Author Archives: Houston Archivist

SSA 2016 Registration is Live!

Register now for the Society of Southwest Archivists 2016 Annual Meeting in Oklahoma City, OK, May 18-21, 2016! The meeting’s theme is Native Routes and promises to be one of our best. In addition to the repository tours, receptions, and stellar educational sessions, we also have a wonderful plenary speaker and special Saturday afternoon programming sure to reinvigorate your mission.

Info about the meeting:  http://societyofsouthwestarchivists.wildapricot.org/annualmeeting

Or go directly to the registration page: http://societyofsouthwestarchivists.wildapricot.org/event-2019063

Questions? Contact Christina Wolf <cwolf@okcu.edu>

Special Talk: Silvio Torres-Saillant, UH Special Collections

All are invited to the upcoming talk with Silvio Torres-Saillant, at University of Houston’s Special Collections
Date: Feb. 10th, 2016
Time: 10 am-11:30 am
Location: University of Houston, Special Collections

Silvio Torres-Saillant is a Professor in the English Department at Syracuse University. He co-founded La Casita Cultural Center, an organization with the mission to create bridges of communication, collaboration and exchange linking Syracuse University with the Latino population of the city and promoting the Hispanic heritages of Central New York. He serves on the core team of Democratizing Knowledge, an initiative that promotes strategies for decolonizing the academy, and in the Syracuse University chapter of The Future of Minority Studies, a nationwide consortium of scholars working on efforts to foreground the ways of knowing and bodies of knowledge subjugated by the colonial transaction.

The Recovering the U. S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project is an international project to locate, preserve and disseminate Hispanic culture of the United States in its written form since colonial times until 1960. The project has compiled a comprehensive bibliography of thousands of books, pamphlets, manuscripts and ephemera produced by Latinos and Latinas in the United States.

For questions or more details, please contact Carolina Villarroel at carolina@uh.edu, or Lisa Cruces at ecruces@uh.edu or 713-743-9903.

Texas Digital Library Award Nominations Deadline EXTENDED

Texas Digital Library (TDL) Awards acknowledge outstanding digital library work at academic libraries in Texas. The TDL Awards Committee encourages individuals to nominate themselves, as well as other individuals and groups, for recognition of the innovative and important work happening across the state in digital libraries.

Award recipients will receive one complimentary registration per group/awardee for the 2016 Texas Conference on Digital Libraries (TCDL) in Austin, May 24-26, 2016, and be honored at the TCDL Conference Reception.

Please review the full set of criteria for each award before submitting. For questions about the criteria or processes for awards selection, please email: info@tdl.org.

To learn more about the different awards and nomination process, check out the Texas Digital Library website here: http://tdl.org/awards.

Nomination Instructions

You may nominate yourself or someone else for these awards. To submit a nomination, download and complete the appropriate form provided below and email it along with any supporting documentation to: tdlawards@utlists.utexas.edu

Important Dates

February 12, 2016: Deadline for submissions
March 18, 2016: Notification of award recipients
May 24-26, 2016: Dates for the 2016 Texas Conference on Digital Libraries (TCDL), at which awards will be distributed. (Attendance at the conference is not required to receive an award.)

Congratulations Lisa Cruces, Winner of the IMLS RBS Fellowship for Early-Career Librarians!

Lisa Cruces, Hispanic Collections archivist at the University of Houston Libraries Special Collections, has been awarded an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Rare Book School (RBS) Fellowship for Early-Career Librarians.

cruces2

To read more about this wonderful opportunity, visit the University of Houston Library website at: http://weblogs.lib.uh.edu/blog/2016/01/20/cruces-awarded-imls-rbs-fellowship/#sthash.QpLuoqNB.dpuf

Harold T. Pinkett Minority Student Award Nominations

The application period for the 2016 Harold T. Pinkett Minority Student Award is now open!

The Pinkett Award was established in 1993 and recognizes and acknowledges minority graduate students, such as those of African, Asian, Latino or Native American descent, who, through scholastic and personal achievement, manifest an interest in becoming professional archivists and active members of the Society of American Archivists.

The recipients of the award will receive full complimentary registration to the SAA Annual Meeting and related expenses for hotel and travel for attending the Annual Meeting of the Society of American Archivists on July 31, 2016 – August 6, 2016 in Atlanta, Georgia. In addition, each recipient receives a complimentary one-year membership in SAA.

Eligibility: The Pinkett is awarded to minority students, with preference given to full-time students possessing a minimum scholastic grade point average of 3.5 while enrolled in a graduate program focusing on archival management during the academic year proceeding the date on which the award is given.

For more details or to download the application form please visit:

http://www2.archivists.org/governance/handbook/section12-pinkett

The deadline to apply is February 28, 2016.

We wish you the best of luck!

Sincerely,

The Harold T. Pinkett Minority Student Award Committee

Part-Time Archivist Position

Jim Windham is seek an archivist assist part-time with two projects.

The position requires two major elements:

  1. The cataloging and organizing of Mr. Windham’s personal archives involving extensive professional, civic, and political affairs dating from the mid-1960s, with the objective of preparing them for storage and/or possible transmittal to a museum or library.
  2. The cataloging and organizing of digital archives encompassing the online publication of The Texas Pilgrim, a monthly letter of commentary on public affairs, policy, books, and American culture, now in its 16th year.

Compensation to be determined by scope and time on task.

Contact Jim Windham at txpilgrim@comcast.net or by phone at 281-589-7055.

SSA 2016 Annual Meeting Call for Submissions

The Society of Southwest Archivist is seeking proposals for sessions or papers for the 2016 annual conference in Oklahoma City, OK. The theme for this conference is Native Routes and we are especially encouraging submissions related to archives of indigenous people, transportation, and communications.

In addition, SSA would also love to hear about all the cool things you are doing at your institution – archival promotion and outreach, A/V and electronic records access and preservation, accessioning, processing, and more.

Please consider participating in this year’s conference by sharing with everyone all of the wonderful things you are doing.

The deadline for submissions has been extended to December 18th. Please see the Submission Guidelines for more details.

 

AHA! Holiday Party & Elections – December 10th

Just a reminder that our Holiday Party is upon us. I look forward to seeing many of you there tomorrow. As a quick recap:  Time: 6:00pm. Location:  The Little Art Gallery on the University of St. Thomas campus (corner of Yoakum and Branard).  Parking should be in back of the house or street parking in surrounding neighborhood.

From my announcement yesterday, I also need to issue a retraction. I had initially mentioned that we would be voting on a by-laws amendment proposal. It has been brought to my attention that although we had discussed this at the Spring meeting and it was captured in the minutes, we still needed to announce the proposal to membership at least 3 weeks prior to the December meeting. Per Article VI of our existing By-laws.  As your President that is my fault and responsibility and I apologize about this. As a result we will not be voting on the proposed document at this time. It will have to wait until next year.

Attached you will find the agenda for tomorrow’s meeting in addition to the slate for the 2016 candidates. Please note that for the position of Vice-President, we have Emily Vinson who has agreed to run, but she is currently running unopposed as we have not received an additional candidate nomination. There is the provision of Article V Section 2B that prior to election, nominations can be made and seconded from the floor prior to the election of each officer, so if we really have a late entry for VP that is a possibility.

Finally, I wanted  to share with you news about the SSA Proposed deadline extension from our SSA President Mary Manning. The good news is that they are still seeking proposals for a session or paper for the 2016 SSA Conference. Deadline has been extended to December 18th for submissions.  I’m sure you all have something to contribute to this year’s theme of Native Routes. Please see attachment for additional details and submission.

Yours,

Vince Lee

AHA Holiday Meeting 2015 Agenda

2016 Election Candidates

SSA Call of Papers December 2016

Olivewood Cemetary Clean-up

Although we were unable to find a sunny day to tour Olivewood Cemetery in Houston, this weekend will be beautiful weather for their cleanup.  If you are interested in working outdoors for a few hours and getting involved with this organization, please consider attending this cleanup!

Also you might remember that the Olivewood folks are in need of some help and advice on organizing and processing the archive of information they have accrued while doing research on those buried in the cemetery.  We will hopefully plan a tour of the cemetery for the spring sometime!

Clean Up will be from 9-12. Don’t forget to bring your lawn tools and wear long sleeves, long pants, closed toe shoes. The cemetery is located at 1300 Court Street in Houston.

Also for those that have asked how can they give a donation, please visit their website at www.descendantsofolivewood.org and click on the donate button. You can make a one time or monthly donation.

For those who would like to send your donation by mail, the mailing address is:

P.O. Box 70644
Houston,TX 77270

News from the Academy of Certified Archivists

News from the Academy of Certified Archivists

The Academy of Certified Archivists (ACA) is making the certification exam more affordable by offering a reduced application fee as part of an early bird special!

Register for the exam before February 15 and receive half-off regular registration. The rate increases to the standard fee of $50 after February 15.

The early bird deadline also lowers the threshold for selecting pick-your-site locations! Instead of requiring 5 test takers per site, the ACA will only require 3 during the early bird period.  This change makes it easier for many candidates to have an exam site in a more convenient and affordable location.  But, like the test application fee, the required number of test participants will increase to the standard number of 5 after the early bird period ends.

This year’s Certified Archivist exam will be held August 3rd.  The predetermined locations are: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, and Seattle.

Questions? Contact the ACA Secretariat: secretariat@certifiedarchivists.org

Thanks to Emily Vinson for passing along the news.