Announcements

Descriptive Notes is pleased to share a new Steering Share from the outgoing Description Section Steering Committee Chair, Max Goldberg. You can find the blogpost here: https://saadescription.wordpress.com/2026/08/25/steering-share-august-2026/. In the post, Max reflects on the 2025-2026 SAA year and describes what the Description Section has been up

We would also like to take a moment to share a few of our recent posts, in case you're just catching up on our spring and summer activities.

From our AI & Description series:

• Brenda Gunn's  "AI Can't Take My Descriptive Expertise;

• Anthony Cheney Guzmán's "The Double Erasure Problem;"

• Elizabeth Lhost's  "Are the chatbots coming for our collections? Or, reflections on navigating AI for archival description and online access;"

• Camila Zorrilla-Tessler's "There is no AI in Archivist;" and

• Owen King, Caroline Mango, Raananah Sarid-Segal, and Miranda Villesvik's "Outside the Black Box: AI Shedding Light for AV Cataloging."

From our other ongoing series:

• Dana Anderson and Samantha Rowe's "Read the Notes: Promoting Equity and Transparency in the WPI Digital Archives;"

• Cory Nimer's TS-EAS update "Standards in Practice: Findings from a Community Survey on Encoded Archival Standards;" and

•  Elizabeth M. (Eli) Peters' "Six degrees of separation: using linked data to create layered archival description."

 

Descriptive Notes continues to solicit posts for this current series on AI and archival description, continuing this conversation. As is demonstrated by these posts, we welcome a range of pieces and perspectives: case studies, editorial or perspective pieces, situated around questions such as: Are you using AI as a tool for archival description? If so, what specific work are you attempting/accomplishing with it? What have you found to be the benefits and challenges? If you've chosen not to use AI in your descriptive practice, what factors or concerns have influenced that decision, and what challenges or pressures are you encountering as a result? Posts might describe descriptive workflows or projects into which you've integrated generative AI, the challenges of implementing AI, guidelines or guardrails for using generative AI in description, how you've advocated for (or against) the use of AI in your descriptive practice … and more!

 

Submit your pitches to saadescription@gmail.com. You can read more on our submission guidelines here: https://saadescription.wordpress.com/guidelines/. 

 

We are also always interested in receiving submissions for any of our existing series, as well as any announcements or updates, conference dispatches, history and heritage month-related posts, as well as our longtime favorite finding aids pieces.

 

Best,

Betts Coup

Lead Blog Editor, Descriptive Notes

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Betts Coup
Head of Archival Operations
Technical Services for Archives & Special Collections
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA
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