I hope many of you were able to attend the Nashville conference, which was filled with lots of networking opportunities and informative sessions—in particular, a number devoted to archiving collections. The first meeting of the Archives and Preservation Caucus was held and was chaired by DMAH’s new archivist Sandra Schock. The Caucus was a great success and we are very happy that Sandra has chosen our division as the umbrella for the caucus. We were also very pleased that our Travel Award Recipient, Niala Dwarika-Bhagat from the University of the West Indies, in St. Augustine, Trinidad, attended all our meetings and presented her project on archiving the public libraries of Trinidad and Tobago. She has made it her personal mission to photograph these cultural institutions since they have never been documented before. It was a wonderful insight into the work she is doing and her artistic skill was very evident. She has volunteered to help with the design of our new brochure as a way to continue her participation in DMAH activities. Outgoing Chair Martha McPhail had planned very successful programmes for Nashville, which were all well attended. The Book/Author luncheon with Richard Rhodes was so engaging that I think all those attending will buy his new book about Audubon when it hits bookstores this fall. The day of tours to the Parthenon, the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, and Cheekwood were wonderful. The Frist had four diverse exhibits, one of them on the Pre-Raphaelites on loan from the Tate in London. Nashville had the only venue chosen for this exhibit. If you ever go to Nashville I highly recommend a visit to the Frist. The art deco jewel was the former historic main post office and all the deco glory has been retained. The Division meetings in Nashville were fruitful. As mentioned we welcome new archivist, Sandra Schock, and new bulletin editor, Nancy Adams, new co-editor, Cameron Trowbridge, new Secretary, John Shea, and new co-Chair, Gerald Patout. We also thank our returning Board Members: Ann Shea, Nominating Committee and Neff Scholarship; Mary Marshall, Treasurer; Eliza Robertson, International Relations Chair; Martha McPhail, Travel Award; Lisl Zach, Professional Development Chair; and thank Joseph Hovish, past Archivist, for his years of service. We were also honoured by a visit from SLA President Cindy Hill who attended our Board meeting. As new Chair I hope to address the Division’s need to increase and sustain existing membership and to ensure Division members get the programming, education, and networking opportunities they require from the Division and SLA. I will be planning programmes for Toronto and will use the listserv as much as possible to keep you informed of the plans. Please contact me at anytime if you have ideas or questions. Have a wonderful summer. Sylvia Frank Board Meeting Those present at the meeting: Sylvia Frank, Chair; Martha McPhail, Past Chair; John Shea, Secretary; Ann Shea, Linda Andrews, Eliza Robertson, Joe Hovish, Sandra Schock, Midge Coates and Niala Dwarika-Bhagat The meeting was called to order at 7:45 am. Introductions were made around the table. Sylvia Frank gave a report on the Division Cabinet Board Meeting of June 8, 2004. Two people will be added to the Conference Program for the Baltimore Conference in 2006. The Association is considering changing its financial year to a calendar year. There was a discussion on the possibility of creating a Medical Division. A new division, the Competitive Intelligence Division, has been formed. Pam Rollo turned over the gavel to Brent Mai who spoke on plans for changing the model for the Leadership Summit in time for the January 2005 meeting in Tampa. An announcement was made that Divisions can apply for Endowment Funds grant from the Association. MAHD will probably apply for a grant to fund a Membership Survey. It was also announced that an Innovation Conference for thirty-five people will be held at Special Libraries Headquarters on October 19, 2004. A final announcement was that a number of divisions including DMAH have not submitted their “Recommended Practices” to SLA. Sylvia Frank announced that Ann Shea is the Nominating Committee Chair. A discussion took place on the vacancies for Membership Chair and Assistant Bulletin Editor. John Shea volunteered to provide the New Members list for the Summer Bulletin. Sylvia will use the “Communities of Practice” listserv to look for volunteers for open positions and she would also like to set up a listserv for the officers and committees. Sylvia announced that she and Mary Marshall, Treasurer, will be drawing up a proposed budget by July 1 to present to the Board for approval. Mary is trying to find the documentation regarding the NEFF Scholarship Fund. Ann Shea suggested that Sylvia tell Mary to check with Katherine Richards, a former division chair, regarding the setting up of the NEFF Scholarship Fund. Sandra Schock reported on the Archives Caucus Meeting. Twenty people attended the session held on June 8 and there was a positive reception to the Caucus. Sandra will approach the News Division about their members joining the Caucus. Sandra will contact the Society of American Archivists regarding a possible liaison relationship between their association and the Caucus. Thirty-five members are presently in the Caucus and Sandra is anticipating a rapid growth in membership. There was a discussion on the time slot for the 2005 Toronto Conference for a Caucus meeting. Sylvia Frank brought up the subject of the Mission Statement for the Division and the role of the Caucus. Sandra did not see a need in the near future to convert the Caucus into a division. Sylvia Frank asked Eliza Robertson about redesigning the Division brochure and logo. Niala Dwarika-Bhagat volunteered to assist in the redesign of the brochure. The Board decided not to change the logo if we can continue using our present name. Sylvia asked who was planning to attend the Leadership Summit in Tampa in January to see if it was possible to hold a short Board Meeting. The response was that most of those around the table would not be attending and therefore Sylvia will conduct Board Business by polling the Board when needed. Sylvia stated her issues for the new year were membership, marketing ourselves, fundraising, and archival initiative. The Division must do a better job of getting the word out about our activities and she will work on getting more members to volunteer to help the Division. Sylvia will be in touch with people during the year and urged people to contact her. Eliza Robertson announced that her committee will be activating the Division listserv and would welcome helpful hints and questions to ask to our members and for the Board to use the listserv. Linda Andrews stated that we have only 261 members on the listserv. Martha McPhail brought up the subject on how we get more of our members to use the listserv. There was also discussion on the electronic distribution of the Bulletin. Is it only going to members on the listserv or is it being made available to all members of the Division with an E-mail address? Ann Shea volunteered to chair the Neff Scholarship Committee again and Sylvia appointed her. Ann asked if we should pay for the student registration and our ticketed events or should we give them a lump sum and encourage them to attend our events. The opinion around the table was to continue giving the lump sum but strongly encourage the student to attend our events and meetings at the Conference and to write an article for the Bulletin. Ann said that this year's winner will write an article for the newsletter. Martha McPhail asked if Sylvia wanted her to chair the International Travel Grant Committee and Sylvia said yes. Eliza Robertson made a motion to increase the International Travel Grant to $1,500.00. The consensus of those attending was that the present $1,000.00 was adequate. Eliza withdrew her motion. Sylvia asked if we could have back-to-back Board Meetings at the Toronto Conference of the old and new boards. It was pointed out that in order to do this we would have to elect the new board in advance by mail ballot. Sylvia will check if we can have a mail ballot. Martha McPhail spoke about the Digitalization Program to take place later today and the Division Tour tomorrow. Martha has thanked OCLC for their $500 sponsorship of today's program, and she urged us to be proactive in getting vendor support for our programs at the 2005 Toronto Conference. Sylvia thanked Martha for serving as Chair for the past year. Eliza urged Sylvia to schedule a Monday MAHDness event as part of our programming for 2005 in Toronto. Martha also strongly suggested that the Open House with the Social Sciences Division and Education Division be moved to Tuesday night to avoid scheduling conflicts. The meeting was adjourned at 8:47 am. John D.
Shea
The Three Pillars: Managing Your Library, Archives, and
Records—Highlights from Nashville
Conference At this well-attended program held on June 8, 2004, the audience was treated to interesting career development stories from three highly experienced information managers. If you couldn’t be there, each PowerPoint presentation is now available on the DSOC website at http://www.sla.org/division/dsoc/Conference%20Archive/2004programs.html. The moderator wishes to extend her sincere thanks to the speakers for their exceptional, imaginative and enlightening presentations. Our three champions of innovation were:
Iris W.
Anderson Preserving Appalachian Culture through
Digitization On Wednesday afternoon, the last day of the SLA conference, DMAH sponsored an excellent program on using OCLC's ContentDM software to preserve and make available unique resources concerning the Appalachian region. Three librarians at small colleges, members of the Appalachian College Association, described their schools in rural or small town settings, a nd how this project has helped to link them all together. The consortium is composed of six private colleges in Tennessee, West Virginia, and North Carolina. All hold unique resources in their small special collections, but each was limited in its ability to make these resources available to its students or interested public or scholars. Dianne Schaefer was hired as project manager and systems librarian for the Appalachian College Association to plan and oversee this project of pooling resources, both financial and labor. In consultation with librarians at all the campuses, OCLC's ContentDM Digital Collection Management Software was selected. A catalog librarian at each campus added learning how to use this software to their responsibilities. Kathy Parker, Librarian at West Virginia Wesleyan College, and Alice Anderson, public services/system librarian at Tennessee Wesleyan College, shared their experiences in learning and implementing this software. They reviewed the selection and management of materials, giving them metadata description, and use of the collections. They showed how this Digital Library of Appalachia aids in the maintenance of cultural identity of the region, breaking barriers and opening new opportunities to offer an accurate perception of the heritage, characteristics, and values of the place called Appalachia. These librarians also detailed some of the problems and challenges encountered in mounting this initiative. Most of these are common to special libraries: limited personnel, time, funding, training, equipment. But also common to special librarians, they surmounted their challenges and accomplished their goal. Working together, sharing expertise, solving problems, they have made available to their separate campuses and to the larger world, their unique, special resources. The three librarians capably encouraged the fifty-some special librarians in the audience to consider why one would want to digitize collections, how to do it, and what can be done with it, that is, the value it adds to one's community of users. All attendees appreciated the skillful way our Appalachian colleagues shared their expertise. They had created most useful PowerPoint presentations to showcase their collections. Go to http://www.aca-dla.org/ to see the collections online. This program was sponsored by OCLC and appreciation was expressed to them for their funding. Martha
McPhail DMAH
Tour of Art Museums in Music City During the conference week, several receptions were held at the Country Music Hall of Fame downtown, so we did not visit this wonderful museum and repository of music on our traditional tour following the conference. Instead, on Thursday after all programs concluded, nineteen DMAH members a nd guests enjoyed an all-day tour of three prominent Nashville art museums. We first arrived at Centennial Park to visit the Parthenon, a full-scale replica of its famous namesake in Athens, Greece. The colossal statue of Athena inside was awe-inspiring, considering its 42 ft. height, the largest piece of indoor sculpture in the Western world! With reproductions of friezes, statues, columns, and other art pieces of the Parthenon, it did seem as if we had arrived at Athens itself. There is also a nice permanent collection of 63 paintings by 19th and 20th century American artists. The shopping bags from the gift shop had Greek artistic patterns, so we happily bought postcards or souvenirs from Greece itself just to have the bag. Our next stop was the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in the old central post office, now beautifully restored to showcase art exhibitions. The Frist does not own a collection, but offers traveling exhibitions of the highest quality. We were taken aback at the extensive exhibit of the pre-Rafaelites from the Tate Collection, as well as the contemporary art of Nashvillle native, Red Grooms. Also featured was medieval and Byzantine art from the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, and social realist American art from the 1930s. The Frist is truly a marvelous place to see great art. Its wonderful gift shop captivated members as we ranged among the many offerings. We boarded the bus to have lunch at the reception center of the Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art. Our lunch was considered the best "box lunch" any DMAH tour has had in recent memory. Fortunately the food was wonderful, as our plans to visit the art collection inside the mansion were derailed without prior notice. The mansion was closed to the public that day as preparations were being made to host the annual Swan Ball, a charity fundraising event to maintain the house and gardens. We were not informed about this, even though I had been in contact with the tour planners of Gaylord Destinations for many months. On our behalf, I wrote Gaylord to express our dismay at spending our money on this tour, only to be turned aside without notice. Gaylord organizers have written me several times to say they were unaware of the house being closed that day, and they apologized to us. I had asked for some refund of our tour money, but they operated our tour at a loss, so I have let this go, being out of their or our control. For that unfortunate omission, I express apologies to all attendees on the tour. I do believe that we all enjoyed our tour of the other art museums, especially the Frist. We know that unexpected things will occur at any conference, but overall, we enjoyed our Thursday tour as well as the entire conference in Nashville. Sylvia Frank is planning an interesting tour for us next year in Toronto, so we look forward to enjoying another educational, art-filled day. Please join us! Martha McPhail New DMAH Members
I'd like to welcome Cameron Trowbridge as the new Assistant Bulletin Editor and thank those who have helped to make my transition to Editor an easier task. We hope to have more articles about the Nashville Conference in our next newsletter. In the meantime, if you would like to write an article for the bulletin or have a suggestion for an article that you would like to see, please don't hesitate to let me know. Nancy
Adams The DMAH Bulletin is published four times a year by the Museums, Arts and Humanities Division of the Special Libraries Association. Deadlines for submission of advertisements and materials are as follows:
The Special Libraries Association assumes no responsibility for the statements and opinions advanced by contributors to the association’s publications. Editorial views do not necessarily represent the official position of the Special Libraries Association. Acceptance of an advertisement does not imply endorsement of the product by the Special Libraries Association.
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