Recap of the Portland Emerging Archivists kick-off event

This past Sunday was the kick-off event for the Portland Emerging Archivists (PEA), a student and new professionals network in Portland, OR focused on tackling the needs of students and new archivists in the area.  Our first meeting/event saw 12 students and new professionals gathered to discuss the state of students in the area and to participate in a remix of the Northwest Archivists annual conference.  We heard from Pete Asch, Oregon Jewish Museum/Portland State University on the student needs as they relate to professional organizations and what how these organizations help students and new professionals gain greater depth in their field.  Max Johnson, current San Jose State Student University spoke on the gap between student expectations for entry level work and the expectations held by employers and a break down of the skills hiring archivists are looking for.  Next we had Brian Brown, Business Systems Analyst for the City of Portland give an expanded version of his lightning talk from NWA 2012 in which he outlines the strategies employed by the CoP to enhance user access to collections.  He detailed how the TRIM EDRMS functions in this capacity and how it meshes with other tools used to collect usage data and conduct aspects of digital preservation.  Our final speaker, Jenny Mundy, Electronic Records Management Analyst for Multnomah County, gave us an in-depth look at the innovative systems she uses at the County to track ingest of electronic records, the storage structure used, the access tools deployed and the collaborative skills necessary to bring it all together in a successful program.
     The first two speakers highlighted the challenges students and new professionals face in the Pacific Northwest and Portland in particular. From Brian and Jenny, we heard first hand of how records management and the continuum approach to records leads directly into archival management and digital preservation - something archivists had indicated students were not bringing together as part of their career searching.
      After the presentations we had an open discussion about what could be done in the future to help students and new professionals tackle internships and networking in the area.  We discussed becoming involved in the Oregon Archives Crawl and in the Northwest Archivists as "access points" towards greater involvement in the profession.
     Finally we discussed in brief how best to take PEA forward and are looking at a few more events this year which include tours and other student/emerging professional mixers and gatherings.

As always the most important aspect was to get together, talk and see how we can move the profession forward.