As funding becomes increasingly competitive and unpredictable, archives and institutions are finding ways to build sustainable financial foundations for long-term sustainability. This session will bring together archivists and institutional representatives who have launched or are currently undertaking fundraising, "friendraising," and/or capital campaigns to endow their archives. Panelists will share practical approaches for engaging donors, building compelling cases for support with donors and administration, and cultivating lasting relationships that secure the future of their collections.
The session will feature a range of archival institutions from large public research universities to small cultural heritage organizations, each navigating distinct challenges and opportunities in fundraising. Some operate within well-established university advancement structures, while others work independently or without ownership of their physical spaces, requiring inventive solutions to sustain operations and build donor confidence. Together, they reflect the variety of archival contexts across the region and the adaptability required to secure lasting support.
Building endowments and cultivating donor-based funding models are becoming vital to preserving collections and ensuring continued access to archives. Participants will gain practical ideas and inspiration to enhance and sustain fundraising initiatives within their own organizations.
Speakers Kristina Warner, Norwegian American Historical Association (Session Chair) Neal Harmeyer, Purdue University Dina Kellams, Indiana University Alexis Braun Marks, Eastern Michigan University Pete Rhoda, Indiana University
Faculty Organizing for Community Archives Support (FOCAS) is a three-year, nine-university collaborative (Mellon) grant concentrating on community-partnership-based archival work. Components of the grant support curricular and pedagogical development, along with archival development and project planning. This session brings together three perspectives of experiences within the first two years of a three-year Dominican University (DU) FOCAS grant: the community partners, the student interns, and the Dominican faculty. These experiences highlight that archival access and discoverability are not only technical goals but also relational practices built on trust and shared purpose.
You will learn about and engage with the realities related to the vulnerability of archiving and cultural heritage work from a community-advocacy/community-partner perspective. The community-partner discussion also will illuminate aspects of power, empowerment, privilege, and purpose. In turn, student interns will discuss how training in community archives work has influenced their understanding of archival ethics, care, and social responsibility. The faculty moderator will facilitate the session and offer nuances of leadership approaches that maximize community and intern engagement.
By utilizing a 360 perspective, the session offers insight into how universities can prepare emerging professionals to engage responsibly with community partners. It argues that to truly “find it here,” we must build together and create infrastructures of access, stewardship, and respect that make (community) archives discoverable, usable, and cared for over time.
Speakers Anthony W. Dunbar, Dominican University (Session Chair) Kaitlyn Griffith, Dominican University
This presentation explores the critical need for responsible AI practices in managing organizational records. Kansas State University, a mid-sized public institution governed by public records laws, is addressing copyright and intellectual property concerns through a comprehensive AI policy. The policy guides AI tool use across record categories, focusing on minimizing data control loss and ensuring copyright compliance.
Developed collaboratively by librarians, records managers, and professional staff, the policy is designed to be accessible to employees unfamiliar or uncomfortable with AI. By fostering confidence in AI use, the initiative supports ethical integration into daily operations. It also outlines a process for granting exceptions to AI tool restrictions, offering a replicable framework for other institutions.
You will gain insights into: - Creative and collaborative approaches to policy development - Stretching institutional resources through thoughtful design - Building a replicable framework for responsible AI use - Strategies for preserving and accessing records in AI-enhanced environments - Leadership and people management in emerging technologies
As many organizations struggle to create AI guidelines, this presentation offers practical steps for initiating policy development and building a cohort of informed professionals.
Speakers Danielle Hall, Kansas State University (Session Chair) Ryan Leimkuehler, Kansas State University
Want to learn about how to get more involved with MAC but unsure of what volunteer opportunities are available and how to get started? Come to this forum led by members of MAC leadership to learn more about volunteering with MAC.
Facilitators:
Rosalie Gartner, Lead Processing Archivist, Iowa State University (MAC Vice President)
Digitization is not just preservation; it is access. Digitized records enable institutions to highlight underserved collections, weave connections between disparate curatorial areas, and approach archives through a non-hierarchical, rhizomatic lens. How we accomplish this mission changes rapidly with new technological innovations and new standards. These changes are reflected in the work we produce now, but what about the work we’ve completed in the past? Over the past five years, Georgia State University's Digital Projects has critically reexamined our existing workflows and the state of digital collections to rework several key aspects of our program to increase archival accessibility. As part of this process, GSU has established new standards, completed extensive structural changes to digital collections, started revising existing metadata, optimized our digitization workflows, and utilized new AI-empowered processes to increase the productivity and searchability of our digital content.
This presentation will highlight key takeaways from our accessibility projects: what worked, what did not, what we wished we did differently and the surprising benefits that emerged as part of this process. We will discuss simple ways to increase scanning productivity, what we learned from our metadata revision process, and our AI-empowered transcription workflow.
Speakers Rachel Senese Meyers, Georgia State University (Session Chair) Abigail Martin, Georgia State University
