Trivia Night in November

We've been thinking about having a fun meet up to chat, discuss archives and enjoy trivia so . . . 

5th Quadrant hosts a regular Trivia Night and we are going to check it out.  Join some students, new archivist professionals and archivists for a fun night out.

Details:

Location: 5th Quadrant, 3901 N. Williams
Date: Nov 7
Time: 7 pm
Website:  http://www.lompocbrewing.com/fifthquadrant_home.html

Very informal meet-up event, hope to see you there!!

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.

Portland Emerging Archivist Event

PEA's First Event: A Local Remix of the NWA Conference

2:00 pm (program starts at 3:00) on June 24th at


The Green Dragon 
928 Southeast 9th Avenue
  ‎ 
 
Cost = FREE


The Portland Emerging Archivists would like to invite all archives students and new professionals to attend our first event at the Green Dragon Brewpub.  The event will feature a number of lightening talks by students and archivists who presented at the recent Northwest Archivists Conference in Salem.  This is a great chance for anyone who was unable to attend the conference to catch up on what our region is doing.  If you did attend the conference come anyway to meet everyone while enjoying a beer or coffee. 

Speakers include:
Brian Brown, Business Systems Analyst at the City of Portland Archives and Records
Jenny Mundy, Electronic Records Management Analyst at Multnomah County Archives
Max Johnson, MLIS Student at San Jose State University 
Pete Asch, Archivist at Oregon Jewish Museum

Please RSVP or for more information contact : Pete Asch (pete.asch [at] gmail [dot] com) 

PEA - Portland Emerging Archivists

Picking a name is hard, but last night at the Lucky Lab in Southeast Portland, 5 of us got together (2 students, 3 archivists) and founded Portland Emerging Archivists (PEA). We drew up a couple guiding ideas for the group:

• PEA will host 3-4 events each year aimed at bringing together students and "new" archivists.  
• Each event will be free or very cheap and include both educational and social components.  
• The locations will be picked that encourage social interactions, including community spaces, bars, coffee shops, etc..
• We will collaborate with area groups including library/information science organizations, but our mission is to serve the archives community. 
• Instead of trying to create a new listserv/board/etc...we decided to work through the established channels of the SAA's Student and New Archives Professional Roundtable (SNAP), Portland Area Archivists (PAA), the Northwest Archivists(NWA), and the archive programs listservs in the area.  

Our first event will be June 24th and by the middle of this week, we will be announcing the exact time and location. 

The Plan

Following our session at NWA's 2012 Conference in Salem, Max and I have taken a few weeks to figure what our next steps should be and have laid out a plan:

The Plan - v0.1

May 20, 2012 - Conduct initial meet-up with interested students and new professionals.  Use opportunity to develop core group for initial/kick-off event.  Needs agenda.

Early June 2012 - Kick-off event mini-conference and mixer - several 5 minute mini-sessions to help bring the messages to students who could not attend.

July/August 2012 - Have group develop feedback/talking points for engaging SNAP.  Develop strategies.

SAA 2012 - Pete and Max go down to San Diego, have informal/formal meetings with SNAP,look at how groups can help each other.

August/September 2012 - Pete and Max author articles for Easy Access and Journal of Western Archives.  If local group is successful at this point, start developing general strategies for routine student/new professional engagement.

September - April 2012/2013 - Action item #1, develop quarterly programming and implement.  Action Item #2, develop model for the local group, and seek ways to implement in major cities under NWA.  Action Item #3, begin Hinterlands-engagement activities.  Develop strategies.

Employers/Intern Supervisors Respond

We received over forty responses from employers and internship supervisors, representing 14 states, Washington D.C., and Canada. Their input is greatly appreciated and we are currently working to compile some analytical data from the surveys, which we will share on this site and with SNAP after the NWA conference. These survey results allow us to build a model of expectations for employers of students/volunteers/interns. These expectations are going to be compared with the expectations of the model we develop for the current student (based on those survey results).

In the meantime, keep checking up on the blog as we are going to create a couple of posts on both surveys for your viewing pleasure. To start, we wanted to share some of the answers to a few of our questions.

-Max and Pete

Are there any particular set of skills, knowledge, etc that you look for in potential interns and employees?

“Curiosity, responsibility and friendliness. With the school here, I hire grad students already interested in or learning about archives. I'm happy to teach skills, so long as I'm teaching someone receptive.”

" ... Understanding that we need to have skills in the interpersonal side as well as the technical side of things"

"Attention to detail, strong analytical skills, excellent communication skills, interest and curiosity about archival materials, strong self-motivation"

Are there any skills, knowledge, etc that you feel students and emerging archivists do not possess which would make them more prepared?

“Management, communication skills, & donor relations are rarely addressed in grad school, but they should be.”

“The connection between what we do and why we do it. Processing does not happen in a vacuum and is part of the bigger picture related to preservation and access.”

“The biggest problems are actually with their abilities to create good cover letters and resumes and their lack of preparation for interviews. In addition, however, some have no practical experience (practicum or internship), most have weak understanding of appraisal, and too many are daunted by large modern collections.”

How do you define a successful experience for an intern/volunteer/student worker?

"Unfortunately, I think there might be some divergence between what employers define as successful and what students/interns think. And it depends on the job they were brought in to do ... So with all this in mind, I define successful as coming out of the experience having learned more about the profession and how theory and practice come together. They'll have had the opportunity to put their knowledge to work and move to the next level of experience or figure out how the dots connect. Above all, I think it's a successful endeavor if they understand that it really isn't all about processing and working with cool materials, because the vast majority of archivists will only do this for a short period of time. "

Participation via Twitter

During the NWA 2012 conference in Salem we will be monitoring our twitter feeds in order to include individuals not able to make it to the conference in person. We are looking at popularizing, or broadcasting a hashtag so that interested parties can include a brief message and tweet it using that hashtag. We will monitor that tag and include the input in the general discussion portion of our session. Example:

How do students view their roles in professional organizations? #newacc

Short and sweet. Please send us comments, your experiences and questions and include #newacc in the tweet to ensure we will view it. If you have any questions, let one of us know!

Best,
Max and Pete