Taking the show on the road

I just returned to the office after a couple weeks away for various professional and personal activities. The major professional activity was attending the Society of American Archivists conference in Chicago, where I exhibited a poster on the survey project (captured in miniature below – please click and save it if you’d like to see it in its full 44" x 28" glory).



I gathered up a raft of business cards and talked with lots of people about their particular collection situations. Both coasts are represented in my followup pile, as are a number of the states in between. There are plenty of university archives and academic special collections in there, but also private historical societies, museums, religious institutions, schools, professional organizations and a funding agency.

Talking with people at SAA emphasized to me once again the similarity in the issues so many of us in archives and special collections face, regardless of the types of institutions we work in, the kinds of collections we hold, or how long our programs have been around. In some ways this can be a touch disheartening – if so many of our issues are so common, shouldn’t we have figured out some kind of solution by now? – but in many more ways it’s very encouraging, because it means we can learn from and help each other.

Special thanks to everyone who stopped by, and to John and Jenny for continuing to work down the mountain of Philadelphia area surveying while I was in the Midwest.