Did you pilot a creative, remote project during COVID-19?
As a part of the 2020 Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivists, the Reference, Access, & Outreach (RAO) section will host its 8th annual Marketplace of Ideas. The Marketplace of Ideas takes place in conjunction with the annual RAO business meeting, and offers participants a chance to learn more about creative instruction, outreach, and reference programs piloted by colleagues. This year, COVID-19 brought unexpected changes and new challenges to our work. As a result, both the RAO business meeting and Marketplace of Ideas will take place virtually with details to follow as SAA finalizes the transition to a remote Annual Meeting. In this same spirit, RAO invites proposals from presenters who enacted unique and creative solutions to moving the following endeavors to a remote or online environment in response to the COVID-19 crisis:
- Access to Born Digital Collections -- This could be a policy discussion regarding privacy or confidentiality, as well as access policy and procedural issues, or the technology and manpower needed to make it happen.
- Assessment -- What stats do you keep? What's important? How do you track these stats? How do you use these at your institution?
- Archival Outreach on a Shoestring -- Do you use any project planning tools for outreach? What do you need to commit to outreach at a minimum level?
- Community Archives Outreach -- Have you designed a program to reach out to local community organizations and groups to make sure their voices are included in the archive? What is involved in a successful outreach initiative?
- Pop-Up Exhibits - Have you found a way to do quick and easy exhibits that enable your archives to reach a variety of different constituencies with less staff time and involvement than traditional exhibits?
- Teaching with Primary Sources -- How to design/help design an archival research assignment or program that incorporates faculty and their students.
- Lone Arrangers and Advocacy 101 -- How to educate your host institution or non-archivist colleagues about what an archives is, what you/the archives does, and why it's so darn important?
To submit a proposal, please fill out the application form by Friday, June 12th 26th.------------------------------
Julie Porterfield
Instruction & Outreach Archivist
Eberly Family Special Collections Library, Penn State University Libraries
Bellefonte PA
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