The Twin Cities Archives Round Table is pleased to announce the seventh annual Minnesota Archives Symposium (MAS). MAS is a local educational and networking opportunity for archivists, librarians, records managers, curators and other information professionals. We seek to broaden opportunities to share knowledge and insights among peers at a local level. The Symposium will be held on Monday, November 5th at the Carondelet Center in Saint Paul.

This year’s topic will be: Balancing Act in the Archives

Whether you’re a solo archivist or part of a large archival department, in this profession we all have many tasks to undertake over the course of our day. As job descriptions can sometimes read as in charge of “everything under the sun,” we are often faced with struggling to accomplish it all. How do we balance all of these different hats, especially when some are seen as competing priorities — bringing in new collections versus paying attention to old collections, privacy versus access, cultivating old donors versus going after new donors? As an archivist, how do you tackle the juggling act?

Ideas for presentation topics include:

• Balancing incoming processing with backlog processing
• Coordinating various staff members including volunteers, interns, students, staff, part-time staff, etc.
• Taking on special grant projects while maintaining existing job workload
• Serving internal users versus external users (corporate archives)
• Navigating digital initiatives with existing responsibilities
• Personal goals for professional development and institutional support (or lack thereof)
• Fundraising or advocating for institutional support

This is not an exhaustive list, but will hopefully spur on ideas.  We would especially like to hear from new institutions or those who have never spoken at a symposium before. We encourage presentations from archivists and information professionals at all levels of their career.

Call for Participants:

If you have a great idea but don’t think you can speak for an entire hour, please still submit your idea! We will attempt to pair you with other presenters with similar topics for a panel presentation.

If you are interested in presenting at the symposium, please provide us with a brief abstract and working title for your presentation, along with how long you wish to present (30 minutes/60 minutes). Include full contact information with submissions, including your name(s) and institution or school if applicable.
Submissions should be sent to tcartmn@gmail.com.

Deadline for submission is Monday, August 27th.

Registration:

Save the Date!!! The Minnesota Archives Symposium will be held at the Carondelet Center on Monday, November 5th. Registration is FREE, but we will ask that participants register their intent to attend. Look for more details on registering for this event on the TCART listserv and website.

Questions?

Questions should be sent to the TCART Communications Officer Kate Dietrick at diet0134@umn.edu or 612-625-0192.