Events

Applications OPEN for Brenda S. Banks Educational Workshop Scholarship!

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The Society of Georgia Archivists is now accepting applications for the 2024 Brenda S. Banks Educational Workshop Scholarship. The application deadline is Early May, date still to be determined.

Starting in 2008, the Society of Georgia Archivists has awarded a scholarship each year for attendance at an SGA-sponsored Spring/Summer Workshop. Past SGA workshops have addressed a variety of themes and issues faced by archivists and archival institutions, including electronic records, exhibits, donor relations, digital collections, diversity, and funding.

This year’s Spring/Summer workshop will be Writing for Impact: Introductory Grant Writing Workshop, providing an introductory session about the basic fundamentals of grant writing, grant research, and the overall grant lifecycle.Speaker: Lilly Heidari (she/they), Grants and Development Manager at the Historic Oakland Foundation, former Manager of Donor and Guest Relations at the High Museum.

Join us for an interactive and informative workshop on the fundamentals of grant writing. Led by an experienced grant writer, this workshop will provide you with the knowledge and skills needed to effectively navigate the grant writing process and provide a space to ask any questions you may have. Throughout the workshop, you’ll learn more about the basics of grant writing, including understanding the terminology and structure of grant proposals, tips for adapting your language to apply for funding from different grant makers, databases with grant opportunities, and more! Whether you’re a beginner looking to learn the ropes or a seasoned grant writer seeking to refine your skills, this workshop will provide you with valuable insights and practical tools to nurture your grant writing abilities. (ZOOM link to be provided)

Meet The Speaker

Lilly Heidari (she/they) is an Atlanta-based grant writer and manager. Originally from Columbia, South Carolina, she holds a B.A. in English and Theatre with a Concentration in Creative Writing from the University of South Carolina. Previously, Lilly worked for non-profit film production company Local Cinema Studios coordinating partner relations, events, and grant writing and management. They have spent the past two years working as Manager of Grants and Donor Relations at the High Museum of Art, managing government, foundation, and corporate grants as well as the museum’s Friends of the Collection donor groups. In April 2024, she started at the Historic Oakland Foundation as their Grants and Development Manager working on grants to fund the Oakland Cemetery’s educational and historical programming as well as conservation and preservation initiatives. A proud Iranian-American, Lilly is also an actor, writer, and musician.  

Cost:

Members: $10

Non-members: $25

Students: $15

For more information and to register for each workshop go to: https://soga.wildapricot.org/events.

Scholarship parameters: The registration fee for one of the desired workshops will be waived by the Society of Georgia Archivists for the successful scholarship applicant. Additionally, the recipient of the scholarship will also receive an Annual Membership to SGA (or a 1-year renewal if a current member) and a $100 credit to apply to a Society of American Archivists (SAA) class or purchase in the SAA bookstore. Please note that the scholarship winner is responsible for submitting their workshop registration form by the registration deadline. After the workshop, the recipient will submit a brief article on the experience for use in the SGA Newsletter.

Eligibility

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 SGA Spring/Summer Workshop. Individuals may apply or be nominated by a supervisor or instructor.

To Apply

To apply for the Brenda S. Banks Educational Workshop Scholarship, please complete the online application and submit your cover letter and CV or resume to scholarships@soga.org, prior to Early May, date still to be determined.

For more information or if you have any questions (or experience any difficulty with the online form) please contact: scholarships@soga.org

SGA Scholarship Recipient attends Fall Workshop

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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.

Learn more about the scholarship SGA offers on our website, https://www.soga.org/scholarships.

SGA Scholarship Recipient Attends GAI

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Submitted by Maranda Christy

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.

Visit the SGA website to learn more about our scholarship opportunities, https://soga.org/scholarships.

SGA’s Summer Workshop Series 2023

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SGA’s Summer Workshop Series has extensive opportunities this summer and fall to learn about the value of preservation and archives in Black communities.

The SGA Summer Workshop Series: Rooted in Memory highlights the value of Archives and Preservation in Black communities. This 5-month series highlights the importance of preservation from knowledge production at the level of the body to institutional repositories. These workshops center work of HBCU archives, archivists, and Black Memory Work(ers) and will take place during the Summer and Fall quarters of this year and will be open to the public.

Learn more about the speakers here, https://rb.gy/hvxgt.


Sign up for the workshops here, https://soga.wildapricot.org/events and learn more about the scholarship opportunity to attend a workshop from SGA here, https://rb.gy/vmy76.

Call for Proposals for the 2023 SAA Research Forum, due May 1, 2023

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[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

Apply for the Carroll Hart Scholarship today

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The Society of Georgia Archivists is now accepting applications for the 2023 Carroll Hart Scholarship. The application deadline is March 6, 2023.

This year’s Georgia Archives Institute will be held June 5-16, 2023.

For full details, please go to https://soga.wildapricot.org/scholarships/hart

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.

How to apply:

Please fill out the online portion of the application for the Carroll Hart Scholarship. Then, to complete your application email your resume or CV and cover letter to scholarships@soga.org. Your application is not complete until these documents have been received.

Complete applications including cover letter and CV or resume must be received by March 6, 2023.

2023 Georgia Archives Institute Announcement

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Submitted by Jill Sweetapple, GAI Outreach

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

For additional information, please visit our website at www.georgiaarchivesinstitute.orgor contact us at georgiaarchivesinstitute@gmail.com.

Never-Never Bland: Another Fun, Fully-Immersive Georgia Archives Month Program Wraps up at Georgia Southern

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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!

More information about the program can be found at www.georgiasouthern.libguides.com/archivesmonth or by contacting Special Collections Librarian, Autumn Johnson at autumnjohnson@georgiasouthern.edu.

To learn more about Georgia Archives Month see SGA’s website.

SGA’s President Reflects on our Annual Meeting Theme

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Submitted by 2022 SGA President Cathy Miller

This year’s annual meeting theme, Sustaining Archives: Practical Solutions for the Future, in my mind, speaks to not only what we have done to sustain the work of our archives, but the work we have done over the last three years to sustain ourselves. During the meeting, specifically in our keynote and in one of the planned sessions, the importance of self-care was emphasized. And boy howdy, can I say what an advocate I have become for self-care in these times. 2022, which is really just 2020 dressed as two kids in a trenchcoat, has been a year, to say the least. There’s been good, sure, but also, to put it plainly, there’s been a lot of suckitude. I hope that everyone who attended the meeting took away many learning moments regarding the work they do, but I also hope that attendees may have taken away new leases on life – I know, that’s a tall order, but bear with me a moment. Maybe you met a colleague at the meeting who plays Animal Crossing as religiously as you do, and before you know it, you are Switch friends and visiting each other’s islands and conspiring about how to take Tom Nook’s empire down. Or you found someone who shares the same hobby as you and you are able to trade ideas. Or you made a colleague who lives near you and now you have a new friend to go grab coffee or food with. In leaving the annual meeting, I hope you were able to take away something that sustains you as the person you are, not the archivist/librarian/information professional that you are.

SGA Keynote Address at the 2022 Annual Meeting

We have a lot of vocational awe in our profession. We are either told by someone or we tell ourselves that we are so lucky to be working in this field and getting to do the things we do, thus we’ll let slide the often poor pay, lax benefits, and multitude of other black marks that our profession is guilty of. I am here to say that while the work we do is awesome and important, the work will never love you back. So please, sustain yourself, however that is, be it treating yourself to a yummy food or drink treat on the drive home from work or going to the dollar spot in Target to see what new and exciting things await you. I’ve been reading T.J. Klune’s Under the Whispering Door – the premise of the novel is that Wallace, a workaholic lawyer, has died and he is given one week to get his afterlife in order and cross over to the great beyond. Wallace decides to embrace living a lifetime in those seven days. Let’s not be like Wallace. Live your life in the present. Leave work promptly at your 7 or 8 hour mark. Go enjoy being you with the people and pets that matter most to you in life.

SGA Scholarship Winner attends Georgia Archives Institute

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Submitted by Camilla Stegall

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!