Georgia Archives Institute Scholarship Opportunity

Staff Report

Monday, January 23rd, 2023

The Georgia Historical Records Advisory Council, in conjunction with the University of Georgia and the Georgia Archives, has available one stipend to cover attendance at the 2023 Georgia Archives Institute (GAI). The stipend is funded by a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) and is contingent on congressional authorization of continued funding of NHPRC. 
 
The stipend is available to an employee or volunteer at a local government repository. Preference will be given to an applicant from an underserved community. The recipient will receive tuition in addition to up to $1500 to cover travel and accommodations in the Atlanta area and will be eligible for a post-training implementation sub-grant for their institution. We will be in direct contact with the winner after GAI. 
 
Designed for beginning archivists, manuscript curators, and librarians or those whose positions have expanded to include the management and care of their organization’s archives or manuscript/history collection, the Georgia Archives Institute provides general instruction in core concepts and practices of archival administration and the management of traditional and modern documentary materials. The Institute is a two-week program held at the Georgia Archives in Morrow, Georgia, and includes six days of classroom instruction and a three-day internship. This year, the Institute will be held in-person June 5-16. 
 
Classroom instruction will take place all of the first week, June 5 through June 9, and also on Monday, June 12. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday June 13-15 will be an on-site internship at a local institution, where questions can be asked while putting classroom instruction to use. Friday, June 16 will be a wrap-up day, held back at the Georgia Archives. 
 
Instructional topics include appraisal, accessioning, arrangement and description, reference and outreach, security, copyright, born-digital records, and preservation and care of archival materials. 
 
Primary instructor Pam Hackbart-Dean is the Head of Special Collections & University Archives at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has worked at the Special Collections Research Center at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, the Special Collections & Archives at Georgia State University and for the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Study at the University of Georgia. Hackbart-Dean has been active in many professional archival organizations, including the Society of American Archivists, the Academy of Certified Archivists, the Midwest Archives Conference and the Society of Georgia Archivists. She is a Fellow of the Society of American Archivists and the Society of Georgia Archivists. She has conducted a number of workshops on arrangement and description, as well as published articles and books on the subject. Hackbart-Dean received her MA from the University of Connecticut. 
 
The Preservation of Archival Materials day-long session will be taught by Tina Seetoo, Preservation Manager at Delta Flight Museum. With the Archives Manager, she is responsible for the preservation of and access to the archives and museum collections. Since 2010, she has been a part-time Instructor of the Preservation of Archives course in the Masters of Archival Studies program at Clayton State University. Prior positions include Conservator of the Georgia Archives and Manager of Preservation Services at the Southeastern Library Network (now LYRASIS), where she was responsible for preservation education and outreach throughout the Southeast. She lectures and consults on a wide range of preservation topics, including collections care and repair, environmental management, disaster preparedness and recovery, and preservation management. Seetoo received an MLIS and a Certificate of Advanced Study in Conservation from the University of Texas at Austin, which included a year-long internship in the Book Conservation Lab of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries. 
 
The Born-Digital and Digital Preservation session will be taught by Katherine Fisher. Fisher is head of digital archives at Emory University’s Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, where she manages a team responsible for acquiring, preserving, and providing access to born-digital and digitized collections and provides leadership and expertise in digital preservation and digital collection management across the organization. Prior to joining Emory, she worked as the Digital Preservation Archivist at Georgia State University Library and the digital projects coordinator at the University of Hawai’i Press. Fisher holds an MLIS from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa and a PhD in English from the University of Michigan. 

 

Look for the grant application on the Georgia Archives website under “Announcements.” To apply, submit a completed application form to [email protected] by March 1, 2023.