ensuring equal job opportunities and the creation of training programs for marginalized communities. The collection has 78 linear feet of mainly documents with some audio visual material. Not only does the team want to make the documents available online, they also are collaborating with the Digital Library of Georgia to create online educational resources. Read more about how this grant project is progressing in the new magazine, available to read now!
Thanks to all of our contributors for submitting something to be featured in this year’s SGA Magazine. We have years and years of a backlog of our quarterly newsletters which were the predecessor of the SGA Magazine. If you want to learn even more about SGA as an organization take a look through our previous issues on our website, https://soga.wildapricot.org/publications/newsletterbackissues . Consider submitting an article next year or if you cannot wait, submit it as a blog post here.
June 5-16, 2023 is the date for the 2023 Georgia Archives Institute. The Institute will be held at the Georgia Archives, located in Morrow, GA, just outside Atlanta. Classroom instruction will take place the first week, June 5 through June 9 and also on Monday, June 12. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday June 13-15 will be an on-site internship at a local institution, where you can ask all the questions you want and put your classroom instruction to good use. Friday, June 16 will be a wrap-up day, held back at the Georgia Archives.
Pam Hackbart-Dean, Head and Professor, Special Collections & University Archives, Interim Associate University Librarian, University of Illinois Chicago Libraries, will serve as primary instructor. Preservation of Archival Materials will be taught by Tina Seetoo, Preservation Manager at Delta Flight Museum. Born-Digital and Digital Preservation will be taught by Katherine Fisher, Head of Digital Archives, Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, & Rare Book Library, Emory University.
Tuition is $500 and enrollment is limited to 20 students. The application will go live on January 1, 2023 with a deadline of midnight on March 15. There is an application fee of $75, but if your application is not successful, your fee will be refunded.
Currently, there are also four scholarships that fit your situation and aid your ability to attend the Institute. You can find links and more information here: https://www.georgiaarchivesinstitute.org/support
Submitted by Autumn Johnson, Special Collections Librarian, Georgia Southern University
Georgia Southern University’s Special Collections recently wrapped up their Georgia Archives Month program, Bland’s Botanical Bequest: An Escape Game for Georgia Archives. This was the third and most successful game-based instructional program the unit has organized over the past few years that highlights the unique resources offered on their campus. The program builds upon the success of their 2019 Secrets, Sources, and Swamp face-to-face escape room and 2021 semi-virtual Case of the College Sweetheart mystery experience. This year, Special Collections took the escape game concept outside of the library and partnered with Georgia Southern’s Botanic Gardens. The program was held in the Botanic Gardens’ historic Bland Cottage, the 1920s homestead of Daniel and Catherine Bland, who donated the cottage and land to the University in the 1980s.
The game, similar to commercially available escape games, placed players together in a situational enviroment where they must solve a series puzzles and clues in order to solve the task at hand. Specifically, players in this game were given 45-minutes to find the Last Will & Testament of Daniel “Dan” Bland, who upon his passing in 1985, bequeathed his estate to the University.
The Bland cottage was transformed back into the 1980s and reflected the wide interests and hobbies of the Bland family. Many of the clues and puzzles encountered throughout the game were based on actual materials belonging to Dan and Catherine Bland including photographs, a hand-drawn map, herbarium press book, historic newspaper articles, and even an oral history recording. Many of these were rediscovered in Special Collections when Gardens staff began to conduct research for an upcoming exhibition!
By encountering these first-hand accounts and original materials from Special Collections, our players were able to piece together the lives of Dan and Catherine Bland, two citizen scientists who contributed greatly to Georgia Southern and the local community. They discovered the Bland family and their vision to inspire generations of lifelong learner through community gardens while learning more about the breadth and depth of resources available to them from Special Collections.
This program was the most successful to date with over 230 participants during the short-run. The program was made available through generous funding from the 2022 Georgia Archives Month Spotlight on Archives Grant. There will be an encore run of the program in Spring 2023 based on unprecedented demand from both University and greater communities!
Hello! My name is Camilla Stegall. I am honored to be the 2022 recipient of the Carroll Hart Scholarship to attend the Georgia Archives Institute.
First, a little about myself. I am 2022 graduate from Kennesaw State University (KSU). I was encouraged by Dr. Jennifer Dickey, the Public History Coordinator at KSU, to apply for the Institute. During my time at KSU, I developed strong relationships with the archivists and had heard about the Society of Georgia Archivists. (It was through them that I learned about SGA and applied for and presented in the Student Research Showcase at the SGA 2021 Virtual Annual Meeting.) I am thankful for the opportunity to attend the Institute as I go on to attend the MSLIS online Leep program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the fall.
Now to the Institute. The first six days were filled with instruction on foundational archival concepts, including appraisal, arrangement and description, preservation (physical and digital!), reference, copyright, and outreach. Everything that you need to “identify, preserve, and make available” archival materials. Pam Hackbart-Dean, Tina Mason Seetoo, and Katherine Fisher were wonderful primary instructors whose years of experience are evident in their instruction—from their lectures to their class activities to get us thinking about how we would approach challenges and daily tasks in archives.
As mentioned, the lectures were interlaced with group activities and case studies. This was fantastic for me as I am a “hands-on learner!” In these groups, I also learned from my peers. The twenty of us in the cohort came from a variety of backgrounds and locations. I met a community archivist and a university archivist both from California, an English professor from Alabama, a library associate from Missouri, and an archives volunteer from Atlanta along with several fellow early career archivists from Metro Atlanta. The opportunity to visit and work on assignments with members of my cohort with such a wide array of knowledge and experience was fascinating and eye-opening into how different institutions and individuals approach their work.
Additionally, we listened to guest speakers about topics on archival projects and organizations. The guest speakers for 2022 were Tamika Strong of the Georgia Archives about her work creating a community archives of African American funeral programs, Morna Gerrard of Georgia State University (GSU) about GSU’s Women’s / Gender & Sexuality Collections and projects, SGA President Cathy Miller about SGA and the benefits of it and similar organizations, and Joshua Kitchens about Clayton State University’s Master of Archival Studies program and The Academy of Certified Archivists and how to take part in them. These guest speakers contributed to the Institute by showing us poignant examples of individual and institutional projects that benefit communities by preserving and telling their stories. The overview of the archival organizations and professional development on the last day was a great way to end by providing us possible “next steps” as GAI alumni.
2022 was the first time the Institute has been in-person since the pandemic began. As such, we had several educational excursions during our two weeks. The cohort toured the Georgia Archives and learned about its history; on another day we visited the Georgia Archives Conservation Lab, where we met the conservators and watched demonstrations; and, we also toured the GSU Special Collections and Archives before we attended the GAI Reception. At the reception, we had a lovely evening as we mingled with the GAI Board, our internship supervisors, and amongst ourselves.
Week 2 centered on our three-day internships at sites around Metro Atlanta. I, along with two other attendees, interned at the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory University. Our supervisor was Laura Starratt, the Senior Collections Archivist. For our project, we worked with one of Emory’s star collections, the David R. Scott and Anne Lurton Scott papers. David Scott is a retired astronaut and the seventh man to walk on the moon. The collection consisted of materials relating to Scott’s missions and Anne Lurton Scott’s experience as an “astronaut wife.” We processed the printed materials, correspondence, and photographs in the collection (all the while geeking out about NASA). The three of us are honored to have worked on this collection and to make it more accessible to students and researchers. Additionally, during our time at Emory, we toured their conservation lab and archives. We also met with many members of the archives staff and learned about what they do. As I am exploring what facet of archives I want to pursue, I appreciate the time that they spent with us.
Overall, I am grateful for the amazing learning experience that I had during my two weeks at the Georgia Archives Institute. It provided me with a firm foundation of knowledge and insight into the field of archives as I take my next steps to becoming a full-fledged “Georgia Archivist!” Thank you for your support in this endeavor!
Submitted by Christina Zamon, SGA VP/ Membership Committee Chair
On Saturday, nine members of the Society of Georgia Archivists were treated to a two-hour tour by Atlanta Preservation Center Executive Director David Y. Mitchell. Despite the heat outside, the group enjoyed learning about L.P. Grant, his origins, family, and the history of the oldest existing house in Atlanta. We were able to walk through the windows just as the Grant family did to get out to the cool shade of the porches and porticos, learn how the stucco was made and about the “Grant Park Green” color of the window trim.
Vader, the unofficial mascot of the property also came by to say hello to us.
David made it clear that our work as archivists is essential to the larger role in preserving historic homes and neighborhoods and without us they could not do their important work. After the tour we had a great conversation with lots of questions about the house and the role it has played in the history of Atlanta.
The Society of Georgia Archivists is thankful to David for taking time out of his Saturday to allow us to visit and tour the space. If you missed the tour you can always sign up for one on your own: https://www.atlantapreservationcenter.com/lp_grant_mansion. Thanks also to SGA’s Membership Committee for coordinating such an insightful tour. To learn more about SGA membership and all the benefits it includes visit our website, https://soga.wildapricot.org/membership.
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