AIR#12. The DSGS Annual Meeting II

 As is tradition, every July all Sections of the Society hold their Annual Meeting. Last Monday, July 7, the Section held its 37th Annual Meeting.

The first part of the meeting was devoted to reviewing the annual report on the Section's activities over the past twelve months. Membership has reached 337 members and continues to grow. During the past year, the Section focused primarily on the following activities:

1-After a seven years-process, the SAA Council approved the updated Section’s Standing Rules. Through this update we have adapted the Section’s rules to the current SAA standards. The changes primarily affect the Steering Committee Member terms and the creation of two new positions: Social Media Liaison and Programming Coordinator.

2-The launch of the Section’s blog and newsletter, Archives In Rainbow (AIR). The first post was published in October, and we now have twelve posts and nearly two-thousand views, half of which are thanks to post #08, dedicated to the Mazer Lesbian Archives in Los Angeles. AIR averages one hundred and fifty views per post. The blog aims to be a hub for information and insight into the world of LGBTQIA2S+ archives and archivists, as well as a meeting place for the Section members and anyone else interested in the topic. The blog has also covered other topics, such as the 50th anniversary of the Lesbian Herstory Archives ans the 90th anniversary of Audre Lorde.

3-The Section has also collaborated with the SAA Diversity Committee to address the plight of many LGBTQIA2S+ archives and archivists due to hostile Federal and states policies on the issue.

The projects for the next year are as follows:

1-The launch of a coordination program to harmonize the Section's presence on the Internet through its three channels: the microsite, the blog and the Facebook account. This program will be coordinated by our future Social Media and Web Liaison.

2-A webinars program to cover topics related to LGBTQIA2S+ archives and archivists, with a special focus on new and young professionals.

3-A collaboration inititative with other Society's Committees and Sections, as well as extend it to other sister organizations, such as the Rainbow Round Table of the American Library Association (ALA-RRT) and the Sex-Affective and Gender Diversity Archives and Archivists Working Group of the International Council on Archives (ICA-SAGDAA-WG).

Of course, there is a space for all the Section's members to propose and suggest any activity or initiative they believe could be interesting. By the way, we are approaching to the 40th anniversary of the Section, and it could be really enriching to delve deeper into its history.

The Meeting then spent a few minutes reminding the candidates for the two open positions as Junior Co-chair / Elected Senior Co-chair and Social Media and Web Liaison. You can read the candidates' statements on the microsite and here on AIR. The Meeting also welcomed the two new Early Career Members of the Steering Committee, Madison Newport and Lark Wilson.

Joyce Gabiola then spoke a few words as the SAA Council Liaison and said goodbye, as Joyce will be leaving the Council next term. We thank Joyce for the work, commitment, and dedication during this time and also for the time to come.

The last part of the meeting was for the two presentations on how to process LGBTQIA2S+ oral history projects in an archival way. The first one was conducted by David Advent. David is a Scholarly Communication Librarian at Utah State University, focusing on research publishing and impact. He recently graduated with his MLIS from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he worked for the LGBTQ+ Oral History Program. The title of the presentation is "Visibility is Survival: Changes to the LGBTQ+ Oral History Inventory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison". David explained us that in our current era, where harm against LGBTQ+ communities is on the rise, the need to record and preserve LGBTQ+ histories and stories is tantamount. The University of Wisconsin-Madison LGBTQ+ Oral History Program works directly in this goal to preserve Wisconsin LGBTQ+ history , and recent changes to the program have been made to broaden the scope and impact of the program.

These include four points: reorganizing the LGBTQ+ inventory to make it more accessible for researchers; working closely with different university committees to advocate for the program; instituting community-based outreach to identify new narrators; and, most recently, introducing a narrator compensation policy that allows the program to compensate narrators for the gift of their time.

The presentation higlighted these changes and included recommendations for how other oral history and archival programs can implement similar ones.

Once David's presentation was over, the Meeting gave way to the second presentation by Carmela Furio. Carmela is an early career archivist with a background in accessioning, processing, and digital projects. They hold an MLIS from the University of Iowa and BAs in English and Italian. They established the LGBTQ Iowa Archives & Library's digital oral history repository, LGBTQ Iowa Narratives (LIN), where they currently manage the collections' processing and digital preservation needs. They additionally serve on SAA's Podcast Working Group as a producer for Archives in Context, the podcast about the archives and the people behind them.

The presentation is titled "One Bit a Time: Initiating Digital Preservation in Queer Community Archive Oral History Projects". In early 2024, the LGBTQ Iowa Archives and Library (LIAL) began to revitalize LIN, its oral history project, on a low budget and with an all-volunteer staff.

Aiming to conduct, collect, and make accessible audio interviews regarding queer Iowan life, LIN needed to initiate digital preservation to survive. As such, the presentation discussed LIN's methodology for approaching digital archiving with minimal means. LIN is affiliated with the LGBT Oral Histories of Central Iowa (LOHCI) project and will be housing a copy of their materials. LOHCI is a project made up of interviews gathered by students of Grinnell College.

We thank Carmela and David for their work and their commitment with LGBTQIA2S+ archives and with the people supporting them. The two presentations were selected to be present at the SAA Annual Conference Archives * Records 2024 in Chicago and we have enjoyed an updating of the two projects at the 37th SAA-DSGS Annual Meeting.