Oral History Interview with Amy Cooper-Cary, August 24, 2011

Oral History Interviews of the SAA Oral History Project

INTERVIEWEE: Amy Cooper Cary (ACC) DATE: August 24, 2011 INTERVIEWER: Lauren Kata (LK) PLACE: Hyatt Regency Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

LK: [We’ve] started.

ACC: Alright.

LK: I’m going to introduce us. First of all I just want to thank you again for participating in the project.

ACC: My pleasure.

LK: My name is Lauren Kata, and I’m the coordinator for the Oral History Project for the SAA Oral History Section. We’re conducting these oral history interviews as part of the 75th anniversary. Today is Wednesday, August 24th, 2011 and we’re in Chicago -- at the Hyatt Regency – conducting this interview. And my interview today is being conducted with Ms. Amy Cooper Cary, who is a long time member of SAA. And thank you again for joining us. Can you start first by describing what your title is currently, right now?

ACC: I’m the Director of Archival Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, School of Information Studies.

LK: Okay, and you are an archivist as well?

ACC: I have been an archivist, but right now I’m primarily an educator.

LK: Okay, can we start first by talking about your background as an archivist and what led you into the archival education realm?

ACC: Sure.

LK: Just tell us your whole life story [laughter]. What led you into wanting to become an archivist?

ACC: You know, it’s--I was thinking about that this morning, I was thinking that if you asked a whole bunch of archivists what got them into the profession, you’re going to have some really interesting stories. I was--I came to it late. I had been working for about ten years for the Border’s [Books] group, doing publisher relations. I managed a staff who did all of the relationships with all of the publishers to make sure that we got appropriate discounts and 00:02:00that we got the books, and talked to the buyers, so I worked in the corporate offices at Border’s for a long time, and Border’s was getting big. And it’s funny, isn’t it, because Border’s is going away.

LK: Right, it closed.

ACC: Yeah, the bankruptcy. I walked into the one here last night and it was just depressing, everything is going. But anyway, the corporation was just becoming too big, it wasn’t suiting me anymore, so I thought about what I had always really wanted to do, and what I really wanted to do was go to library school.

LK: Oh wow.

ACC: So, you know I had already had ten years of corporate experience before I went back into library school to begin with, went back to the University of 00:03:00Michigan and the first class I happened to take was a class on rare books and ancient manuscripts. It was called the “History of Books and Printing.” So, I thought, this is what I want to do, I want to deal with all this stuff because this stuff is so cool.

LK: Yeah.

ACC: And so I started taking archives classes and just never looked back. When I was at Michigan, I worked in the--I kind of haunted the special collections 00:04:00there. I did an internship there, and then when I was getting ready to graduate, I had been working there about 20 hours a week, and they extended that position while I was looking for my first archives position. So I worked there for about 8 months before I landed my first archives position which was [at] the University of South Dakota.

LK: Before we get into talking about that, I remember that you also did your undergraduate at the University of Michigan, correct?

ACC: I did.

LK: So, I was wondering if that was part of what led you back to Michigan’s [Library and Information [Science] program, or why did you choose the library school that you did? I’m sure there were a variety of reasons, but --

ACC: Well, you know, I did do my undergrad at the University of Michigan and when I was an undergraduate, I had family in the area, so it was kind of a logical choice for me to stay put in the Ann Arbor area.

LK: Right.

ACC: My first master’s degree was in comparative literature, which I did out at the State University of New York at Binghamton, now called Binghamton University.

LK: Right, right.

ACC: And that was a two-year program in comparative literature and translation, and I did that and was out there for a couple of years. I decided to move back to Ann Arbor and when I was back in Ann Arbor that’s when I started working at Border’s and it took me ten years to get around to library school, so I was soundly placed in the Ann Arbor area.

LK: It was home?

ACC: It was home, so that was a big part of why I decided to go to library school there as opposed to other places, I mean they had a good school. It was interesting when I first started library school, the Michigan program was just changing its curriculum, just moving into, what was it, 36 credit hours, in any case, it was just becoming a full two-year program.

LK: I see.

ACC: And they had just changed their name to the School of Information, so we were the first School of Information cohort. There were about a hundred students 00:07:00in the School of Information at that time, I don’t know how big it is now, and the archives concentration was one of three specializations you could do. So, it was definitely a different program from what it is now.

LK: Who was your advisor?

ACC: Margaret Hedstrom.

LK: Okay.

ACC: She was my advisor. David Wallace was, he taught my very first intro to archives course, he had a reading list as long as my arm, it was great, it was terrific, I loved it. And he had just been hired, it was his first class, but he was terrific, and Margaret was wonderful, I had a good experience with them.

LK: Were there any fellow students at the time, when you were studying, that are colleagues today?

ACC: Sure, Cal Lee, who is a UNC Chapel Hill, he was one of my classmates, and I have a couple of friends who I stay in touch with, they’re not in the archives world, but Rebecca Price, she’s in the architectural library at Michigan, Rebecca Bizonet who was a year behind me, I stay in touch with her a bit. You--but it’s--well coming from Michigan, I mean there are so many people in the profession from Michigan, you know [inaudible] -- it’s kind of fun because you can say, oh yeah, we have a Michigan connection, but it was a good program.

LK: I graduated through the Wayne State University program.

ACC: Also an excellent program.

LK: It is in some ways an interesting partnership or collaboration to say that we’re all from Michigan, but there are some differences. When you were studying at Michigan, did you feel that there was a specific culture at Michigan, maybe versus-- not necessarily versus Wayne State, that only comes to mind because of my experience? Did you think there was a specific Michigan [culture?] compared, or in contrast to other programs?

ACC: You know, it’s interesting, I’m not sure, and that may be because I did my undergraduate at Michigan. Jack Simpson [a SI classmate], who I believe is still here [in Chicago] at the Newberry Library, he’s their genealogist, he worked at the Reuther. He did-- I just remember he was doing something with death files or obituary files.

LK: Wow.

ACC: Very cool, and he had that connection to Wayne State, so I never really felt that Wayne State and Michigan were competitors, or different cultures or anything, just different programs, you know, in that, and in fact, what’s his name, Joe…

LK: Turini?

ACC: Yes, there we go. Yeah, you know, I worked with him on a panel and we’ve been in contact through the Archival Educators Roundtable.

ACC: I think one of the things about the Michigan program is that what they were interested in doing was making sure that they were on the cutting edge of things and so the program I went through in library school had some technology aspects to it, but it had a lot of business and management aspects to it as well, and I found that very useful. Coming out of the business world and into the library world, I felt I could apply my experience in the business world to what I wanted to go into. And that was very helpful.

LK: Did you expect that?

ACC: No, I didn’t.

LK: Okay.

ACC: Not at all. I thought I was going to do something completely different.

LK: With rare books?

ACC: Well, and ultimately I did.

LK: Right.

ACC: And I think that the base of the program had some of the business concepts to it, and I think those are the core classes that you would take, and I think what I found in that was that the concepts that you deal with in a business atmosphere are really about communication and project management and collaboration, all of those things, which are things we are constantly talking about in our sessions here and constantly talking about in our profession. How do we do things and how do we do them better? So I appreciated the way --and of course it was a new curriculum, right? So they were kind of fussing with the 00:13:00content of it -- and I really appreciated what we got there because it did show me that the business background that I had, came in directly. At Border’s, I did a lot because I was in a management position there and they were an up and coming company, and I did different kinds of business management training. I don’t know if you remember the whole Deming movement? There was a whole big movement in the business world back in the [19]80s, I’m guessing, mid-80s.

LK: I’m minimally aware of it. You saw connections?

ACC: Yeah, well they sent me to this Deming training, so I got to see Deming 00:14:00himself, and I was able to see a lot of connections coming through in those core library school classes. And that was useful. I mean, I think it was useful to me not only in school but professionally as I moved on.

LK: Do you feel like--so you had the connections to the world you were working in previously, and then you moved on to the University of South Dakota. Do you feel like those concepts, specifically business or management, you applied right away? Talk about your first job at the University of South Dakota.

ACC: My first job at the University of South Dakota, like I said, I had been 00:15:00working in the Special Collections at the University of Michigan, I had been doing some really cool stuff. I did a collection of Alexander Dumas, I did a collection of, a very small collection of manuscripts that they had. The woman I was working with -- [Kathleen Dow]-- Anyway, the manuscripts I was working with, she knew that I had the French background, so I could work with the manuscripts, and I’d be able to do the research to write-up a good finding aid and figure 00:16:00out what these actually were. So I’d done some really kind of cool, very specific, almost precious work at the University of Michigan. It was wonderful and I’d done these interesting collections and managed them and then I went to the University of South Dakota and then all of the sudden I had the whole archives not just a couple of collections.

LK: Was it a bit of a culture shock?

ACC: The university itself?

LK: Moving from sort of a small special project to..?

ACC: It was, it was what I wanted. I was looking for something to get me, because at South Dakota I had, I wore a ton of hats. I had a small collection of 00:17:00manuscripts, I had a small collection of rare books, university archives. I was also the records manager for the university because, you know, by default. So I was working with peers to do retention schedules and tried to get those applied across the university and things like that, and I did 10 hours a week on the reference desk.

LK: Wow.

ACC: It was fun, it was fun, it was a great job. So a bit of a culture shock, yeah it was, but it was also, this is where I found that project management skills meet the role in order to actually get anything done. You know, I had to manage and I was the only archivist. I had one FTE and a few students who I could have for 10 to 15 hours a week. So in order to get anything done, I really 00:18:00had to manage what those people were doing, as well as try to do a little of it myself. As you work in a university atmosphere, something that I wasn’t a part of at the University of Michigan, all of the sudden I was on the faculty senate. I had a whole bunch of library committees that I had to sit on, job searches, so there were a lot of different requirements of that position. But it was fun, it was a great position. I really loved the [inaudible] collection, it had some real gems.

LK: Do you remember, or any highlights from the experience of actually looking for your first job after you finished the program at Michigan? Can you talk a little about that?

ACC: Yeah, sure, you know it was a real different atmosphere than it is right now. You know now I send my students out into the world and it’s like, I want there to be more out there for them and with the economy it’s just terrible. I’m very glad to say a lot of my students are employed in the profession, so that’s good. But you know there was a lot--there was a relatively fair amount of openings out there. I was sending out resumes all over the place, and I realized then as now, if you want a job in the profession you have to be willing to move. You know, it wasn’t that South Dakota had family or any great hold on 00:20:00me itself as a place, though it really came to, I really love the state, but I knew that in order to get a job I would have to relocate. There was a job up in Lansing, Michigan, at the State Archives there, and this was when they were doing the newspaper project, where they were microfilming all of the old newspapers on a state-by-state basis.

LK: Right.

ACC: I interviewed for a position there and they wanted me as a cataloger for the state newspaper project, and I turned it down. I was terrified. It was a job in the state archives and I turned it down. But it wasn’t archives-related, it was a cataloger position, and I didn’t want to get pigeonholed into being a 00:21:00cataloger without having that special collections background. That was where my first love was. I still did cataloging when I got to South Dakota - that was another one of my hats, I did some cataloging there, but it wasn’t the only aspect of the job. And so that’s--the job was so one-dimensional, that’s why I turned it down. I was terrified to turn it down because I thought I would never get another job. I think that so many graduates feel that way, you know the first job out of school, I have to accept it because I’m never going to get another chance, you know. I try to tell people, you know, don’t think that 00:22:00way. You have to think: is it a good fit, is it a good place for you, is it what you want to be doing, will it put you on a path where you want to be going? So, I think that’s the benefit of coming late to my library and archives career, because I had a little more perspective, I wasn’t 20-something looking at my first job. I was 30-something looking at my second career. But it was a very different climate than it is now, there were a lot of jobs out there.

LK: Did you have, either at Michigan or elsewhere in the profession, a mentor of any kind that was someone you were talking to at the time about the process you went through, do you remember?

ACC: Not tremendously.

LK: Another way to ask the question is maybe, what role a formal career guidance program may or may not have played, either at Michigan or through another group?

ACC: At Michigan, the librarian I worked with, Kathleen Dow. Kathleen was really the person who I worked with the most closely at Michigan, and she would be the person who would be the most like a mentor to me. It’s interesting because she wore a lot of hats at Michigan and she still does. One of them, she did cataloging, and she taught me how to catalog. I took a cataloging class at 00:24:00Michigan and I learned this and that, but I learned how to catalog from Kathleen Dow. She was terrific. But I think that through the process of trying to get my first job and all that, she was paying attention and was talking to me about different things, but I always really had a desire to be involved with manuscripts and rare books and archives, all three, I wasn’t thinking I specifically wanted to be at a university and specifically in the special collections, so when the South Dakota presented itself, it seemed ideal to me 00:25:00because it encompassed all of those things. It had small rare books, it had manuscripts, it had some university archives. I was really excited about it. It was great.

LK: That was going to be one of my questions, is there something specifically about academic archives that drew you to accepting the job, but some of the aspects you were looking for one might find in an historical society setting, or…

ACC: Yeah, yeah. I may well have found some of those aspects in an historical society, but I think especially from a pure archives position, in an academic setting, it’s my perception that you get kind of a mix, you might definitely have an archives component where you’ve got the university record that 00:26:00you’re working with, but then you’re generally having something do with manuscripts as well, and maybe rare books. Within those collections, for example, when I was at Iowa, you’ve got the defunct corporate archives coming through which is very interesting, but Iowa was quite a different position, and I know we’ll get to that. But at South Dakota, it really taught me a lot about the differences between a manuscript collection, a rare book collection, and a university archives, and the different needs of those constituencies, how different those needs are.

LK: In a way that you didn’t realize when you were studying archives?

ACC: Absolutely, because you can read about it, you can read about the theory, 00:27:00but once you have a basis in practice, and this is why I’m glad as an educator, because I have a strong basis in practice, I think that informs everything about what I do, everything about what I try to teach people, understanding that when they get out of my classes, they’re going to go into a situation and it’s going to be completely different from anything that they have read.

LK: I was going to say that reminds me of what you said a few minutes ago about cataloging. How you had taken the cataloging class, but really learned cataloging from on the job, I guess?

ACC: Absolutely, from doing it. I had a really good practicum at the Bentley Historical Library, a processing practicum, where I learned from Tom Powers, and I remember a lot from that, but processing really meant something to me after I got to South Dakota and I realized what I had in front of me. That there were a handful of finding aids that had been created, but there weren’t finding aids for every collection by the stretch of the imagination, there were some big collections, important collections that really needed some work on, so how was I 00:29:00going to get those processed and get some finding aids up into a format that could be used. EAD [Encoded Archival Description] was just coming on at that time, in the late 90s, in its relative infancy, it had only been around for a few years. And I studied about EAD at Michigan, I even did a coding class using SGML and using, the name of the old program just flew out of my mind. In any 00:30:00case, when I got to South Dakota, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed archivist that I was, I wanted to implement EAD for my repository and everything had changed. All of the sudden the DTD [Document Type Description] was new and they were using XMetal at the time. XMetal was the hot new editor that they were using. I went to my IT people and I said I wanted to be using it and they had no idea, no clue.

LK: When you say they were using these new things, do you mean…?

ACC: The profession.

LK: Okay.

ACC: That was what was happening in the profession. We had just gone through that first iteration, we had gone from an SGML-based EAD [Encoded Archival 00:31:00Description] and a new DTD [Document Type Definition] had been created, we were just coming around to the Big Bird issue of the American Archivist, so the discussion was just building and EAD was just kind of taking shape. I couldn’t get it going at that repository, largely because as a lone arranger I didn’t have, from my education, I didn’t have sufficient skill to make the leap to the new format and I didn’t have an IT group who knew anything about this new editor I implemented or how to create a search bin, it was really frustrating, really frustrating, because I wanted to jump on the bandwagon at that point. Couldn’t do it.

LK: What did you do instead?

ACC: Instead I focused on processing and making the finding aids accessible in a way that my IT folks could manage, which was in Word documents, posting Word documents, as a perfectly viable solution. But it really kind of spurred me to, well it spurred me in a couple of ways. I actually then did a presentation with Kelsey Shepherd and a couple of other people about the problems of implementing 00:33:00EAD in a small repository. At that time, Archon didn’t exist, Archivists’ Toolkit didn’t exist. We had the Cookbook, but without IT support it was really rough. Whereas with Archon and AT [Archivists Toolkit] in small repository it makes it much easier to in a smaller repository to do it now. So I did this presentation with Kelsey Shepherd and a couple of other people about the problems of implementing EAD in a small repository, and I, also as an educator, one of the first things I did was at Milwaukee was to develop a class that wasn’t going to teach me how to encode a finding aid, that’s not hard.

LK: Right.

ACC: But what this class does is talk about technology issues in archives from an administrative and management perspective. When you bright new young archivists are thinking about what you want to do in your repository, you want to implement EAD, here’s what you need to know, here’s where you go to find the information, here’s what you need to know about the process, here’s how you make some of these decisions. You can’t do it by yourself, you have to have some IT backing, you have to have somebody who can help you with this kind of thing. So this class takes a look at technology and unpacks it for students coming in, new archivists, instead of them going out and getting into their first job and getting frustrated with a project that they can’t really realize 00:35:00because they don’t know the steps that go into implementing that technology in a repository. So that’s one of the first classes that I developed for the Archival Studies program at UW Milwaukee, because of that experience at South Dakota.

LK: Interesting. How important was your process practicum then in terms of starting your job at South Dakota?

ACC: I think it was tremendously important. I think everybody learns how to process from someone from somewhere. Again at Michigan I had the processing practicum and then I had the nine months or so working at the Special Collections and doing these very particular processing projects and writing up a 00:36:00very intricate scope and contents, doing some very precious work with the box list and stuff like that, so you learn how to do that and then you get into a repository and you start having to make decisions about the level of processing that you’re going to go through because you can’t do every collection at that precious item level. It’s one thing when you have 15 or 16 manuscripts, it’s another thing when you 20 or 30 feet of material, and so what I was really able to take away from my experience at Michigan and transfer into my experience at South Dakota was an appreciation for the process of processing. I 00:37:00love processing, I miss processing actually, I wish I could do more of it, it’s just great, it’s great stuff.

LK: Do you believe that students in programs today should still be expected to do, learn how to process?

ACC: Absolutely, yeah, they should. I kind of think that there are a couple of different approaches; some classes have a full processing project within the context of the introductory class, and some wait until an arrangement and description class. Ours had a segment on arrangement and description in the 00:38:00introductory class, and then we had a more detailed arrangement and description class that is a full class. I toy every once in a while with putting the more substantial processing projects into the intro class. I think there are a couple of different ways to do it, but I do think students need to learn it. I also think in the arrangement and description class, I have students work with a digital collection, for a couple of reasons – one, because oftentimes you teach them offsite, in an online environment, that’s one way I’ve built up a way to teach arrangement and description online; I think another reason is that 00:39:00this is what’s coming to us, this is what we’re going to be getting, and we have to learn how to deal with it. So I still get students who come in and want to deal with old stuff, they don’t want to deal with digital stuff.

LK: What do you say to them?

ACC: Well, you can’t avoid it, I say yeah, I understand because what got me into it [archives] in the first place was that history of books and printing class, that old stuff, that rare stuff, give me medieval manuscripts, I love that kind of stuff. But I realize that what we as archivists have a responsibility for right now is not only the historic record we have a good handle on, we know what to do with paper, we know what to do with rare books and 00:40:00medieval manuscripts, we know what to do with that stuff, but what we don’t have a handle on right now is the electronic stuff, and we need to find a way to make sure that stuff is coming into our repositories no matter what size our repository is. South Dakota was really really small, but they have to worry about the electronic record just as much as the University of Michigan or UCLA or Simmons or the US government, you have to. That’s the way we’re doing things now, so you can’t get away from it

LK: The way you described that was that archivists have a responsibility. So, in 00:41:00talking to your students, how do they respond to that? They have a desire to do something but then are told, not necessarily told, but come into the profession with the framework of “archivists have a responsibility,” and then perhaps go into the real world and…don’t really have the power to implement that responsibility.

ACC: Well I think that there are a couple of things, and we do definitely talk about this in all levels of our classes. One of the things that we have to do as archivists is to…[pause]. I don’t like to say prove, but to really explain 00:42:00to administrators at whatever level what we’re doing and why it’s important, and how it’s important. This really is in, like, the university archives setting, or…less so in the manuscript-collecting repository, where you have to go out to donors and say okay, give me your stuff and if they hand you a jump drive, then that’s what you get. I think my students come to archives, and I think that this is across the board, that the general public comes to archives and they think about those old letters and the Antiques Roadshow, how many times have we all heard it, oh this is so cool, we do stuff with the Antiques 00:43:00Roadshow. They come with this notion of what archives is, and to a certain extent it is an accurate notion, we have all of the old paper or diaries and letters, and all of that stuff that’s so interesting, and they forget about what we’re doing today. And they forget that today’s letters, today’s emails are what people are going to look for tomorrow to do that research that we all think is so cool. So they forget about that. This is what I try to explain to my students is that’s where our responsibility lies. Our responsibility lies in making sure this stuff is accessible over here, but it 00:44:00also lies in how are we going to make this stuff that we’re doing right now accessible 50 and 100 years from now? To me, that’s where it’s poignant. I hate to think of the loss that we will experience if we don’t get our acts together, because I’ve seen the Civil War diaries, I love them. At South Dakota there was a diary of a woman who was living on a farm in 1892 in Yankton, South Dakota, and Yankton is still a pretty small town. To read her diary is poignant, it’s moving. It’s nothing extraordinary, she writes about the 00:45:00people in the community she knows and she writes about the weather all the time, and she writes about the sicknesses that her family has. It’s nothing remarkable, but together it forms her daily life. How are we going to know anything about daily life of whoever, of somebody in Yankton, South Dakota right now? Because you can be darn sure they’re not keeping a written diary.

LK: They’re keeping a blog.

ACC: They’re keeping a blog, they’re keeping a Facebook page, they’ve got a website, or they’re typing emails to their sister who lives in Sioux City. 00:46:00We’re going to miss it, we’re going to miss it if we don’t get our acts together. This is the kind of thing I try to impress on these students, and by and large they understand that. But it’s a shift, it’s a mind shift that I think we’re going through as a profession, and it’s a mind shift that we all have to come to. And then there’s the whole question, maybe you do have the power, maybe you don’t have the power, but explaining it to people goes back to that management practice, back to that idea of how do I convince somebody that this is what we need to do.

LK: Do you think that’s a skill that can be taught?

ACC: I think to a certain extent it can be taught, I think that a lot of my students come and say that they are interested in this because of their passion for history and they’re looking back, their passion is for old history and I think the one thing that you can do is teach how to present a good project, and you can teach how to work collaboratively, and you can teach all of these 00:48:00things. What I really want to instill in my students is, and I don’t know how good I am at doing this, but what I really want to instill in my students is an appreciation, a passion for this history that we’re seeing slip through our fingers right now, and how to get that to people 50 and 100 years on, because if we don’t start now, it’s not going to be around. It’s not like we’re going to be able to find the documents in our parent’s attic because the documents will not exist. So, I try.

LK: What comes to mind for me when I hear you say that is, well, several things. One question is what role does or doesn’t SAA or another regional professional 00:49:00association or another related professional association have in driving that message either to students or to the public? It’s kind of a big question, I realize that.

ACC: It is a big question.

LK: But in your opinion, and I do want to go back and talk about more of your highlights that you’ve experienced, but this is coming to mind as we’re talking.

ACC: You know I think, one of the reasons I agreed to do this interview is because I am very strongly pro-SAA. I think SAA is a terrific organization and I think it does a lot to bring those questions, those issues to light at least. I 00:50:00think it’s very easy to go into the world from your educational experience and to deal with what you have, right? And a lot of us get out and deal with what we have and what we have are paper collections and we may have some photograph collections and we may have some films that we don’t know what to do with and audio that is deteriorating and whatever and we put on our blinders for those electronic records until some kind of crisis point hits and all of the sudden the university catalog goes completely digital and we have to find a way to 00:51:00manage the university catalog coming through, or somebody does hand us a jump drive and say here’s are all of our manuscripts, this is what I have. But I think SAA does a good job of bringing those issues to light on a broader professional level. The “I Found it in the Archives” experience I think is really good. I think to a certain extent it stays with some of the more traditional formats, but you’re starting to see people accessing those traditional formats in a digital realm. People are finding those images in an online database. So, I think SAA does a really fine job, and that is more a 00:52:00public outreach kind of thing, making it easier for the general public to understand, here’s some of the stuff we have as a society, right, and this is where we find it. But professionally, not to the general public, but professionally, SAA is extremely good in making sure that we as archivists stay on top of those big trends because, while we’ve got all these working groups, roundtables, sections, and this conference--I mean when you look at the conference program, anybody who is coming through here is going to get the idea that the big push right now is us trying to come to grips with digital and 00:53:00electronic records, so I think SAA is critical in that. Regionals too, as we see the same movement in regionals just in a smaller plan. They are great organizations. If the students join, I make sure they have the opportunity to come to the conference because this venue is the most dynamic and informative venue that you can go to as an archives professional, I think. So, it’s critical. I think it serves as a hub, as a kind of starting point. Clearly, there are a lot of other things that go on, coming out of the National Archives, 00:54:00the ERA [Electronic Records Archives], a lot of collaborative efforts like in NARA you’ve got projects and collaborative projects, every kind of project you can imagine and I think SAA is kind of a hub for all of that, so you can kind of come here and see there’s really a lot going on. It’s dynamic, it’s great.

LK: This might be a good time for us to take a break.

ACC: Okay.

LK: We ended tape one kind of talking about the role SAA has in bringing the profession together, I like the way that you described it, SAA is a hub for the profession and all the activities that are going on. Before we talk more about your experience with SAA, I wanted to go back and continue talking about sort of the positions you had and the work you’ve done in your career prior to your current position at the University of Wisconsin.

ACC: Okay.

LK: So your first job was at the University of South Dakota.

ACC: Right, and from there I went to the University of Iowa, in Special Collections.

LK: What are some highlights from that period?

ACC: You know, I felt like South Dakota was terrific, and I loved it there and I 00:56:00loved the collections, but it was really a small place. So, when the job at Iowa came open, I decided to apply for it, for a couple of reasons. One, it would put me a little closer to family, who were still in Michigan at the time. Two, it was a larger repository, and I would have the opportunity to work with other archivists there. And I felt like South Dakota really kind of gave me an idea of what I wanted to do and Iowa really allowed me to really step into to do it. South Dakota, with the many hats I wore, it was a great experience and it taught 00:57:00me a lot and it enabled me to move into the position at the University of Iowa and I think do some good work while I was there. I came in replacing Bob McCown. I don’t know if -- I don’t think he was involved in SAA. Iowa has a very strong rare books focus and Bob was the Manuscripts Librarian, and when I came on at Iowa I was the Special Collections Librarian. So, I had my hand in a 00:58:00lot of different aspects of the collections there. I did some work with a rare books collection, a couple of them, of Lincoln materials, they had a really big collection of Lincoln materials. I did some work with that, I did some work with a collection of Poe books, rare books, but I also curated a collection of ephemera and newsletters called the Social Documents collection, right wing materials, and it has kind of a counterpart in the Wilcox Collection at Kansas, something to offend everyone, which is absolutely true, because it was really 00:59:00the ultra right-wing trendy stuff, a little intimidating to collect because it was so far from my own perspective on the world. It was very interesting, it’s a very interesting collection.

LK: How did you handle that, working with materials that were potentially offensive?

ACC: Not even potentially offensive, they were really offensive. I did a presentation on it at SAA and I’ve been meaning to write it into an article and I just haven’t, but [this is] one of the things that struck me the most -- 01:00:00this collection was started back during World War II, and they were collection [of] both the right and the left-wing ephemera, and the library director at the time really recognized that if it wasn’t going to be collected, it was going to disappear, much like I was saying earlier, if we don’t start collecting this stuff we’re creating now it’s going to disappear. So, he made it a priority to collect those polar opposites, the right and the left-wing collections, and when it became clear that the collection was going to be pretty large, and the resources to collect both ends of the spectrum were not as available, they decided to maintain the right-wing collection because there were 01:01:00other places that were collecting the left, but the right was much less broadly collected. So, it was a good decision I think, you know, the decision to focus on the right wing, really had nothing to do with politics, it had to do with the collecting priority and a collecting need and that’s the way I see that collection, is you know, I don’t have to believe in it, I don’t have to think it’s the right way to go about things, but I do have a very strong belief that those perspectives need to, those voices need to be heard. It would 01:02:00be just as if it wasn’t important to collect some other underserved voice in American archives. So that’s how I came to grips with being in charge of that collection. And I’m very glad for the experience, it was really engaging, really enlightening, you know to just understand the necessity to collect things that you may not appreciate intellectually, or agree with personally. That’s a good lesson as an archivist, I think we tend to think we go into because we love 01:03:00history, because we love the stuff, you don’t have to love the stuff, you just have to love the principle behind what you’re doing, and that’s the way I saw that collection. That was one of the most interesting things I did at Iowa.

LK: How long were you at Iowa? I don’t mean to put you on the spot, I know we have your resume.

ACC: No, it’s fine. I went to Iowa just after, I believe I started at Iowa on October 1, 2001, so just after 9/11.

LK: Oh wow.

ACC: I moved to Iowa and I left there in August of 2005. So, I was there about four years. And I was at South Dakota about two years. Again, I loved the work at Iowa, it was such a wonderful job. It was such a wonderful job. A couple of years after I had been there -- I had been there for two, two and a half years I guess, and I was made the Assistant Head of the Special Collections. So I had my fingers in all of the areas again, which is what I really loved, I had my fingers in university archives and was working to help manage that with David McCartney, he was the University Archivist there. I did a little bit, like I said, of the rare books curating, and David Schoonover was the Rare Books 01:05:00Librarian there. The manuscripts were being done, a lot of the management and processing was being done by Jacque Roethler, and I was working on acquiring collections and working with Sid Huttner who was the head at the time. Karen Mason is still, and was then, the head of the Iowa Women’s Archives. She was doing really fascinating and interesting stuff with the IWA, they had a big anniversary and that was terrific, I think there was all kinds of stuff going on. It was just a really great job, it was terrific. There were a couple of large projects that I did there. I helped with relocation of materials into 01:06:00compact shelving, a reorganization of the whole structure of the holdings area, one on the first, one in the basement.

LK: Was that a new experience for you?

ACC: That was, but project management, it wasn’t really, it was just a project that we made sure we got through. The other thing I really enjoyed was we brought up all of our finding aids into an online format. I was smart enough to know that EAD was not part of the equation here, but we did bring all the finding aids online and we also implemented PastPerfect as a collection management program. That taught me something about working collaboratively with 01:07:00people in IT and with people in the department because it was much larger than just me, and so we have a lot of people to work with to ensure that it served the needs of the different areas, and again project management, it was great, I loved doing that, it was just terrific. So I really felt like I got to put into practice a lot of what I had been learning up until that point, that in Iowa I really actually got to dig in and do some of the work, and when we were -- just in the last year or so of my time there-- we were starting to get into digital 01:08:00projects. There was a big one that we worked on with the Vandermoss Collection, which is a collection, it’s a really cool collection that’s all of these photographs that this one person went out and took of Iowa railroad depots, but then not just Iowa, all over the country railroad depots, everywhere, and he put them all in scrapbooks, and so they are by state and county, and then city. So you’ve got all of these images of railroad depots and some of them multiple times, photographed maybe in the 50s or the 70s and 80s, so you’ve got several different images. So, we were just starting a digital project to get the railroad depots up into an online, because we had a ton of railroad buffs who loved to use that collection.

LK: That’s what I was going to ask, what was your user group like?

ACC: A lot of people who were very amateur historians of railroad history. They loved that stuff, it was just terrific, and we had a lot of other railroad collections actually. Iowa was a real hub, it was kind of a center of where things would come, so we had a lot of good railroad collections. We were just starting this digital project, CONTENTdm, get the images up and then create the metadata, and I was working with the Preservation Librarian, Nancy Kraft, who was interested in doing this at the time and as a part of the Iowa Digital 01:10:00Heritage, there was an Iowa Digital Heritage site, and that was one of the first collections for that particular site. And we didn’t have the staff, we had CONTENTdm, we sat down and hammered out what we wanted as metadata, and then the circulation department decided that instead of just having the students sit there and read books or something while they were on downtime, they could do the scanning and the initial metadata. So we would ship the--take the scrapbooks down there, and the students would do the scanning and put in the preliminary metadata. Then I’d check on the metadata and Nancy would make sure the images were up to snuff and then we could mount it, so that’s one way to skin a cat with a digital project. You think it’s going to take x number of hours, where 01:11:00is that manpower going to come from? Part of it, you learn how to use it within your own institution, that’s what we did. Now they have terrific digital collections, they’ve got a digital librarian, she was just coming on board when I was leaving. They’ve really done a fabulous job, and I think the Iowa Digital Heritage site moved over to the state archives site, I’m not sure if that’s true. They’ve just done a really great job in moving forward in that whole. So, part of me really regrets that I had to leave that position because things were just getting really exciting with this new approach to access.

LK: Can you talk about why you left, or the transition?

ACC: Sure, yeah. The reason that I left Iowa was really just a personal thing, I was--I had been--while I was in Iowa I got married to a man who lived in Milwaukee, Tim Cary, he was at the time the archivist for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, and we met at the Midwest Archives Conference, and so it just wasn’t possible for me to continue after doing a back and forth, between Iowa City and Milwaukee.

LK: Yeah.

ACC: And so while I was in Iowa City, Tim Ericson, who was directing the program at Milwaukee, he knew that I was looking for something, and I did not know that he was thinking about retirement. And so when I had an opportunity to talk to him at MAC, he asked, “Do you want to come teach a class in Milwaukee?” And I said, “Sure I want to teach a class.” It would be an online class and that kind of thing, and I thought I could do that in Iowa City, trying to find a way to transition, and then I don’t know what kind of discussions went on with administration there, but he came back to me and said, well maybe you want to come and talk to the deans and interview a bit, and maybe do more than just teach a class.

LK: Wow.

ACC: Yeah, and so I went and I interviewed and I undertook my career in archival education. I sound a little flip about it. I think that it was really a stumbling in than a solid career path. There were no openings in Milwaukee for an archivist. Milwaukee’s got a real small archives community and they are all about my age, so nobody was really moving

LK: This is a little bit personal, we don’t have to go down this path, but when an archivist marries another archivist and you’re living in a different city, and the landscape is what it is, that must have been a little bit of a challenge to figure out, okay, now where do we go from here.

ACC: Well it was and it wasn’t, and it is personal but, Tim has a son and I have no children, and his son was eleven and in the school system and wasn’t wanting to move.

LK: That makes sense.

ACC: And so it really was the case that in order to be together and be as a family, I needed to go there, and that’s fine.

LK: And through your networks you were able to. . .

ACC: I was able to come up with this position. I’m fortunate, I’m really lucky. I interviewed, all of the stuff that you go through, but I don’t even know that, and they did post the position, but I don’t even know that I 01:16:00would’ve known that the position was open, nor would I have thought to take it. Milwaukee has a bit of a different structure, because I don’t have a PhD, and a lot of people who go into archival education, the PhD is required. At Milwaukee they have a different structure that permits them to hire people who come from professionals backgrounds as teaching academic staff and, so that’s how they hired me on. And just last year I was granted the equivalent of tenure for that program, they have the same requirements that they have of regular 01:17:00faculty --of service, publication and university service and professional service and all that stuff, but I feel really fortunate in that I’m one of the few archival educators out there that comes from a practitioner base.

LK: Right.

ACC: Exclusively, rather than a PhD base. I have the master’s, I have a dual masters, but the PhD isn’t there.

LK: Has that ever been a problem for you?

ACC: I don’t know that it’s been a problem. I mean, if I wanted to go 01:18:00anywhere else and teach, I this I’d probably need the PhD. But I really, really value my experience as a practitioner. I think my experience as a practitioner has really informed my approach to education. Like I said earlier, that’s the direct reason that I created the class that I did. When I go into a classroom or when I’m teaching online, I have experience to draw from, that I say, well it may say this in the book but in my experience, this is what really happens.

LK: Right, I almost wish I could go back and ask the question a different way, what are some of the advantages that you see as an archival educator that archival educators can offer as not necessarily the theoretical professorship background?

ACC: I think theory has to underpin practice. That’s why we teach it, and even as a practitioner, I still go back to certain of the readings that I had, or try to get a grasp around. I remember when I was first thinking about the University Archives at South Dakota, I went back to [Helen Willa] Samuels, because you know, it’s Samuels. So theory underpins practice. But I think practice is 01:20:00where you learn the weaknesses of theory and where you learn how you can apply it and when there are holes that theory can’t fix. So, I like having both, and as an educator now I have to say I have to keep up on the archival literature to make sure that I’m up on the discussions that are going on. So, from a perspective of an educator, trying to keep a hand in both places, in theory and in practice, trying to hang on to both of those, it just shows me the importance of both. And I think that certainly the educators… there are really a lot of great people in archival education right now, they’re just terrific, and I 01:21:00think of my advisor, Margaret Hedstrom, she’s got a tremendous practice background, [inaudible], there are just tons of educators who have that practical background.

LK: You’re involved in the archival educators group?

ACC: Yeah.

LK: Within SAA, so was the decision to join that group or participate in that group, as soon as you segued into the archival education realm? Maybe another way to ask is what role did SAA play in your transition?

ACC: Well, to say that, I’ll have to back up. SAA, I’ve been a member since 1999 or 2000. In any case, not that long -- really I’m a newbie. That’s why I was surprised that you asked me to do this interview, because I feel like I’m a complete beginner in some respects. But I have been really involved in SAA. When I got to SAA, the first SAA that I went to, this is kind of funny, the first SAA that I went to, I was kind of roaming around the exhibit hall and I wanted to stop by the booth when they were having that revolving booth for different roundtables, and the Women Archivists Roundtable -- what is now called the Women Archivists Roundtable, it wasn’t at that time, -- but they were there and I wanted to go talk to them, so they said, “why don’t you 01:23:00come to our meeting and would you be interested in running for our co-chair position?,” and I’m like “what?”-- I was brand new and I said, “Really I’m brand new at this.” They said, “If you’re interested in doing this, it’s a co-chair position,” and I was the co-chair all of the sudden. I was like wow -- but it was great, it was a lot of fun. So, ever since I’ve been in SAA, I’ve been involved in something. I’ve been involved in -- the other thing I wanted to do was the American Archivist editorial board.

LK: Right, yes.

ACC: My first stint on it, when Phil Eppard was the editor and was transitioning into Mary Jo [Pugh], and that was terrific, and I was also in the Manuscript Repositories Section, on the steering committee, the chair position, and then the chair elect, and then the chair. So, I’ve always been involved in SAA in some way or another. It didn’t really occur to me when I transitioned into this new position not to become involved in the archivists’ roundtables, the 01:25:00Archival Educators Roundtable. Shortly after I came into Archival Educators, they asked me to serve on the Education Committee, so I did that. So, I did that for a few years and now I’m back with the editorial board…I’ve done things all through. I think that, from my perspective, it’s great coming to the meetings, you learn a ton, it’s wonderful to do presentations, but service to me means really giving back somehow. To my mind is why I try and engage with a committee, a section, a roundtable, whatever it is, I try to keep myself engaged.

LK: I think you were right that we had to go back and talk about your first involvement in SAA, can you talk a little bit about some of the issues or the projects that you were dealing with these different groups you mention, beginning first with the Women Archivists Roundtable?

ACC: The Women Archivists Roundtable was, at that time, it was kind of loosely formed.

LK: Not to be confused with the Women’s Collections Roundtable, there’s two different things.

ACC: Right, two different things. And in fact, with the Women Archivists Roundtable, one of the things that we did was we did a survey, and that was while I was still at Iowa -- we did a survey of women archivists, we asked the 01:27:00women archivists of SAA to fill out the survey, to touch on the issues that were important to them and we published, and it should be on the website.

LK: I think it is.

ACC: We published a little review of the issues that women are facing in the archival profession. The presence of the glass ceiling, the need to balance work and home life, there were all kinds of interesting things that came out of that survey. I think that ultimately -- ultimately the survey needs to be reconsidered, I think ten years is a long time in the profession.

LK: Sure.

ACC: And I think there are certainly things that have shifted for women archivists today. It’s really an interesting and critical thing. The roundtable has really progressed a lot since that time, so that was really interesting. With the Manuscripts Repository Section, I really enjoyed that section a lot. A great group of people.

LK: It’s quite a large section, isn’t it?

ACC: I think it’s the largest one, I don’t know if it is still, at that time 01:29:00it was. It’s huge. That was a real interesting, an interesting set of years. We had the steering committee working on presentations, the Manuscript Repository Section does a regular program at SAA, so we had people working on that. We also had a couple of different things going on. As I was leaving, and this is something we are still trying to get legs under at the 75th anniversary, is a history of the section.

LK: That’s fantastic.

ACC: We’ve done a timeline.

LK: Oh that’s great.

ACC: We’ve got something, Sammie Morris had been working on and off in our copious spare time, but that’s something we’ve been working on for years. And the year that I was chair, we really wanted to engage the membership, so we 01:30:00tried again to try to find -- sense out some concerns that the membership had -- about collecting and copyright, electronic records, you know there’s a lot going on. And again, I think the Manuscript Repository Section has done a really good job addressing a lot of those issues. So, I’ve always, I really liked that section, I always go back to that meeting and wait with bated breath to hear what they are going to do next. And hopefully Sammy and I can get some legs around this history session this year - that would be my goal.

LK: Why is that important to you?

ACC: The history of the section?

LK: Yes. Not necessarily to you personally, but why do you think it’s important?

ACC: I think it’s important to me personally and I think it’s important to SAA. I think this organization, probably more than any other, recognizes that this is where, our history, this is where we come from, it helps us understand who we are right now. And so it’s nice to see these 75th anniversary events going on, the things SAA is really trying to promote, I think that, when I think about the Manuscripts Repository Section, you can see over time how people have 01:32:00tried really hard to make that, help that section address the needs of the profession and the people who are attending. I think that’s important, you can’t know what you are doing right now without understanding what you have been doing in the past, because you stand on their shoulders. You don’t come in and wipe the slate clean, that’s not what you are going to do.

LK: Right

ACC: So, that was a really good experience. Working on the Editorial Board has been terrific.

LK: So you had a period of service and now you are back on?

ACC: Right, I had a period of service as just a member of the Editorial Board, 01:33:00and I thoroughly loved doing that. Really, my heart lies in the publications, it really does, and so when I heard that the opening for Reviews Editor was up, I decided to jump at that when Jeanette [A. Bastian] left that position, and I’m thrilled to be the reviews editor, it’s great fun, it keeps me in touch with all the stuff coming through, the things we’re trying to do right now, just -- I think you probably saw the announcement on the listserv is that we’re starting the review webpage.

LK: Yeah, that’s exciting.

ACC: It’s very exciting. We’ve been working hard to get it to happen -- that was the goal for this first year, this year of work that I’ve been doing. We have Danna Bell-Russell, who’s the Associate Reviews Editor -- she and I have been working together with Teresa Brinati and Jenny Schooley at SAA to make that happen, and it’s just great to see it up and running. I expect that it will shift and change over time, how can it not? This is the first time that it’s been done. But I think that’s --that puts people more immediately in touch 01:35:00with what’s out there, and between --when I was just going off the editorial board the first time, Mary Jo was coming on, and she had a lot of things on her agenda and she has accomplished all of them. One of her first priorities was to get that publication online, the American Archivist and get it up and running, because Archivaria was already there. If you think of Archivaria and American Archivist, Archivaria was ahead of us.

LK: Yeah, right.

ACC: But it was great to see that happen and she did a fabulous job in marshalling that through and, again, an effort in collaborative work. I don’t know if you are going to interview Mary Jo, I mean she’s. . .

LK: She’s being interviewed tomorrow.

ACC: Fabulous, good, she’ll talk about it. I mean, she’s just done terrific work, I have so admired her and so admired working under her, because she really did a service to the publication.

LK: What did you learn during your period serving on the Editorial Board that you didn’t realize was behind the scenes and the journal and SAA’s journal? What are some things that stick out to you that you came away with that first round of serving?

ACC: That first round -- I think part of it was really just the process of 01:37:00dealing with this massive amount of submissions. People really want to be published in American Archivist. I was the editor of Archival Issues for the Midwest Archives Conference for a number of years as well and I have to say we never had the problem of too many submissions, but American Archivist, part of it is just the care with which the members of the Editorial Board reviewed the materials. And that I think, if you’re going to sit on an editorial board, you have that responsibility, you really have to be committed to helping someone 01:38:00improve their work. I think that American Archivist does a really good job trying to speak to all areas of the profession, and I think Mary Jo has done a really good job of bringing on all kinds of different articles, case studies, theoretical articles, and historically-based articles, and all kinds of stuff, it really expands our vision of the reach of the archival profession. When we see that it’s not just case studies, and it’s not just how we do what we do, but it goes beyond that to historic interpretation or corporate involvement, there’s just all kinds of things.

LK: Do you feel that your fellow Editorial Board members had that sort of same spirit, or view while you were serving?

ACC: I think so. Yeah, I think so. I think really the people who I served with on the Editorial Board were smart and knowledgeable, I’ve really been fortunate. I learned a lot by sitting on the Editorial Board both times. The people who are on those boards, they are engaged with the profession in a very 01:40:00broad way, in that they’re not--I think in order to do service to that process, you have to be able to look beyond your own repository, be able to look to the broader profession, to the needs, what do all of these archivists who are reading this journal need to know? What’s going to engage them, what’s going to interest them? And part of that is the responsibility of the editor, but I think part of that is the responsibility of the editorial board as well.

LK: The Editorial Board is one of the, in my mind, one of the higher profile groups in the sense of how necessary the collaboration is between the staff, the 01:41:00SAA staff and specifically the publications position --Teresa Brinati--and that collaboration. What was your experience with that?

ACC: Yes.

LK: Just in observing how that process works?

ACC: In observing that, but also Teresa is one of the first people that I got close to in SAA, she is just an incredible dynamo and she has done just yeoman’s work. I know SAA gave her a special citation for her work in publications. She oversees the Publications Board and the Editorial Board and she works with both of those. So, for a small organization, SAA has an amazing 01:42:00publishing profile, I mean you look at the publications that we put out, not only the American Archivist, but then we have Archival Outlook, which for a newsletter is not a puff piece. We have Archival Outlook, we have the American Archivist, and then we have all of the books, and you’ve got the Publications Board, -- and I really want to serve on that board someday, I have yet to have the opportunity of serving on it -- but then you’ve got the Publications Board that really works to get these great, interesting books coming out that are useful across the profession. As an educator I really appreciate it. 01:43:00Somebody’s writing about archives. It’s terrific and yes it is probably like you say one of the higher profile, I would say those two boards are two of the more higher profile collaborative efforts between SAA and the membership, and I love that aspect of it. It shows me what a commitment SAA has to its membership, it shows me what a good collaboration can actually achieve. With Mary Jo, when she wanted to get the American Archivist online, she knew, she pulled several 01:44:00people, Bill Landis, Paul Conway, she pulled those guys in. They did tremendous service. She saw where her shortcomings were in understanding those processes and she put the people on the board who knew how to get it done. And that was an ingenious move on her part, because their work enabled the American Archivist to move forward. And you can see that too in the publications. I think that one even more so. Teresa has a good hand in helping the pubs board chair, in this 01:45:00case Peter Wosh, and before that I think it was Richard-- I think it was Richard Cox but I’m not sure. In any case, it’s great to see that collaboration and we all reap the benefits of it. I think we have a really -- I look at other publications from other organizations and I think we have a great series of them. We really do. So, I love being involved in that, it’s like where my heart is.

LK: That’s great.

ACC: Yeah.

LK: Another one of our loaded questions is, where you think the profession might be headed.

ACC: I think that it’s too obvious to say. We talk about the electronic record and digital record, that’s --

LK: That’s where the record’s heading.

ACC: That’s where the record’s heading. The profession follows the record, it has to, that’s what we’re there to do. I think right now there’s a real opportunity to shift our mindset, and I’ve said that in a couple of different ways in this interview, and I think that the more I study, the more I learn, the 01:47:00more projects I see, the more I’m convinced that our shift is how we’re going to make our practice fit the circumstances of the record. We talk about do we do traditional appraisal when we’re working with electronic records, or do we have to shift the format of appraisal if we’re working with electronic records. Do we have --I don’t think it’s that easy. I don’t think it’s that simple a question. I think what we’re really coming around to is we have 01:48:00to have a different understanding of what our position is in relationship to the record. When I talk to my students, I always talk to them about balancing needs because in an archival situation, as you brought up earlier, you the archivist may not have the power to do x, y, or z. You have to be able to balance the needs of -- the political needs of the institution. You’re bound by them, no matter what kind of repository you’re working in. But you also have to balance the needs of the collection, whatever format that collection is in, and you have 01:49:00to balance the needs of the user. So, as archivists right now, we’re seeing digitization as means to provide more access to users. We’re seeing digitization, the creation of digital objects, electronic records as posing something of a conundrum for the collection, and we’re seeing that same shift in the record. We have a hard time explaining that, or justifying that, or getting the administration on board with this sometimes.

LK: Right.

ACC: So, our mindset has to go beyond just the format that we’re dealing with, just the stuff, it’s gotta go to how we administer that stuff and where the access needs happen. Some materials, we don’t need to make them digital. For 01:50:00some materials, it’s going to be necessary, for others it’s absolutely critical. We have to find the balance, and I think that’s one of the biggest things we face as a profession, balancing all of those needs. We also get into the whole question of copyright, privacy, and ethics. There’s a tremendous junction of all of it--

LK: I was going to say crossroads.

ACC: Crossroads, and that’s right where we are. So, what’s going to happen in the profession? I don’t know, but I have a lot of faith in the 01:51:00collaborative approach and the bright minds we have in this profession right now. I know a lot of people who I really respect and who I think are doing wonderful work. Every time I come to a conference, I’m amazed by what people are doing, it’s fascinating. It’s a fascinating profession and I think that we can make that shift. I think that that shift has started, I think that it continues. Right now it’s my job to get my students into that discussion, 01:52:00right? That’s the job that I have. But I have--I fully expect that we can make that shift and that we are doing it. It’s just a matter of, as with any large entity, getting everyone on the same page, and then the page will shift, right?

LK: Right.

ACC: So, it’s constant, just constant, but it’s fascinating.

LK: Well, Amy, we have a few minutes left, do you have any final thoughts that you want to share? About SAA or being part of the profession?

ACC: I’m honored to be a part of the profession. I love it. When I started and I took that first class, I had no clue where it was going to lead me, but I thoroughly enjoy what I do. And I really --if I can’t practice with my hands 01:53:00in a repository, staying in touch and teaching and working with the students who are coming through. I have a lot of hope, because I see these people who are coming through and are really interested and engaged, and that’s what I want to do. I want to be a part of what we’re trying to do. It’s a great profession, it’s great to be a part of it, and I want to stay around and see what happens next. It’s fascinating.

LK: Thank you, I think we can stop there.