The Descriptive Notes editorial team is pleased to announce the publication of a new post in our ongoing Inclusive Description series.
In "Efforts in Reparative Description: Community Listening Sessions at the University of Minnesota Libraries," Theresa Berger and Kate Dietrick discuss the University of Minnesota Libraries Archives and Special Collections' pilot "Community Listening Sessions," during which they welcomed members from a specific (often marginalized) group to come onsite to discuss description of, presentation of, and access to material that may be considered sensitive or potentially harmful to said community.
Read it here: https://saadescription.wordpress.com/2025/09/22/efforts-in-reparative-description-community-listening-sessions-at-the-university-of-minnesota-libraries/
Descriptive Notes is the blog of SAA's Description Section, featuring articles related to all aspects of archival description. We are currently soliciting posts for new series on the Description of Visual Materials.This series will build out of two collaborative sessions with the SAAvVisual Materials Section over the last year, the first in-person at the 2024 SAA Annual Meeting and the second virtually in early February 2025. Visual materials - from photographs to artwork to maps to architectural plans - present a variety of descriptive challenges, and we'd like to take the conversations we began together to Descriptive Notes.
Individuals who attended or presented at the SAA Annual Meeting this last month might also be interested in writing for our rolling Conference Dispatches series (https://saadescription.wordpress.com/category/conference-dispatches/).
You can read our submission guidelines here - https://saadescription.wordpress.com/guidelines/ - or email us at saadescription@gmail.com.
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Betts Coup
Blog Editor, Descriptive Notes
Head of Archival Operations
Technical Services for Archives & Special Collections
Archives, Arts, & Special Collections
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA
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