Under different circumstances, the award recipients would be presenting in person during the Spring Meeting. Thank you to Beth and Ellen for providing the following reports.

The American Craft Council Library’s TCART Professional Development Award, 2021
Beth Goodrich
I was fortunate to receive the TCART Professional Development Award to offset the cost of registration for the Write (or Re-Write) Your Emergency Plan workshop held virtually over three days from March 2-16, 2021. The past pandemic year has brought many changes to the American Craft Council as an organization, and a particular goal for 2021 in my role as librarian/archivist for the organization is to reassess and update all of our library policies and procedures. Our library emergency plan was woefully out of date, having been last drafted in 2002 when the library was located in New York City. In creating a revised emergency plan, I was essentially beginning from scratch, and having never written an emergency plan before, I sought out guidance from the Midwest Art Conservation Center. Their recently held workshop was a great experience and I completed the course with plan in hand that I feel confident in presenting to ACC staff and emergency responders.

Session one challenged attendees to assess their collections, building spaces and environmental conditions for risk situations that may affect their collections. Session two provided us with a template for drafting an emergency plan tailored to the needs of our own institution. The final session offered participants time to discuss their draft plans and any particular issues they encountered during the process of drafting. A tabletop exercise to talk through an imagined disaster allowed participants to think through the steps of response and recovery. This workshop, although presented by an organization from the field of art conservation, addressed the needs all types of collecting institutions of any size, and I would highly recommend this workshop to any library or archive information professional.

University of MN Libraries IHRCA’s TCART Professional Development Award, 2021
Ellen Engseth
Thanks to the generous funding of TCART’s Professional Development Award, in April I attended the Organization of American Historians (OAH) 2021 virtual conference. I applied for the award this year with the goal to expand from my usual archives and library conferences, and utilize the opportunity provided by virtual conferencing.

In the OAH conference, I attended sessions related to archives, teaching history, or subject matters in which I regularly work. These included sessions on the intersections between Native American and immigration histories, working with undocumented students, and a session connecting slavery of the past with slavery in the present. In “The Crisis of Black Archives,” three leaders of major Black repositories discussed challenges, and offered solutions and next steps. They called on the Black community to take documentary evidence seriously, as well as for others to join in the work. (This session is available at https://www.thehistorymakers.org/2020/crisisofblackarchives). Archives were a key topic within the innovations in teaching history session. Dr. Krista Grensavitch at University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee presented the Personal Archive Assignment that she developed with archivist Abbi Nye, who some of you may know. This assignment encourages students to be aware of the process and the personal politics with creating archives, and to recognize how sources are developed, described, and made available. It looks like a great assignment!

I sincerely appreciate the support of the Twin Cities Archives Round Table and the Professional Development Award.