By Will Clements
Image above: Photo by Dustin Humes on Unsplash
After a very active 2022-2023, the Description Section Steering Committee has embarked on a robust slate of activity for the coming year.
Following a collaboration with TS-EAS last year which resulted in an international webinar series on the use of controlled vocabularies in archives (available here), inter-sectional collaboration remains a major priority for the Description Section.
Our first collaboration this year is with the Collection Management Section, with whom we are planning a webinar on gaining basic descriptive control of collections. This topic encompasses everything from collection moves and barcoding projects to backlog management. This event is planned for sometime in the first half of 2024, most likely April. Please keep an eye on our section listserv for updates!
We are also in talks with the Visual Materials Section to collaborate on an event regarding the description (and the descriptive standards) of visual materials. Specifics are still under discussion, and we should have more information to share this spring.
Our other major task this year is the maintenance and improvement of our Inclusive Description Portal. Our focus with the Portal this year is on gathering and soliciting more submissions to add to the list of helpful resources, as well as improving usability for the materials already gathered there. For more information about the Portal, please take a look at this Descriptive Notes post by our Vice-chair/Chair-elect Betts Coup. We are always looking for suggestions and feedback on how we can improve the Portal. To offer feedback or contribute a resource, please email the Description Section Steering Committee at saadescription@gmail.com with a link or attachment, the name(s) of the creator(s), and a brief summary of the resource.
For a number of years now, the Description Section Annual Meeting format has been to include a panel of speakers (often chosen from our Descriptive Notes contributors!) on a prearranged topic, in addition to updates from section steering committee members and representatives from TS-EAS and TS-DACS. While we have not yet begun planning this year’s annual meeting, you can expect a similar format this year. Please stay tuned.
Finally, we always welcome feedback on how the Description Section can better meet the needs of our membership. Please contact us at saadescription@gmail.com with any ideas or feedback, and stay tuned for more details on this year’s slate of programming.
Will Clements is Chair of the Description Section. He is the Public Policy Papers Archivist at Princeton University.
Descriptive Notes 