This workshop is a crash course in the terminology, technology, and techniques of museum-object photography for those who occasionally need to do such work. For example, a digitization technician at a library may be asked to capture a few elaborately bound books as artistic objects, or a curator, exhibition designer, or conservator may need to photograph an object in the course of regular non-imaging work. The refinement of the craft of museumobject photography is a lifelong endeavor, therefore in this 3-hour class we will focus on practical and immediately actionable knowledge that can meaningfully improve the technical and aesthetic quality of your object photography.
Even in the best of times, the uncertain copyright status of archival and special collection materials makes many archivists and librarians uncomfortable. As more and more repositories think about providing access to material on the web, anxiety about possible copyright infringement increases. This workshop will explore what strategies special collections can follow to minimize the risks inherent when reproducing and distributing unique and/or unpublished material. Topics covered will include an introduction to basic copyright law and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act; exemptions to copyright such as fair use and the specific exemptions for libraries and archives; methods for assessing the copyright status of materials; and issues associated with particular formats. Attendees should leave with a better understanding of the basics of copyright and be in a better position to work with senior administrators to establish a mutually acceptable level of institutional risk.
The word “reparations,” is an idea, a term, and a movement that is slowly edging its way into the mainstream of the archives profession. A growing body of academics, historians, and memory workers are engaging in critical analysis of traditional repositories and examining how to reconcile past practices with current demands for a space that acknowledges and provides redress for the dismissal and systemic erasure of marginalized communities from conventional archives. This workshop will elaborate on the role of academic archives in silencing under-documented communities but will also illuminate efforts to reckon with challenging histories, such as Project STAND. This radical grassroots archival consortia project between colleges and universities around the country seeks to create a centralized digital space highlighting collections emphasizing student activism in vulnerable communities and to foster ethical documentation of contemporary and past social justice movements in under-documented student populations. Attendees will have the opportunity to map out a reparative archive framework using collection assessment, outreach and engagement, advocacy, utilization, and transformation. Attendees should be prepared to think about their own repositories and how they might engage in creating a reparative archive.
The Heritage Museums and Gardens are operated by the Dorchester County Historical Society, which has been in operation since 1953. The campus includes the Meredith House (circa 1760), the Stronghouse, Goldsborough Stable (circa 1790), herb garden, two museum spaces, a waterfront walkway, and the Todd Research Center. The Heritage Museums and Gardens will host a volunteer opportunity for MARAC members. Give back to the community hosting the conference by working in the organization’s library, filing newspapers in appropriate binders, as well as other tasks. LAC Contact: Anita Weber
The Choptank River Lighthouse is a 2012 reconstruction of an original six-sided screw-pile lighthouse used historically along the Choptank River. The original lighthouse was completed in 1871 and stood between Castle Haven and Benoni Points on the river. The replica was completed using records from the National Archives and now sits in the Cambridge City Marina. The lighthouse tour includes a visit to a museum exhibit about the original lighthouse’s history and local maritime traditions. Participants will enjoy a guided tour of the lighthouse featuring stories about the lighthouse as well as how it fits into the historical context of Cambridge and the Chesapeake Bay. LAC Contact: Adam Minakowski
Thursday November 7, 2019 1:00pm - 2:30pm EST
Choptank River LighthouseLong Wharf Park, High and Water Streets, Cambridge, MD 21613
Is your entrepreneurial spirit speaking to you? Want to be your own boss? This workshop will address the basics of what is necessary for archival consulting in terms of concrete business planning and promotion as well as philosophical and psychological considerations. Valerie A. Metzler founded Valerie Metzler Archivist/Historian in 1985, thus becoming the first full-time freelance archivist in the United States. She will share her experience and provide guidelines in this half-day workshop.
The newly completed Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park and Visitor Center sits on 17-acres at the beginning of the 125-mile Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway. This tour will be led by a park ranger and who will provide an introduction to the park as well as view the exhibits and library. Participants will have a chance to explore on their own the site’s exhibits about Harriet Tubman’s early life in Dorchester County and her legacy. The park is adjacent to the Blackwater Wildlife Refuge. LAC Contact: Becky Collier
Thursday November 7, 2019 2:00pm - 4:00pm EST
Harriet Tubman State Park4068 Golden Hill Road, Church Creek, MD 21622.
Join fellow MARAC members on a 30-minute walking tour of Layton’s Chance Winery and Farm. The tour includes the winery’s production facility and a stop in the tasting room for a tasting of seven wines produced on site. The 1800- acre farm was purchased by the Layton family in 1948 and converted to a winery in 2010. It has been farmed by the Layton family for three generations. The winery includes a picnic area, so consider bringing a dinner to enjoy on site before returning to the Hyatt. LAC Contact: Meghan Guthorn
Thursday November 7, 2019 3:00pm - 5:00pm EST
Layton's Chance Winery4225 New Bridge Rd., Vienna, MD 21869
Everyone is invited to Michener’s Library, directly below the main lobby of the Hyatt, to welcome new MARAC members, new archives professionals, first–time attendees, and graduate student members to the conference. Stop by and get to know someone new. Michener’s Library features a full-service bar, billiards tables, and fireplaces and overlooks the manor lawn and Choptank River.
Take a walk down the most haunted street in Maryland on this unusual tour! As participants walk down High Street in Cambridge, a tour guide will share stories of the spirits of soldiers, governors, jilted women, oystermen, an eccentric cat lady, a dying daughter, slain war heroes, suicidal bankers, murderous merchants, laughing children, and a one-legged sea captain who haunt the town. High Street is a brickpaved road which houses the oldest homes in Cambridge. Sites featured include: Christ Church and graveyard, the Richardson Maritime Museum, the Dorchester County Courthouse, Long Wharf, and seven historic homes that line High Street.
Thursday November 7, 2019 8:00pm - 9:30pm EST
Cambridge, MDSmall park on the southwest side of the Dorchester County Courthouse on Spring and High Streets
Cambridge native Victoria L. Jackson-Stanley has spent her life dedicated to working for the greater good for the citizens of Maryland. She is currently serving her third term as Mayor of the City of Cambridge and holds the distinction of being the first woman and African American ever elected Mayor in that city. She has held numerous positions in state government, most recently as the Deputy Director of Dorchester County Department of Social Services and has held offices in many local and national organizations as well, including First Vice-Chair of the Maryland Democratic Party, and President of the Maryland Mayors Association. She earned a B.S. degree in Social Work from Salisbury University and an M.S. in Social Work from the Howard University School of Social Work. Jackson-Stanley was a young teenager enrolled in the formerly all-white Cambridge High School during the race riots of the summer of 1967. She will reflect on her personal experiences with this historic event and the Civil Rights movement on the Eastern Shore.
This session highlights a collaboration between American University, Montgomery History, and members of the African American community of Scotland, Maryland to create a new type of museum exhibit blending cultural anthropology, archival photographs and recordings, and community artifacts. Working together to uncover hidden aspects of the vibrant community life in Scotland, this team of collaborators strove to portray a fresh perspective on the resilience of Scotland residents. Panelists will discuss the ways they were able to connect across disciplines, in order to “keep the flame alive” both within the institutions as well as in the cultures they reflect.
You’ve arranged all the records; you’ve described all the records. Now what do you do? In this presentation, three archivists who have taken their archival training and degree and morphed into something else will share their wisdom. One archivist has written about donor relations and how working with donors has enriched his repository’s collections. A second archivist has used her degree to help perform genealogical work for lawyers. The third presenter will talk about her experience with leaving a position and changing her focus from working with the records to informing others about what records can do for them.
Collaboration with non-archivists takes place in many settings. For example, Towson University archivists built relationships with unlikely campus partners and discovered how to talk about archives work and how to listen to partner needs in return. Trexler Library at Muhlenberg College partnered with Bradbury-Sullivan LGBT Community Center, navigating different, sometimes competing agendas, conveying the importance of preserving personal stories and new voices, while creating an inclusive, friendly environment. Erie Yesterday, composed of regional museums and historical societies, works collaboratively to promote, preserve, and maintain Erie County’s heritage and applies for joint grants. Come discover how collaboration occurs among these diverse communities.
This session will look at the numerous ways in which the ever-expanding digital age for archival records and information management has impacted the reference experience. The panelists will address questions related to reference staffing in this new environment including: Are institutions seeing an increase in virtual reference and a decrease in on-site reference? Or are Special Collections and archives seeing fewer researchers and less reference interaction overall? How are digital collections increasing the number of researchers discovering collections? What staffing changes are needed to handle new types of requests? How has this impacted staffing of reference teams?
Audio-Visual materials can be found in archives of every kind and are particularly vulnerable to loss, whether from obsolescence of technology or physical deterioration. Archivists need to consider all the tools at our disposal for tackling A/V issues so that the ideal of the perfect does not prevent achieving the good. The panelists will offer suggestions for processing A/V material; rescuing at-risk content in a targeted way; potential collaborations to preserve material; serving reference needs using A/V material; and will answer questions from the audience to assist in solving any unaddressed challenges.
With instruments ranging from ukulele to banjolin to slide whistle and clarinet, Louise Anderson and Diana Wagner reveal the music of Peter Dale Wimbrow, early radio star, ukulele master, performer, and philanthropist. A small-town boy from early 20th century Worcester County, Maryland, Wimbrow became a nationwide radio and stage sensation, all the while documenting his native Eastern Shore in song. In this lecture-performance, Louise and Diana will take you along on their archival journey to discover Wimbrow’s music, life, and legacy. A sought-after Eastern Shore musician, Diana Wagner is Associate Professor of Education at Salisbury University, where she teaches social justice education, research methods and outdoor leadership. Wagner learned to play guitar in 1977, thanks to a public-school music program. She is a multi-instrumentalist who specializes in collecting historic and traditional folk and blues music. She has worked extensively with the archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where she has translated and transcribed archival source documents to aid in survivor and victim research. Wagner also hosts the weekly radio show, Chesapeake Folk, carried on several Eastern Shore radio stations, including the regional NPR affiliate. For more information on her musical adventures, visit www. dianawagnermusic.com. Louise L. Anderson, Associate Professor of Music and Coordinator for Music Education at Salisbury University, holds a PhD in Music Education from Temple University in Philadelphia and an M.A. in Humanities from Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Anderson has 30 years of experience teaching grades K-12 encompassing everything from instrumental and string instruction to choral. After finding a ukulele in a university closet, Dr. Anderson embraced this small wonder and has incorporated ukulele into many different types of educational and personal projects ever since.
In this session, three archivists will share how they have remained passionate about their careers despite the day-to-day pressures of processing large-scale collections. An archivist at the DC Public Library will talk about challenges processing collections in the Punk Archive; an archivist at the University of Richmond will address burnout and expectations management through the lens of the Dr. and Mrs. Wyatt Tee Walker Collection, which includes records pertaining to the donors’ civil rights, religious, and ethnomusicology work; and an archivist at the Library of Virginia will summarize her approaches to retaining a fresh perspective and continuing to grow professionally through outreach activities drawn from the records of the Virginia circuit courts. Attendees will leave with strategies to manage outside expectations, enhance relationships with constituents, and find creative outlets to promote the relevance and research potential of their collections.
Slavery in the United States was the foundation on which many institutions were built and were able to flourish. Four panelists will share the legacy of slavery as it relates to their individual institutions and the approaches they are taking to address this once marginalized yet integral part of their schools’ histories. Panelists will discuss how their universities established formal projects that foster collaborative research initiatives between students, faculty, and other groups, as well as how they develop curricula, foster outreach efforts, and improve access to controversial archival materials by expanding digitization efforts and enhancing metadata for these collections.
You’ve reached an age where maybe you’re thinking about putting that last Hollinger box on the shelf, turning out the lights, and leaving the archives for good. What are you leaving behind for your successor? What fights did you wage over your career and how did what you accomplished make your repository a better place? Our three panelists will look at their careers from the perspective of having left their primary positions behind and will impart their knowledge on archival legacies for those mid-career archivists who are thinking about the day when they too, can relax and reflect on a career well-managed.
Educators from a variety of institutions bring together archival records with Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics (STEAM) fields in this panel discussion. You will have an opportunity to hear from a watermen’s community project leader, a maritime museum educator, and two science educators. Access to primary sources—maps, photographs, oral histories, land records, GIS data, and scientific results—is critical for their research and educational programs. Learn about how they capture stories about local communities and how they use archival resources to teach about the Chesapeake Bay region’s natural resources.
This presentation will focus on disasters such as the discovery of mold in archives storage areas, mitigating the mold using limited resources, reviewing and updating policies and procedures, best practices for creating effective disaster response manuals, and how each institution developed policies to protect their collections and respond to disasters. Panelists will discuss their experiences and how creating response plans has changed the outcome of disasters. How has your institution responded to the threat of disaster and what challenges have you encountered? The presenters encourage the audience to share their experiences.
This panel will focus on the 140-year custodial history of the collections held by the National Anthropological Archives (NAA), as well as examine the practicalities of conducting and managing an assessment project that requires frequent collaboration with IT staff, multiple project archivists, and anthropologists. Panelists will give an overview of the assessment project; how it operates day-to-day; preliminary findings; and the value of the gathered data to the sustainability of the NAA’s collecting policies and needs. The panel will also address parallel efforts to increase accessibility for NAA users, utilizing both the assessment’s findings and data gathered through user studies and a National Science Foundation-funded fellowship in museum anthropology.
Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay and tributary waterways have always been central to its cultural and economic growth. Most of the state’s archives and museums contain at least one collection that speaks to the importance of this estuary bay and the rich history of life on its waterways. This session gives those often-hidden collections a moment in the proverbial sun. Come learn more about area archives’ holdings and the fascinating development of maritime culture in Maryland.
This panel will focus on fostering collaboration with K-12 educators to bring primary source materials into their classrooms. Presenters will share models of how repositories can work with educators to incorporate archival collections into their curricula—from digital engagement in the classroom to in-person research visits to institutions. Presenters will also discuss several types of collaborations that help K-12 teachers and their students locate, interpret, understand, and interact with archival collections while increasing outreach and collection accessibility for the archives.
Nora Caplan-Bricker’s New Yorker article “The Challenge of Preserving the Historical Record of #MeToo” questions how to best preserve stories from the #MeToo movement. While Twitter is generally public, do users believe their tweets will become part of a dataset? When collecting personal stories from social media, should archivists be required to obtain consent from the creators before including posts in a collection? In this interactive session, presenters will debate the issue and two audience members will speak to each side following the debaters. The debate will conclude with a vote to determine which side prevails.
Embracing the Fire and Water theme, the reception will be held on-site along the beautiful Choptank River, in the Hotel’s Regatta Pavilion. Located right outside the meeting rooms, the pavilion features a fireplace and stunning views of the resort and river. Join your colleagues for some drinks, hors d’oeuvres, firelight, and make-your-own s'mores! In addition to good food, drinks, and conversation the PC and LAC Committees are pleased to host Charlie Paperella, a local journalist, who will regale us with stories of his historic research along the Delmarva Peninsula. According to Charlie, attendees will hear “a little talk, a little music, have a few laughs and learn the answer to the question, 'what is the purpose of a person?' Charlie Paparella was born in 1952 in Paw Paw, Michigan, one of seven children born to a food scientist and a teacher. After a dreadfully misspent youth and an irresolute college career, Charlie tried several occupations including musician, muskrat trapper, printer’s devil, high-school teacher, computer programmer until finally taking a job as a news photographer at WMDT TV in the early 1980’s. He moved to WBOC TV in Salisbury in 1993 where he has somehow managed to remain ever since. In 2002, he was rewarded for his many years of service in hurricanes, blizzards, fires and crime scenes with his own franchise, which he named Travels with Charlie, stealing the title from John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley. He’s earned numerous AP awards over the years, which he proudly displays in an unkempt pile on his desk, which is also equally unkempt. Due solely to pure luck and the unflagging support, guidance, and patience of his wife Becky, he’s managed to keep churning out feature stories while staying pretty much out of trouble ever since. His reports cover people, nature and quite often the early years of the storied past of the Delmarva Peninsula. Charlie lives in Worcester County with Becky and a rescue dog named Bo who, like Steinbeck’s Charley, likes nothing more than to hop in a car and go.
All conference attendees are welcome to attend the MARAC Business Meeting. You are not required to purchase the breakfast to attend. The Business Meeting starts 15 to 30 minutes after the start of the breakfast, depending on the needs of the MARAC chair.
Approaches to managing business archives are not frequently discussed within the archival community, yet the experiences of business archivists are valuable to conversations about topics including extensible processing techniques, limited resource pressures, complex processing projects, and collaboration with broad user groups. Business archives also serve non-traditional users, work efficiently under persistently constrained budgets, and use metrics for common archival tasks in order to demonstrate the value (and existence) of archival labor. Panelists will examine the similarities and differences between the challenges academic and business archives face and how lessons learned working in business archives can be translated into more efficiently managing other types of archival collections.
Historic images are in demand—especially those available for discovery online. At the same time, digitizing large photograph collections can be daunting, particularly when a project involves balancing access and preservation with tight budgets, limited staff, and fragile or deteriorating objects. Outside collaborators can help leverage available resources and increase the effectiveness and reach of the project but identifying and recruiting partners and keeping diverse stakeholders on the same page can be challenging. Panelists will discuss collaborating across disciplines on two large digitization projects, the Religious News Service photographs, 1945-1982 (about 60,000 prints and negatives) and the Los Angeles Department of Public Works photographic materials (about 700,000 prints, negatives, and slides).
Over its nearly fifty-year history, MARAC has held meetings in all corners of the region. Until very recently, one of the hot spots of the conference was the MARAC Hospitality Suite, where attendees could gather after the day’s events to unwind and enjoy the company of their fellow archivists. As the hour grew later (or earlier) and the MARAC Business Breakfast Meeting approached, an intrepid group of MARAC members would put pen to paper to write a Resolution for reading at the Business Meeting the following morning. In this session, longtime MARAC members will recount their experiences in the MARAC Hospitality Suite and, direct from the MARAC Archives, read several resolutions for the attendees.
When archivists teach, we do so with an understanding of the role primary source literacy plays in the shaping of information literate students. Teaching across different disciplines, archivists introduce undergraduates to original research opportunities, digital scholarship, and unique processing projects in archives and special collections. Whether partnering with classroom faculty or teaching independent study courses, providing single or multiple semester projects, our roles in engaging undergraduates are continually expanding and taking new forms. This session presents three approaches to primary source instruction, highlighting the benefits and challenges of each to stakeholders. The panelists will share their experiences and encourage discussion from participating instruction practitioners.
“So horrible to watch the massive fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Perhaps flying water tankers could be used to put it out. Must act quickly!” (@realDonaldTrump). Trustees are vital to many institutions, and they bring enthusiasm and experience in their own fields, but few are current or former archivists. Some may recommend actions that are unproductive, considered unethical within the profession, or that may threaten the preservation of materials. How do archivists effectively communicate with trustees? What sorts of institutional documents and policies can help educate trustees and direct their efforts?
Historically, special collections within academic libraries have been collections focused. In seeking to establish a broadened collecting area for Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation at the University of Rochester, one centered around activism, human rights, and social justice, university archivists hope to break from traditional thinking around the methods of collecting and move towards a post-custodial approach centered on relationship building. The discussion leaders are seeking guidance, whether that be intellectual or practical, from those in the archival community who are already doing this work, as well as to engage in a dialogue that will no doubt inform and expand approaches to this critical topic.
Collaborating with non-archivists can be a key part of our efforts to strengthen archival holdings and fill in gaps in the documentary record. Drexel University Archives is currently engaged in an interdepartmental project to compile and share information about traditionally underrepresented groups in Drexel’s history. In this session, the leaders will give a short presentation, then facilitate a discussion that draws on participants’ own experiences using collaboration with non-archivists to address some of the gaps and silences in the archival record. Collaborations of all kinds are of interest, including those with teachers and students at any grade level, librarians serving the same patrons, members of a local community or a particular demographic group, and writers in any genre and artists in any medium.
To build collaboration and outreach, archivists often need to present about archives to supervisors, external stakeholders, educators, and students. In particular, archivists may need to explain archival concepts to those who have no background in the field. This workshop will help you practice and refine ways to do just that and will provide techniques to deliver content in an engaging fashion for those with a variety of learning styles. The first part of the workshop will deal with presentations to stakeholders outside the library; the second will deal with pedagogical approaches for working with students.
Participants in this workshop will come away with an understanding of what it means to serve as a mentor, why we are compelled to mentor, how we can strengthen the profession and support underrepresented populations through mentoring, and the personal benefits of mentoring relationships. The workshop will include a combination of discussion, exercises, and lecture.
Photographic materials have complex structures, specialized needs, and inherent preservation vulnerabilities; salvaging these materials safely after a disaster incident can sometimes be more challenging than salvaging collections that are primarily paper. This workshop will address disaster response with a focus on photographic collections. Presenters will share practical procedures for efficient initial response and stabilization of a disaster scene and will give specific guidelines on salvaging and caring for photographs following a disaster. The session will conclude with a brief, hands-on exercise in which participants will have a chance to witness and practice simulated salvage of photographic materials.
If an article is published, but no one is aware of it, does it truly exist? More and more, academics are required to prove the impact of their work. Depending on the discipline and the level of support that the academic receives, this can be a tall order. Publication is just the start of the work that needs to be done to raise the profile of a piece. This workshop will begin with the basics of scholarly impact and help attendees acquire skills and identify the tools that are available to help them promote their papers and capture the effect of the scholarship.
Join your MARAC Colleagues after the last session on Saturday for a tour of the facility and a tasting at RaR Brewing. This brewery was built on an 80-year-old pool hall and bowling alley in Cambridge. It opened in 2013 and produces beers 10 barrels at a time. LAC Contact: Adam Minakowski
Saturday November 9, 2019 2:00pm - 3:30pm EST
RaR Brewing504 Poplar St. Cambridge, MD 21613
