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NAMEPOSITION/AFFILIATIONEMAILPITCHORGANIZER NOTESPOSSIBLE COLLABORATORS (include your name, email, what you would bring to this session)
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Katy SternbergerArchivist, Portsmouth Athenaeumkaty.archivist@gmail.comResilience of the archives profession depends on the resilience of archivists. Strength comes from taking care of oneself and one another—because we are human beings first, archivists second. This proposed session would include short presentations from panelists willing to address self-advocacy in the archives (for example, negotiating fair wages, managing chronic illness, balancing caretaking with work, etc.). The session would also include a facilitated discussion among attendees about their experiences with implementing change in the archives and their strategies for putting self-care and radical empathy into action.Kim Harris-Thacker, archivist and teacher at The Ethel Walker School, Simsbury, CT; kharris-thacker@my.ethelwalker.org. I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2024 and have spent the last year managing sick leave and part-time archival work. I developed several strategies for making the most of the times when I felt well and of caring for myself first even as I continued working. I'd love to chat with you further about this topic, which I think is so valuable! [KS 2025-06-26: Thank you for sharing, Kim! Will look forward to connecting with you.]Brett Freiburger, Local History Librarian, West Hartford Public Library (bfreiburger@westhartfordct.gov) Following the murder of my Mother-in-Law, my partner took a step back to deal with the legal repercussions and emotional healing required, putting myself ina position as full-time parent and full-time employee. During this period I learned how to advocate for myself within a strict HR culture (bereavment, PTO) and following a move, began to advocate for my role as a parent and supportive partner in addition to my job qulaifications when interviewing for new positions. [KS 2025-07-21: Thank you for sharing, Brett! I plan to email potential collaborators later this week.]
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Molly BrownReference & Outreach Archivist, Northeastern University mo.brown@northeastern.eduSustainability, Advocacy, and Transparency in Public Services: While public services are often the most visible aspect of an archival workplace, the scope of labor necessary to provide quality reference, instruction, and outreach is often obscured and at times considered less "techincal" than other positions. Additionally, public services roles have a great deal of "scope creep" that can burn out enthusiastic staff quickly. This proposed (roundtable?) session would invite public services practicioners to share the ways they ensure scope in their work while also advocating and emphasizing the full spectrum of labor and expertise required to perform quality public services. This is very flexibly but just a seed of an idea I have! Happy to shift and change the center of the idea for any collaborators, but also encourage a mix of reference, instruction, and outreach practicioners to join in! Caroline White, Outreach Archivist & Public Services Coordinator, SCUA, UMass Amherst, cjwhite@umass.edu. I am in a new role as of February, new to me and my department; I'm also a former adjunct for Simmons. I am excited to see this idea and would be happy to participate. I have a few thoughts/ideas for issues: managing expectations/demands of remote researchers, education and training of archivists in this area (it could be better), looking beyond the exhibit, what are the skills needed for public services and outreach (as a second-career archivist I am keenly aware of how I use what I learned in my first two decades as a professional, in a different field). Thanks! Oh Molly--just realized this was from you! I know you from TPS. :)Blake Spitz, Teaching & Learning Archivist, blake_spitz@harvard.edu. If you are still looking for folks, I'd be happy to join. Bring perspective of someone newly into a job only focused on public services at an institution that divides functions descently strictly, from a job that included basically everything (public services, technical services, donor work, etc.) at an instition that didn't divide, but is moving that way a bit. Lots of thoughts on PS in new context and the big changes for PS at current insituton (in fact, let me know if someone else from Harvard w/ more history here is a better fit and I could ask around, as, Molly, I know we are semi-frequent collaborators and I also duplicate some UMass SCUA history w/ CW, so no prob if you all go another way!)Mimosa Shah, Reference Librarian, mimosa_shah@radcliffe.harvard.edu. Chiming in to share that I'd be happy to participate if you're also seeking other colleagues. My work involves public services, and more specifically, assisting researchers with gaining access to and using visual and audiovisual resources from our collections. I also provided extended research consultations for students, faculty, and other independent researchers; periodically give tours to classes, donors, and other members of the public; teach small classes on using primary sources for their research; and consult upon and/or contribute to diverse guides and tools used by our researchers to support their scholarship. As the 'primary courier' for a la carte digitization requests, I liaise closely with imaging services staff to both prepare and later refile items taken out of collections for digitization. I also act as an unofficial liaison for researchers seeking to understand how copyright might impact their proposed use of a work, with a bulk of my engagements with researchers centered upon understanding of Fair Use in special collections' libraries. Previously, I was part of the curatorial team and contributed to the creation of a new collection development strategy.

What I would bring to this session: with a background in working at public libraries (and specifcally with public programming and outreach), and now transitioned to working at a special collections' library, I bring a different insight into what it means to work with a public in this setting, and how those requirements are rapidly changing. While I am not trained as an archivist or cataloger, I have skills that are less easily described but are no less technical. Feel free to message me at the email address above. Thanks for bringing this proposal up!		Angela DiVeglia, Instruction and Outreach Librarian for Special Collections, Rhode Island School of Design, adivegli@risd.edu I'd be happy to participate from an instruction-oriented perspective; like Blake, I formerly worked somewhere where I did a wider variety of the tasks involved in Special Collections work, and now I'm somewhere where my primary focus is on public services, especially instruction and reference. I teach a very large number of classes, each of which is tailored to a course's topic and upcoming assignments, and I spend a lot of time communicating the scope of labor involved in planning and teaching a class, in great part because our demand for classes outstrips our ability to teach them. We're always aiming for sustainability, but part of that includes setting boundaries so that we can fit (most of) our work within a typical workweek, and articulating the mostly-invisible work behind our public services is a crucial part of this!Brett Freiburger, Local History Librarian, West Hartford Public Library (bfreiburger@westhartfordct.gov) As a counter to Mimosa, I am coming to a Public Library role after working the majoirty of my career with special collections. I am encountering members of the general public who have little to no idea how to approach archives and special collections, therefore I have developed methods to bridge the gap from the typical audience for historical reference and research to a manageable format for the general public to engage with primary source history and elarn more about their family, home, or town. Also, think I can add a very important perspective as the only person working in a Public Library.
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Thera WebbWomen@MIT Project Archivist, Massachusetts Institute of Technologytwebb@mit.eduTalking about Gender in Archives - A panel or group presentation where we discuss ways our repositories can make thoughtful decisions about describing gender in our collections. While groups like the Program for Cooperative Cataloging recommend removing gender from authority records in cataloging, the needs of archives are different from those of libraries. How do we, as archivists, think about and describe gender in biographical writing and EAC-CPF? In this discussion we will address cis, trans, and nonbinary gender and how we make choices related to identifying a subject's gender as well as how we describe it.The MIT processing team has been working on updating and solidifying our house style in terms of thinking about and describing gender in our collections, and I think it would be cool to hear from other repositories as well about the work you're doing that's along the same lines.Elise Riley, accessioning archivist, Yale University; elise.riley@yale.edu. Hey Thera! I led a RAD (reparative archival description) project to create a document of recommendations for describing gender identity in archival collections at Yale special collections repositories. During our drafting, my group members and I talked about gender in agent fields, how to address incorrect description, and ways archivial workers can gather or find gender descriptive information about the creators or subjects they are writing about.Laura Peimer, lead archivist for archival processing, Schlesinger Library; laura_peimer@radcliffe.harvard.edu. I co-chaired Schlesinger's Inclusive and Reparative Language Committee and helped develop a guide for reparative work. The guide summarizes some of our descriptive challenges and provides examples on ways we've approached reparative work, including re: gender. For more info, here is the section on LGBTQ+ description: https://harvardwiki.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/Proceed/pages/39395025/Gender+and+Sexual+Identities+LGBTQ
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Kai Uchida, Eleta ExlineUniversity Archivist, Milne Special Collections and Archives, University of New Hampshire; Scholarly Communications Librarian, University of New Hampshire; Morgan Wilson, Publi Services Coordinator, University of New Hampshirekai.uchida@unh.eduOur pitch revolves around building resiliency in our collections by broadening their access via digitization and collaborating with peer institutions that enact descriptive work and steward collections in ways that center communities of color. For UNH Library, this means partnering with Densho, a Japanese American post-custodial digital archives based out of Seattle, WA. We will discuss the ongoing work to host a mirror collection of papers that unearth a forgotten history concerning the admission of Japanese-American students to UNH during WWII. By taking descriptive queues from Densho, enriching their collections, and advocating for other schools in the Northeast to collaborate with them to address gaps in their collections, we hope to provide an example of how building resilience in archives can be conceived by not only broadening access, but also recontextualizing a set of institutional records in ways that reckon with a harmful past.We are wondering if there are other peer institutions that have partnered with community archives to host mirror collections/digital surrogates of pieces of collections or entire collections. I think it would be interesting to see what the possibilities and outcomes of that collaboration are, what its logistical pieces entail, and how we can frame that pitch to understand it as work that enriches collections of potentially vulnerable cultural heritage and community organizations and holding parent institutions accountable.
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Elizabeth PetersProcessing Archivist, Boston Collegeelizabeth.peters@bc.eduWorking with students, interns, or new professionals
How have we (or can we) helped folks new to the profession learn how to advocate for themselves in the workplace? Designing projects can go beyond just teaching the nuts and bolts of doing archives, but can/should include making decisions and having conversations about how the work is happenning.		I'm hoping to present on an example of working with interns on a collection with potentially uncomfortable content (religious items, especially relics), and am hoping there are others who could talk about other areas of self-advocacy/self-care, such as health issues, disability accommodations, asking for and receiving feedback, or something else. This could be a good place for any current students/interns/new professionals to present on their experience from the other side of things as well.Katy Sternberger, katy.archivist@gmail.com. Your proposal sounds like it might fit well with the proposal I wrote above. In my work with volunteers and interns, I actively use empathy to define projects, provide coaching, and encourage self-care/self-advocacy. It would be great to hear from the perspective of students and new professionals as well.
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Linda Hocking
Archivist for Law Collections, Lillian Goldman Law Library, Yale
linda.hocking@yale.eduTitle: Create and Consider or Knitty Gritty
It’s hard to have the bandwidth to propose a conference session, organize participants, and put together a presentation (which may not be something that you can repurpose) under ordinary circumstances. As these are not ordinary times and very little of what is happening around us feels normal, I’m thinking about proposing a different kind of session. Think of it as self-care while discussing difficult topics. Let’s gather in small groups to knit, crochet, cross stitch, fidget, doodle, color, or whatever you like while we discuss the questions in the call for proposals. Let’s create while we explore how our institutional and situational realities are impacting us and what opportunities we see to make a difference in our communities.
It would be great to have a few people who would be willing to lead the smaller groups (if that many people attend!) and get the conversations started. These are due on the 30th, but I will be away after the 23rd. I'll submit on the 22nd, but will note we may add a few others as session leaders/facilitators

I can also bring extra yarn and crochet hooks if people just want to noodle around, as well as skeins that can be wound into balls
Megan O'Shea, moshea@smith.edu. I would be happy to lead a group! I am a knitter and a cross-stitcher, as well as an accessioning archivist at a women's college (Smith College). I'm happy to talk about gender in description, subject headings, and in working with students.Alison Fulmer, alison.fulmer@yale.edu. I'm an Archivist at Beinecke and I'd be happy to lead a group as well! I do knitting, crochet, embroidery, and quilting. I can also bring fiber, crafting, and art supplies if needed. Lucy Ross, lross11@mgh.harvard.edu. I'm an Archivist at Mass General Hospital, and am a knitter and embroiderer (and a variety of other crafts that don't travel as well)! Happy to bring spare supplies and talk about a variety of archival topics, especially planning for anniversaries, privacy and ethical concerns in archives, and how to use crafty skills in archives and museum exhibits!
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Rakashi ChandReading Room Supervisor, Massachusetts HIstorical SocietyRchand@masshist.orgReading Room Futures (“In the Reading Room”) An Open Forum to discuss the current and future use of physical Reading Rooms, the changes we anticipate, providing access and how to balance with security and protection of collections. Let’s explore “best Practices” together to share with our greater archival community and help others succeed in Reading Room Management by sharing policies, experiences and systems that work. Let’s talk about what happens in the reading room from circulation, to sightlines, to digitally born restricted material access, to furniture and new ideas. Share a little and learn a little.Hoping to find others in the New England archival space to share and discuss in an open round table format. Everything is on the table.
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