Society of Southwest Archivists

News

  • 29 Apr 2019 11:47 AM | Jaimi Parker (Administrator)

    By Mark Lambert, SSA President, 2018-2019

    The Southwestern Archivist, Vol. 42, No. 2 (May 2019): 5-6.

    I am pleased that my recent articles on low pay in the archives field and the recent SSA Board resolution adopted requiring salaries or salary ranges in all SSA job advertisements have been so well received in the archival community, and that the SAA Council has also apparently taken notice.

    However, more can be done in these areas. For example:

    • We need the SAA Council to pass a resolution to no longer accept job advertisements without a salary or salary range listed;
    • We need the SAA Council to set recommended minimums for archival pay by region, using financial figures for each region, such as those that list salary requirements for owning a home in a region;
    • We also need to have a Pop-Up Session at the SAA annual meeting in Austin to continue this important discussion, solicit more ideas on the subject, and so more voices can be heard (I am currently in the middle of drafting speakers and preparing the paperwork to propose such a session in Austin this August).
    • Also, annual dues to SAA are based on a sliding scale according to pay, with the scale topping out at $90,000/year. As I’ve found from my recent salary research, there are folks in the profession making much more than that. Right now SAA is giving those big earners a partial pass. SAA needs to push that sliding scale up to at least $250,000/year. I’ve already found a use for that extra money: funds to help provide better representation for all archivists on the SAA Council.
    • SAA claims to represent all archivists, but it is totally dominated by academic or other elite archivists. Looking at the current SAA Council list ( and ignoring SAA staffers), fully 8 of the 12 councilors are academic archivists or work in academia; two are from Presidential Libraries (which I call an elite archive due to their national prestige), another member is from the Rockefeller Archive Center (another elite archive, since it is one of the best funded foundations in the U.S.), and the final councilor is a vendor. In other words, 11 of the 12 councilors are from academic or elite archives, and there is also one vendor (for-profit) representative.

    For SAA to validly represent all archivists in the U.S., and for all archivists to want to join SAA and continue to see value in their membership year-after-year, the SAA Council needs to better represent the great variety of archivists in the United States.

    I propose seats on the council be divided up better between the several major types of archives in the U.S. For example: academic archives (public and private), private research library archives, federal govt. archives, state govt. archives, local govt. archives, museum archives, corporate archives, non-profit archives, religious archives, tribal archives, and vendors. (This list is just off the top-of-my head; please don’t consider it exhaustive, and feel free to suggest your own type of archive to SAA if its not represented in my list above. I also suspect if this better representation actually happened, archivist satisfaction and retention in SAA would also go up tremendously.)

    An obvious question is why are there currently so many academic or elite archivists on the SAA Council, and why do academic archives dominate SAA annual meeting programming so heavily, if there are so many other types of archives in the U.S.? My best answer is one word: Funding.

    While academic or elite archivists don’t necessarily make a lot of money, in one way they are usually head and shoulders above the rest of us: their travel and continuing education funding is usually at least partially provided by their institutions, since continuing education and tenure requirements in those types of archives are the strongest (i.e. as a legal and equity issue, your institution can’t really require you to do continuing education for job retention or advancement unless they at least partially pay for it).

    SAA currently funds most of the work of its councilors. In order to get better representation on the SAA Council, SAA needs to more fully fund other types of archivists willing to serve on the SAA Council. Where would the money come from? I propose it come from those highly paid Archives Directors currently not paying their fair-share in SAA dues.

    Finally, the regional archival organizations in the U.S. provide tremendous value to archivists in keeping their annual dues low (e.g. SSA’s is $25), by providing a newsletter, by providing scholarships for students and early-career archivists, by providing regional advocacy, and by staging relatively inexpensive regional annual meetings and workshops for archival training, socialization and comradery.

    However, American archivists also desperately need our national organization, and all that it does, including providing socialization, comradery and training at annual meetings and workshops, by underwriting archival publications, by provide a professional journal for reporting new advances in the profession, and by representing us in Washington D.C. in both the federal agencies and the Halls of Congress and in the public sphere generally. We just need SAA to better represent all archivists in the U.S., not just the academic and elite archivists.

  • 09 Apr 2019 11:48 AM | Jaimi Parker (Administrator)

    Rep. Stan Lambert

    Texas House, District 71 Room E2.814

    P.O. Box 2910

    Austin, Texas 78768

    Dear Rep. Lambert:

    The Society of Southwest Archivists (SSA) is a professional organization representing over 500 members in the six states of the American Southwest (TX, LA, AR, OK, NM, AZ) who work in or are interested in preserving our documentary heritage, or the essential evidence of our lives, commonly called archives. Approximately half of SSA’s 500 members are from Texas.

    The Society of Southwest Archivists objects to Section 441.206 of Committee Substitute to HB 1962 (The Texas State Library and Archives Commission “Sunset Bill”) which fundamentally changes ownership rights of archival state legislative records. Changes inserted into this bill by committee will have a significant detrimental impact on TSLAC as well as the 24 Regional Historical Records Depositories (RHRD) across the state who house archival legislative records.

    Commonly held archival practice assumes that archival repositories take ownership of archival records upon transfer. As archival records are unique, and irreplaceable in most circumstances, it is the duty of the archival repository to protect those records from loss. Sec. 441.206, as currently written, would allow legislative entities to retain ownership over archival materials, even after their transfer to TSLAC or an RHRD. Further, Section 441.206 provides legislative entities the ability to recall archival materials for legislative use.

    TSLAC and RHRDs hold archival records in secure facilities and make those records freely available for use within the supervised reading rooms of their facilities. It would be a mistake to allow removal of these materials from the archive with no provision for their safety or security where archival records could easily be misplaced, lost or errantly destroyed.

    Archival facilities are much different from records storage facilities. Record storage facilities store records for a limited term, and users may retrieve records at any time. Archival record facilities store records permanently, users consult records on-site, and professional archivists

    keep records in accordance with stringent security and preservation protocols to endure their long-term preservation. Archival repositories make significant financial investments in the permanent preservation of archival records for which they own. The transfer of title of archival records is essential to the core function of the archive, which is to preserve and protect the authenticity of legislative records.

    Not only does Sec. 441.206 place archival records in jeopardy of accidental loss, it places an undue financial burden on TSLAC and RHRDs throughout the state who house and preserve state records. Sec. 441.206 mandates TSLAC and RHRDs retrieve records from archival storage and transport them to legislative offices upon request. To do so would require significant additional work and creation of entirely new work procedures. Who will pay these additional costs? Texas colleges, universities and public libraries as far away as El Paso who serve as RHRDs receive no state funding and would have no means of transporting records to Austin. It is possible that Sec. 441.206 could cause RHRDs to reconsider their participation in the depository program, forcing TSLAC to incur all the costs to reabsorb these regional materials.

    It makes sense for TSLAC to fulfill Public Information requests as the owners of archival records in their possession. However, Sec. 441.206 places an unfair burden on TSLAC to respond to Public Information requests for records they do not own, and which may be retrieved by a legislative body at any time.

    In fact, a potentially unintended consequence of this bill as currently written could be for archival repositories to not accept legislative papers without legal title, thus removing a significant part of history from the archival record. Also, if repositories were required to accept the records without title, they would most likely not invest staff time and resources into processing the records and making them available to the public.

    The Society of Southwest Archivists requests the removal of Sec 441.206 from HB 1962 to ensure the preservation of archival records of historical and cultural significance to the State of Texas.

    Sincerely,

    Joshua Youngblood

    Mike Miller

    Alexis Peregoy

    Jennifer Green

    Daniel Alonzo

    Amanda Focke

    Cordelia Hooee

    Elizabeth Lisa Cruces

    Morgan Gieringer

    Molly Hults

    Mark Lambert

    Officers and Board Members of the Society of Southwest Archivists

  • 11 Mar 2019 11:50 AM | Jaimi Parker (Administrator)

    At its 8 March 2019 meeting, the SSA Board voted unanimously to immediately stop accepting job advertisements that do not list a salary or salary range. This applies to all SSA media including the website forums, Facebook, and Twitter.

    Any request to post a job announcement that does not include salary information will be held while the requestor is contacted and asked to provide this information. Once salary information has been added to the announcement, the job advertisement will be posted.

  • 05 Mar 2019 11:50 AM | Jaimi Parker (Administrator)

    This is the second part of a two-part series.

    By Mark Lambert, SSA President, 2018-2019

    The Southwestern Archivist, Vol. 42, No. 1 (February 2019): 5-6.
    See Part 1 of this column, “Top archives directors are failing the profession,” in the November 2018 issue of Southwestern Archivist.

    Our two national professional organizations, the Society of American Archivists (SAA), and the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) of the Association of College and Research Libraries Division of the American Library Association are also failing us, when they could be assisting on this issue so easily.

    According to the SAA Mission: “SAA promotes the value and diversity of archives and archivists.” However, SAA does not require employers to list salaries on their website.

    The RBMS Mission says: “It strives to represent and promote the interests of librarians, curators, and other specialists.” RBMS also does not require employers to list salaries.

    Both organizations provide an easy platform for hundreds of employers to advertise jobs directly to thousands of archivists yearly, but set no pay minimums, or even require a salary to be listed at all.

    Should I really have to apply for a job before I even find out what the expected salary or salary range is in the internet age, from two organizations that have as their core functions access to information and excellent customer service? NO, NO, NO…a thousand times NO!

    These organizations will probably respond by saying “there are a multitude of factors that go into setting someone’s pay, and it can’t be reduced to a single number or range,” but that is total bunk. Every Archives prepares a yearly budget, and for each Archives there is either a set salary, or a set salary range, sitting in that budget, based on several factors like experience, education, benefits, etc. Why not advertise the job with a salary or salary range?

    Not listing a salary or salary range give more power to the potential employer. Why would our professional organizations want to give power to our potential employers to underpay us? Possibly because our professional organizations are ethically compromised, since they are also taking money from these Archives to advertise for jobs, or in sponsorship money yearly. This should stop now.

    Also, for “vagueness” in language in a profession that prides itself on precision, good writing, facts and essential evidence, these two phrases are award-winners: “competitive salary with benefits,” and “salary commensurate with experience.” These phrases have no fixed meaning and tell an applicant from across the country exactly zero. The use of these phrases should be stopped immediately.

    Our professional organizations should require all advertisers and employers to list a salary or salary range, or not take their advertisement. It’s as simple as that.

    In fact, it’s a little more work, but we should also advocate for setting minimum salaries for job advertisements by region. Surely national organizations with thousands of members can have one large, diverse committee that meets once a year to set minimum salaries per region. This should also be done.[1]

    Our professional organizations need to stop trying to be advocates for Archives as well as Archivists. These are conflicting goals that allow Archives, our employers, to take advantage of Archivists. There are many other national organizations that can advocate for Archives, like COSANAGARANHANCHAASLH, and the NCPH.

    Archivists need their professional organizations to better advocate for them, or we can find someone else to advocate for us. We also need the top Directors in our profession to descend from their penthouse offices long enough to start paying their staffs better. Only when both things happen will salaries in the archives profession rise in general.

    [1] If librarians can do it, why not archivists?

  • 25 Feb 2019 11:55 AM | Jaimi Parker (Administrator)

    Signups have been extended to Wednesday March 5

    Howdy! It’s time for the 2019 SSA Scholarships (virtual) Quilt Bee! This year, we’ll be making the desert bloom with a Tussie Mussie quilt using some truly gorgeous Kaffe Fassett fabric. If you want to participate, please fill out the form and send in your participation fee by March 1st! Only 25 squares are available—First come, first serve!

    The finished quilt will be sold in the Silent Auction at the Annual Meeting in Tucson, with the proceeds going to the Scholarships Fund.

    WHAT TO EXPECT:

    • Pre-cut fabric & instructions will be sent to participants by 3/13.
    • You’ll complete & return your (easy!) square by 4/5.
    • Jennifer Hecker will piece the top & Amanda Focke will back, bind, and quilt it.
    • Funds raised by auctioning the quilt at the annual meeting will go to SSA Scholarships.
    • Participating quilters are asked to contribute a $15 donation to offset the cost of fabric & postage.

    Questions? Contact Jennifer Hecker at JenniferRaeHecker@gmail.com.

    Sign up form

    2019 Virtual SSA Quilt Bee (PDF)

  • 18 Jan 2019 11:57 AM | Jaimi Parker (Administrator)

    Don’t forget to submit your application for an SSA scholarship. Applications are due February 19 (or postmarked by February 15 if submitting by mail).

    Four scholarships are available to support the continuing education and professional development of our members. These scholarships provide financial assistance to defray the costs of attending the annual meeting, student tuition and book fees, attendance at a professional workshop or other continuing education activity. An individual may apply for more than one scholarship but may not receive the same scholarship more than once. Descriptions and application guidelines for each scholarship can be found by following the links below.

    Annual Meeting Scholarship

    A. Otis Hebert, Jr. Continuing Education Scholarship

    David B. Gracy II Student Scholarship

    John Michael Caldwell Student Scholarship


  • 14 Jan 2019 11:59 AM | Jaimi Parker (Administrator)

    The Conference of Inter-Mountain Archivists (CIMA) and the Society of Southwest Archivists (SSA) invite graduate and undergraduate students to submit an abstract for a poster presentation at the 2019 Joint Annual Meeting taking place in Tucson, Arizona, on May 15-18, 2019.

    Posters may describe applied or theoretical research that is completed or underway; discuss interesting archival collections with which students have worked; or report on archives and records projects in which students have participated (e.g., development of finding aids, public outreach, database construction, etc.). Submissions should focus on research or activity conducted within the previous academic year (Fall 2018-Spring 2019). Easel dimensions are: 36 inches by 48 inches (vertical format; clip at top to secure poster with shelf at bottom to stand poster. Poster can be mounted or unmounted).

    Students will have the opportunity to discuss their poster with attendees for 30 minutes on Friday, May 17, at 3:00 pm in the conference hotel. Easels will be provided. Student poster presenters must register and secure institutional or personal funding to attend the Annual Meeting.

    Abstracts will be accepted by email until Friday, March 29, 2019.

    Include the following in your 1-page abstract:

    Title

    Author(s)

    Purpose of project/research

    Description of project/research

    Conclusions/findings of project/research

    Submit your abstract to robert.g.weaver@ttu.edu with “SSA Poster” as your subject line.

    Call for Student Posters flyer (PDF)

  • 20 Nov 2018 12:03 PM | Jaimi Parker (Administrator)

    Meet other archivists, gain valuable experience, help the archival community prosper, and earn the admiration of your colleagues by serving the most dynamic organization of archivists in the U.S.

    The SSA Nominating Committee is seeking candidates for the following positions in 2019:

    • Vice-President/President Elect (three year term-one as VP, one as President, and one as Immediate Past President)
    • Executive Board (3 positions, two-year term)
    • Nominating Committee (1 position, two-year term)
    • Scholarship Committee (1 position, three-year term)
    • Treasurer (two-year term)

    The responsibilities of each position are outlined in the SSA Officer & Committee Procedures Manual.

    If you would like to serve, or know an ideal candidate, please contact a member of the Nominating Committee:

    Rebecca Elder, rebecca@elderpreservation.com

    Ann Hodges, ann.hodges@tamucc.edu

    Molly Hults, molly.hults@austintexas.gov

    The deadline for submitted nominations is January 1, 2019

    Remember, if you are a Certified Archivist, or are planning to become certified, participating in the leadership of a professional organization such as SSA will earn you recertification credit.

  • 14 Nov 2018 12:04 PM | Jaimi Parker (Administrator)

    The top Archives directors are failing the profession.(1)

    It appears nearly every day brings a new article contrasting national wage stagnation with the ever-climbing stock market.(2) Even before the great recession, archivists, who are highly degreed professionals comparable to lawyers, accountants, and IT professionals, were poorly paid.(3)

    The reasons, both before and after the recession are, in large part, a failure of leadership by both those archivists at the head of management and the national organizations that claim to advocate for us.

    Most of us have at least one “prestigious” archives in our state, either at the largest public university, the largest private university, a private research library, or a presidential library; they tend to pay well.

    That is, they tend to pay one person very well: the director. The person at the ¹top of the organization chart should be a leader, yet sadly these de facto leaders of our profession, who have reaped so much, are failing our profession.(4) These “rock stars” are usually full professors from an academic department and the monkish world of terminal degrees, where individual achievements are rewarded, and not from a profession strongly focused on collaboration, customer service, public service, and outreach like Archives.

    Directors often make two to three times more than the management team directly below them, the associate or assistant directors. Those folks keep those prestigious archives operating Monday through Friday, while the director sets the mission and vision, does a lot of public speaking and talks to the press, meets regularly with their dean or board (and their associate or assistant directors), and meets with any potential donors.

    Here are two current examples in Austin of pay inequity, from two independent research centers at the largest public university in town, where the directors have lots of individual discretion over their budgets.(5) The information is obtained from a database of state government salaries maintained by the Texas Tribune, an independent news source based in Austin.(6) The Director of the Harry Huntt Ransom Humanities Research Center, or for short the HRC, makes $270,300.(7) The four associate directors listed make $96,900; $86,595; $79,707; and $71,420. Thus, the director makes more than double the highest paid associate director, and almost four times as much as the lowest paid associate director.(8)

    The Director of the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, or the Briscoe Center, makes $220,239. The four assistant director salaries listed are: $88,990; $81,151; $76,404; and $70,411. Thus, the director makes over double what the highest paid assistant director makes, and triple what the lowest paid assistant director makes.

    If you look at the pay scale for the rest of the professional positions at both institutions, they generally are stacked between the $40,000s to $90,000s. This is a pathetically narrow range, considering levels of experience probably exist between 0 years and 30+ years, and supervision duties probably range from none to several persons.

    To be clear, I don’t begrudge these directors making good pay.(9) I only know them both by reputation, but they both have been in the profession a long time and are highly respected. However, they should think about their staffers more than they do promoting themselves.(10)

    Perhaps these directors would say in response, “well there is only so much money to go around (in the budget), and there is so much to do in an Archives.” Personally, speaking as a director of a large archives, I would rather have less staff, but have them better paid, with better morale, than to have more staff that are poorly-paid, with poor morale.

    Equitable salaries and higher morale will increase retention, as well, and if there is one thing archives benefit from, it’s institutional knowledge which we lose with high turnover. Some duties will probably never be done that formerly were done; that’s when you ask your boss for another “well-paid” position, not a poorly-paid one. I also realize all of this is relative, since no two archives are exactly alike, and at least partially based on geography; what is considered a good salary in Austin, Texas would probably be considered a poor salary in San Francisco, California. But we must start somewhere in better advocating for our staffers.

    Here is a simple back-of-the-napkin example, using Austin-area salary ranges: you have $225,000 in your budget for processing collections by early to mid-career archivists (pay only, leaving aside benefits to make the math the simplest). I would rather have four archivists making $56,250 each than five archivists making $45,000 each.(11) Can we all at least agree on this concept?

    I know we are all highly goal oriented, deeply care about great customer service, and hate to look at backlogs and unprocessed collections that could be used by our researchers, but if we don’t start better advocating for ourselves, we will have NO staff, as they leave our profession in droves soon to go do something else that pays better (like UX or records management).

    I also ask that if your state has a website that lists public salaries, including Archives, inside the southwest region or anywhere in the U.S., please let me know, and we can start compiling this information on a page on the SSA website, and add salary envy and peer pressure to this vital issue.

    Mark Lambert, current President of SSA.

    This is part one of a 2-part series.

    Endnotes

    1. I am focusing on archives, since that is what I know best, but a lot of what I write could also possibly apply to our allied GLAM professions (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums.)

    2. “The Recovery Threw the Middle-Class Dream Under a Benz,” New York Times, Sept. 12, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/
2018/09/12/business/middle-class-financial-crisis.html; “Home affordability drops to lowest level in 10 years,” Houston Chronicle, Oct. 4, 2018, https://www.chron.com/business/ real-estate/article/Home-affordability-drops-to-lowest-level-in- 10-13280986.php.

    3. Tanya Zanish-Belcher, “President’s Message: Aiming for Affordability,” Archival Outlook, July/August 2018, p. 2.

    4. As we say in the military, “Lead, follow or get out of the way.”

    5. I realize not all top archives directors have the large amount of individual discretion over their budgets of the two mentioned here, but many do.

    6. https://salaries.texastribune.org/ The salary information was pulled from the database on 10/7/18. There does appear to be a few persons at each institution listed with higher salaries than the persons listed as associate or assistant director, but without inside knowledge of each archives, I will assume they are due to endowed positions which might or might not come with management duties.

    7. My goal is not to embarrass individual archivists, so I am leaving individual names out of this article; you can look them up if you want to, using the sources mentioned here.

    8. Since I don’t have any inside knowledge about this archives, I will assume the disparity in pay among the associate directors is related to the length of time in their respective positions.

    9. And for the record, they are both men—you can look up their biographies yourself.

    10. This recent Wall Street Journal article writes about corporations now looking for more bosses with humility (no joke!): https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-best-bosses-are-humble- bosses-1539092123

    11. Currently, the Texas Library Association asks that librarians with a graduate degree and no professional experience start at a minimum salary of over $43,000. http://www.txla.org/jobline.

    This article also appears in the Fall 2018 issue of the Southwestern Archivist.

    UPDATE: SSA has created an opportunity to submit files to a crowd-sourced publicly available website, Archives Regional Salary Research

  • 07 Nov 2018 12:08 PM | Jaimi Parker (Administrator)

    Don’t forget! The deadline to submit session proposals for “Crossing Borders, Blazing Trails,” the joint SSA/CIMA Annual Meeting is fast approaching. The conference will be in Tucson, Arizona, May 15-18, 2019 at the Tucson Marriot University Park Hotel. The deadline for submission is November 16, 2018.

    Our friends with CIMA have invited participation in a “presenter connections” Google spreadsheet to facilitate collaboration and the creation of joint proposals. Please take a look and see what opportunities are out there.

    The 2019 Program Committee invites submissions for 60 or 90-minute sessions. Proposals are welcome on any subject or skill relevant to the archives profession. Current issues and recently completed projects are also of interest. All aspects of archives and records management are encouraged. Submit your ideas using the online form or email to jcyoungb@uark.edu.

    The Program Committee looks forward to seeing all your great proposals!

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