NEA Spring 2020 session proposal collaboration connection hub

	A	B	C	D	E
1	NAME	POSITION/AFFILIATION	EMAIL	PITCH	POSSIBLE COLLABORATORS (include your name, email, what you would bring to this session)

2	Cate Peebles	Museum Archivist, Yale Center for British Art	catherine.peebles@gmail.com	How is archival material used outside the archives for non-academic purposes by artists, writers and filmmakers? I would like to look at archival sources used by poets and visual artists aesthetically, politically and narratively to show how our work can extend beyond its expected applications as a source of cultural and creative work--and this extends from fine arts to popular culture. The influence of archives on culture is more broad than it's given credit for. My background is in literature/ poetry, so would focus on this area and hope others can speak about other media (film, tv, theater, etc.)	1. Emily DiLeo, emily.dileo@yale.edu, I can speak about this phenomenon in music. Recent examples include the use of some images from our collection in a show produced by Harry Connick Jr., and the "remixing" of a Native American-inspired piece of music, written in the early 20th century. 2. Jeanne Lowrey, jeanne.lowrey@yale.edu, I can speak to some of the pop culture examples. One that comes to mind is Hamilton, which isn't about archives specifically, but a major theme centers on what histories get recorded and which don't, and the creation/destruction of documents are central to pivitol moments of the show. Another aspect is seeing who is portrayed as an archivist (I've seen a lot of old white men with not even minimal training) and how that is reflective of the actual demographics of the profession/the training required for our work. 3. Cathleen Miller, cmiller10@une.edu, I have worked with a lot of artists and writers who are using the archives to inspire their own visual/performance art and poetry. Recently, there has been a lot of interest in two of our collections dealing with Arctic exploration and artists are reimagining and questioning that narrative through their work. We also started a creative fellow program to nurture artists using the archives.
3	Caroline White	Archives & Manuscript Librarian, UMass Amherst	cjwhite@umass.edu	Archives as a second career: I came to the field of archives/librarianship after a long (nearly two-decade) career as an editor for a major trade book publisher. It seems like an obvious fit—books and manuscripts being features of both fields, for example—but I have found that being a recovering book editor has influenced and strengthened my work as an archivist, and my perspective on the field, in ways I had not anticipated. Some of those ways are specific to publishing, but others, I suspect, are shared by many other fields. I would like to put together a session with two or three other archivists who have had full careers in other fields and who are willing to share how they use that prior, outside perspective and experience—and how and why it can have a positive impact on the archives profession. I envision it as a fairly traditional format (presentations, followed by questions and discussion)—I certainly have a lot to say about how I draw on my own experience (and some of the challenges I faced in making a mid-life change) and I have a sense of how I would structure my talk—but I’m open to a panel discussion or facilitated conversation or something of that ilk.	1. Erik Bauer, bauer@noblenet.org, archives is a second career for me. I come from a retail inventory managment background wtih Apple. 2. Emily DiLeo, emily.dileo@yale.edu, former academic and ethnomusicologist/ethnographer - my ethnographic background has definitely given me a unique perspective on being an archivist, especially as it relates to inclusion and exclusion. I can also talk about the particular challenges of switching careers in mid-life, and how the archives job market excludes those of us who are mid-career (i.e., needing stability for family reasons). 3. Jessica Chapel, jchapel@law.harvard.edu — I came to archives after a career in journalism/digital media and am often struck by how much overlap exists in the fields. I can talk about how the practice of one informs the other, how I find I'm solving same of the same problems in digital archives that I did in digital media, how the career change influences the archives questions/issues I've been most interested in talking about/collaborating on, and — for sure, Caroline and Emily — the challenges of a mid-life career change, especially in a competitive field where a lot of the advice about establishing yourself centers on geographic flexibility and a willingness/ability to weather financial insecurity. 4. Cate Peebles, catherine.peebles@yale.edu, I became an archivist after about a decade working in publishing and as a cheesemonger/copywriter in the specialty foods industry (there are some interesting connections between working in a cheese cave and being an archivist!); I can also talk about the risks and rewards of changing course, impostor syndrome, privilege, debt, and my ultimate (so far) satisfaction with taking the leap.
4	Betts Coup	Processing Archivist, Houghton Library, Harvard University	elizabeth_coup@harvard.edu	How do users experience finding aids? What impact does our description have? How do users understand aggregate and granular levels of description? I'm working on a user experience study to explore if and how users use finding aids, and I'd love to know if others have thought about what impact our description has on access. Maybe you've thought about the other ways our work impacts researchers, like display on a website? Organization based on our standards? I think this would make a great unifying topic to discuss how what we produce as archivists impacts how our users access and experience archival collections, with perhaps three or four short standard presentations. This could also work as a lightning forum if we had enough interest!	1. Stephanie Satalino, ssatalin@cshl.edu, I can speak about how most of our users are coming to us from our digital repository database. Generally, I can talk about how digitization has been increasing the number of researcher requests we receive and the confusion they've expressed to me regarding the traditional finding aid versus digitized material. Also, my institution's attempt to link digitized material directly to the archivesspace finding aid to help users understand how much of a collection is digital.
5	Camila Zorilla Tessler	Archivist, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University	camila.tessler@yale.edu	Would like to explore the intersection of the horror genre and archives, and how popular culture has narrowed the perception of archives into the horror genre. Hope to explore why archives are not included in other pop culture genres like comedy or fantasy or romance, etc.
6	Sonia Pacheco	Librarian Archivist, Ferreira-Mendes Portuguese-American Archives (UMass Dartmouth)	spacheco@umassd.edu	I would like to have a conversation with another 2 or 3 archivists about what it means to be both a member of the community you are responsible for documenting. Some of the issues/questions that could be addressed: Where do you draw the line between professional effectiveness and community needs/desires? how do you impart your knowledge/expertise when the community only views you as a member and not as an expert? We can also share some of the successes/failures we've had because of this tenuous positioning
7	François Dansereau	Archivist, McGill University Health Centre	francois.dansereau@muhc.mcgill.ca	I would like to explore how the setting up of an archival program can be a political act, i.e. how the formal erection of an archival organization affects the collective memory of an instiution, and how it can lead to an opening of the institution's archival collection. This paper will use the recently established McGill University Health Centre Archives and Special Collections as an example that opens up narratives that reflect the diversity of actors involved in hospitals. Typically, the collective memory and history of health care institutions is heavily connected to male doctors' achievements and social and professional identity. This paper argues that the construction of an archival program facilitates the emergence of a diversity of narratives and ressources documenting the importance and involvement of a multiplicity of actors, including nurses and other health care professionals, and a diversity of subjects, including social and community endeavors associated with hospital life. It highlights the proximity of the archival endeavor with the communities the archival program serve.
8	Molly Brown and Stephanie Krauss	Reference and Outreach Archivist, Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections Reference Archivist, Center for the History of Medicine, Countway LIbrary , Harvard Medical School	mo.brown@northeastern.edu and stephanie_krauss@hms.harvard.edu	In this roundtable discussion, “Inside and Outside the Reading Room,” we are looking to have a set of presentations that approach archival reference services from a variety of perspectives in order to explore the following questions: What does a reference community of practice look like? How do we mitigate traditional archival power dynamics? How can we as reference archivists make our reading rooms welcoming spaces, both physically and digitally? How do existing archival practices affect the services we provide in both positive and negative ways?
9	Kathy Berger
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