WEBVTT 00:02:55.000 --> 00:03:14.000 Is going to help them further. Your commitment to ethical and equitable treatment of new professionals and the long-term goal of eliminating unpaid labor in the archives field, which is just a little ambitious right. 00:03:14.000 --> 00:03:28.000 Getting into the specifics of what's the archivist and residence program actually is, and what it technically does, as of this year, Northwest Archivist. 00:03:28.000 --> 00:03:47.000 It offers a stipend of up to $7,000 for one graduate student or recent graduates to receive an archivist in residence, opportunity with an archival organization within the geographic region covered by Northwest membership that includes a Alaska Idaho Montana Orregon 00:03:47.000 --> 00:03:58.000 and Washington, and if you know anything about that region, you're going to immediately notice there's a lot of variation of with that region. 00:03:58.000 --> 00:04:03.000 Let's see. And this started out as sort of our solution to the question of like how to offer. 00:04:03.000 --> 00:04:09.000 And administrate an internship via a regional professional organization. 00:04:09.000 --> 00:04:29.000 Across a region with that level of diversity in cost of living and lifestyle, and how to do that equitably, the core purpose of the program as we developed it, is 3 fold. 00:04:29.000 --> 00:04:34.000 First we want to offer upcoming and new professionals with paid career development opportunities. 00:04:34.000 --> 00:04:46.000 We want to give them the opportunity to meaningfully apply what they've learned, and to have a learning experience in the workplace. 00:04:46.000 --> 00:04:59.000 We want to teach new archivists how to accurately calculate their value, based on their experience and their education, and how to advocate for that value in their career. 00:04:59.000 --> 00:05:06.000 Going forward, and finally, we want to provide an opportunity for the archival organizations involved in our program to work towards. 00:05:06.000 --> 00:05:14.000 Like, I said, that long-term goal of eliminating, unpaid work within the field. 00:05:14.000 --> 00:05:28.000 So we really focused on centering the residents in this when we're looking at applications for this program, we're not looking for institutions that want sort of a socket major. 00:05:28.000 --> 00:05:33.000 Stop, Gap, Major, for getting a bit of collections worked on. 00:05:33.000 --> 00:05:39.000 It's really more about using this as a tool for advocacy going forward. 00:05:39.000 --> 00:05:44.000 See. 00:05:44.000 --> 00:05:57.000 This is a joint application process, where the applicants and their host institution needs to find each other, they need to define their project. 00:05:57.000 --> 00:06:09.000 The project goals and their project budget of how they are going to spend the stipend, which is a major part of the application, and Laura is going to speak to that aspect now. 00:06:09.000 --> 00:06:23.000 Thank you. Katherine. Yeah. As Katherine mentioned from our very first meeting, we had this question of, how do you design a residency with a wage justice focus at its core? 00:06:23.000 --> 00:06:36.000 And we recognized that while on its surface our goal was to create a program that funded, paid internships and encouraged more paid internships. 00:06:36.000 --> 00:06:51.000 We also wanted to take to make this program as much an educational opportunity for the host institutions to critically think about how they support early career archivists as it was a work experience and networking opportunity for the residents themselves. 00:06:51.000 --> 00:06:56.000 So to achieve this goal, we strategically centered the collaboratively built budget in the structure of the application. 00:06:56.000 --> 00:07:06.000 This budget planning process opens conversation between the host and the Resident about how to use cost of living. 00:07:06.000 --> 00:07:22.000 The complexity of the proposed project and the educational level and experience of the applicant to determine a fair and livable wage for the the Residency can go the next slide. Katherine. 00:07:22.000 --> 00:07:34.000 Hmm! So our other budgetary goal was to build a residency that was adaptable and relevant to the needs of the broadest number of institutions and early career archivists represented in Nwa. 00:07:34.000 --> 00:07:38.000 As Katherine kind of hinted at the Nwa. 00:07:38.000 --> 00:08:00.000 Region has a really wide range, both of cost of livings for the areas that are archival repositories are held as well as the types of repositories that are within our region, that they've vary widely from large university archives or state repositories and museums 00:08:00.000 --> 00:08:06.000 down to small local historical societies, and everything in between. 00:08:06.000 --> 00:08:21.000 So we, our goal was to build a program that could work anywhere regardless of whether they had all of the interest structure for administering grants and hiring short-term staff. 00:08:21.000 --> 00:08:30.000 All of that. We wanted to eliminate that barrier, and what we landed on was doing a direct to the Resident. 00:08:30.000 --> 00:08:37.000 Award, and the other way that we kind of accounted for. 00:08:37.000 --> 00:08:42.000 This as we, we set the budget up to have kind of like this triangle effect where it's is the total amount that the award could that the award asked can be. 00:08:42.000 --> 00:09:09.000 And then the cost of living, and the number of hours that the scope of the project is going to require, are both variable, so those can slide in and out according to the specific parameters of the project and the and the resident applicant to establish the cost. 00:09:09.000 --> 00:09:11.000 Of living there's a couple of different tools you can use. 00:09:11.000 --> 00:09:26.000 We landed on the Mit Wage calculator, I find that it is really granular and in a it's it has a lot of good detail in it about like the specific variables for each applicant's needs. 00:09:26.000 --> 00:09:29.000 If you haven't looked at this at this resource before. 00:09:29.000 --> 00:09:44.000 It's a really great tool. I took a quick screenshot of what this looks like for Oregon, which is my home state, and you can see they have this breakdowns by county, and then they also have the major regional areas in the State and then when you go into each one you'll get even more 00:09:44.000 --> 00:09:54.000 granular types of detail, so that that is kind of where we were asking them to build their calculations from. 00:09:54.000 --> 00:10:10.000 I will also note that another way that we have built wage justice into this application is that we are starting to account for inflation as we set the the total amount each year in 2020. 00:10:10.000 --> 00:10:23.000 The amount was $5,000. We have now bumped it all the way up to $7,000, and, like gradually increments over the last few years, hopefully inflation is not such a factor in our lives moving forward. 00:10:23.000 --> 00:10:38.000 But if it is, and we are able to keep up with fundraising that is definitely one of our goals is to continue to make this a problem that we see is that a lot of internships are set, and then never revisited on that amount. 00:10:38.000 --> 00:10:49.000 And so they very quickly become grossly underpaid for what they are asked, even if they were just at the time that they they were established. 00:10:49.000 --> 00:10:56.000 So this the flexibility of the grant structure also does provide space. 00:10:56.000 --> 00:11:01.000 For institutional rules about compensation. So long as they're explained in that budget. 00:11:01.000 --> 00:11:14.000 Narrative. Some institutions have rules about how much or how people are compensated, and we wanted to give an opportunity to account for that. As well go to the next slide. 00:11:14.000 --> 00:11:22.000 So in designing the program we wanted it to be an ethical labor learning experience for both the potential residents and the host institutions. 00:11:22.000 --> 00:11:23.000 The program's primary benefit is contributing more paid work. 00:11:23.000 --> 00:11:44.000 Experiences, to the field, but is also an opportunity to prepare early career archivists to negotiate for a living wage as they enter the workforce by encouraging them to think about how cost of living and their own expertise should factor into negotiating wages during future career opportunities we also felt that it was a 00:11:44.000 --> 00:11:47.000 valuable opportunity for applicants to gain experience. Designing a budget and collaborating on grant funded projects. 00:11:47.000 --> 00:12:01.000 Conversely, we also really wanted to encourage host institutions, to become more proactive in how they structure future projects that use term labor. 00:12:01.000 --> 00:12:11.000 Frequently early career archivists are hired into term positions on grant funded projects where the budget is already set, and there is no room for negotiation on salary. 00:12:11.000 --> 00:12:18.000 Therefore, reaching the archivists that are in the planning phase on the projects they are proposing, is the best time to actually effect. 00:12:18.000 --> 00:12:20.000 Some of this change in the field, and also it has brought up some kind of interesting conversations. 00:12:20.000 --> 00:12:45.000 One example of this is conversation that came up during the application process, where the formula can sometimes result in the residents potentially making a higher hourly wage than their mentors at the host institution, and this has led to some productive conversations about if there should be a premium placed on the 00:12:45.000 --> 00:13:04.000 hourly wage of term, archivists that you are asking to move, for, you know a short period of time, and who do not have usually get benefits or any additional compensation in the way that the hourly wage of someone who's a permanent employee usually also accounts for and 00:13:04.000 --> 00:13:25.000 it also in general starts conversations that I know we're all having in the field right now about what it means for our field to pay a liverable wage, especially when you consider the level of education and experience and technical knowledge required to do our work, and with that I am going to pass this on 00:13:25.000 --> 00:13:34.000 to Sarah to talk a little bit about the board interactions. 00:13:34.000 --> 00:13:37.000 Yeah, can you hit the next slide? Katherine? There it is. 00:13:37.000 --> 00:13:46.000 So you know many volunteer organizations that are professional associations are are conservative. 00:13:46.000 --> 00:13:52.000 There! There they have bureaucracy, they have turnover. 00:13:52.000 --> 00:14:00.000 They're not any necessarily very nimble, and they want to avoid. 00:14:00.000 --> 00:14:05.000 Doing things that will cause problems down the road. Bankruptcy. 00:14:05.000 --> 00:14:09.000 I've certainly been in professional organizations that went bankrupt, and nobody wants to be that President. Right? 00:14:09.000 --> 00:14:30.000 So at the time that the External committee for the Archivist and residence program was looking at these issues and creating this proposal, I happen to be sitting on the Board of Northwest Archivists as the Alaska State, Rep and and I was just very interested in this issue and 00:14:30.000 --> 00:14:40.000 I was part of the committee, and I was part of the board, and once the exploratory committee had hashed out this basic structure for the new approach, they submitted their report and the recommendations to the Board, and in July of 2019 I and other members of the Board and in July of 2019 I and other members of the board had an opportunity. 00:14:40.000 --> 00:14:57.000 To discuss the proposal and ask the committee questions about the recommendation. 00:14:57.000 --> 00:15:09.000 Before endorsing this new effort, this new way of approaching this problem, the Board had, to be sure that the program was consistent with Nwas Overall Mission. 00:15:09.000 --> 00:15:18.000 We didn't want to jeopardize the so's nonprofit status by establishing a award program that lack the proper structure and oversight. 00:15:18.000 --> 00:15:22.000 And we'll talk about this a little bit more on the next slide. 00:15:22.000 --> 00:15:26.000 But just a few months. So to set the background right. 00:15:26.000 --> 00:15:33.000 So this is pre pandemic. This is, this is 3 lots of things. 00:15:33.000 --> 00:15:44.000 Cast your mind back to many years ago the dinosaur age, before we really started talking about these issues so openly and so broadly. 00:15:44.000 --> 00:16:00.000 The Nwa. Had first really started to consider this when Rachael Woody had asked us to consider, requiring salary ranges with all job postings that went on the Nwa. Job board. 00:16:00.000 --> 00:16:02.000 I mean, that's how long ago we're talking about. 00:16:02.000 --> 00:16:09.000 It wasn't required back then to tell people how much you were. 00:16:09.000 --> 00:16:26.000 Gonna pay them for the work that you were asking. And so Rachel wanted the board to make this a requirement, and there was a lot of discussion about that, and as we've talked about, you know, there's a lot of diversity in the institutions, and organizations that are part of 00:16:26.000 --> 00:16:31.000 Nwa. And at the time the Board didn't think that that was a good idea. 00:16:31.000 --> 00:16:42.000 There was just too broad a range of of organizations, and how things were structured, and we wound up, not approving that proposal. 00:16:42.000 --> 00:17:01.000 At that time. So we had begun to think, though, about how the board could support salary transparency, provide some kind of positive reinforcement for equity initiatives. 00:17:01.000 --> 00:17:02.000 That may be restructured differently. 00:17:02.000 --> 00:17:22.000 So in light of that earlier discussion, the majority of the board discussion about the archivist and residence proposal centered around, ensuring broad access to this new opportunity, both in terms of the diversity of appants, but also the variety of projects that would be considered eligible for funding the board 00:17:22.000 --> 00:17:38.000 encouraged the committee to expand the list of acceptable fields of study beyond the traditional archival programs and to remain open to funding the full range of projects from traditional processing to outreach to digital projects. 00:17:38.000 --> 00:17:51.000 And so because the Exploratory Committee had really looked very carefully and considered many of these issues, and done a lot of this leg work, the Board did unanimously approve. 00:17:51.000 --> 00:17:58.000 The archivist and residence as a pilot program for 2020. 00:17:58.000 --> 00:18:07.000 And next slide. Please. 00:18:07.000 --> 00:18:15.000 So I'll take this one. Thank you, Sarah, to take a moment to talk about responsibility and logistics, of how we've structured the Residency. 00:18:15.000 --> 00:18:25.000 And again this was back in 2019 and going into early 2020 before we have additional compensities to consider. 00:18:25.000 --> 00:18:36.000 But part of the initial work that the exploreatory committee did together was addressing and figuring out, Where does it make sense to? 00:18:36.000 --> 00:18:49.000 How the internship, from a logistics and administrative perspective, where and how does it make sense to do fundraising and bring finances in, and then turn around and make sure that money gets to the residence somehow? 00:18:49.000 --> 00:18:51.000 So there was a lot of research done in those early days, looking at other Residency models. 00:18:51.000 --> 00:19:04.000 In particular, the art Field, an Art Residency is fairly prolific, and so we had some great examples we could draw from there. 00:19:04.000 --> 00:19:17.000 And so throughout this research and part of what centered us, and a lot of the decisions that we made together as the exploratory committee was that out of Nwa as the professional organization out of the host organization, whomever that may be. 00:19:17.000 --> 00:19:26.000 And then the Resident, and whomever that may be, where's the priority? Like? 00:19:26.000 --> 00:19:27.000 Who? Who among that 3 are we prioritizing to base our decisions on? 00:19:27.000 --> 00:19:45.000 And while all are important, what we determined was that the Resident themselves, as based on the program we structured, is the priority person that we wanted to make sure. 00:19:45.000 --> 00:20:06.000 If we're fundraising and giving money to a Residency that that resident themselves, get them gets the maximum amount of money possible, and that the structure and shape of the project for the Residency is determined by the Resident with that host organization in these discussions of where the responsibility 00:20:06.000 --> 00:20:13.000 lies the decisions that we made. We came up with the following sort of division of what that looks like. 00:20:13.000 --> 00:20:21.000 So from the organization perspective for the region northwest archivists, their responsibility is to receive the Residency funds. 00:20:21.000 --> 00:20:29.000 So any fundraising we do for the Residency goes through Nwa, which is an established nonprofit. 00:20:29.000 --> 00:20:34.000 And so there's some nice nonprofits from that that I'll talk about a little later. 00:20:34.000 --> 00:20:35.000 And then the rest of that responsibility is the treasurer of the professional organization. 00:20:35.000 --> 00:20:46.000 They cut 3 checks of predetermined amounts based on the resident application. 00:20:46.000 --> 00:21:03.000 And then the treasurer is required to send out a 1099 at the end of the calendar year, and for those who may not be familiar attend 99 is a irs like a one-sheet thing that you would use if you had a contractor, and it's just saying that 00:21:03.000 --> 00:21:05.000 this person received in this case this year $7,000 from northwest arivists. 00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:12.000 So keeping the responsibility fairly minimal for Nwa. 00:21:12.000 --> 00:21:21.000 We didn't want to put a lot of burden on the professional organization, because everybody who serves is entirely voluntary in their capacity. 00:21:21.000 --> 00:21:27.000 The next up is the actual Residency Committee, which was made up of us from the Exploratory Committee and the chair. 00:21:27.000 --> 00:21:48.000 In this case, which is the role I served in, I would help connect and provide the payment logistics to the treasure based on the new residents, application and the budget that they put together, that Laura covered and making sure that the treasurer knows what their responsibilities are as well as the 00:21:48.000 --> 00:21:55.000 host and resident. So those responsibilities are presented upfront on the Archiviston residence website. 00:21:55.000 --> 00:22:04.000 But I also remind that of remind them of that when their application is chosen so we're very clear on expectations. 00:22:04.000 --> 00:22:19.000 Who needs to do what for the hosts. Responsibility. We needed host organizations to be committed to providing oversight and supervision mentorship and to be available to our residents. 00:22:19.000 --> 00:22:22.000 So there is a portion of our application where we actually ask the host organization to speak to how they intend to supervise monitor and mentor. 00:22:22.000 --> 00:22:47.000 The Resident, and then for the resident responsibility. We asked them to send in monthly updates, mostly just to make sure that everything is going okay, and that they, if they need any sort of additional support which, as you can imagine, definitely came up in 2020, and that they also connect with the Nwa 00:22:47.000 --> 00:23:06.000 Treasurer to send A. W. 9 for tax purposes, and that they are aware that while it is an award, there is still some tax responsibility that they have to account for, we were very intentional in choosing the irs definition of an award which I have in the italics on 00:23:06.000 --> 00:23:19.000 this slide, and when it is an award, as defined by the Irs, it's not subject to the social security or Medicare taxes, but you do still have to pay at least a little bit of taxes on that Awards. 00:23:19.000 --> 00:23:30.000 So again, being very intentional on the choices we're making in setting this up so that again, that resident is prioritized and receives the maximum amount of the word as possible. 00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:35.000 One note is that we do. The organization pays the Resident directly. 00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:52.000 That was also an inattentional decision, as we did our research, we learned that some of the larger academic organizations, for example, if a grant is received that they sometimes the policies to take a percentage of that grant, regardless of the size of it. 00:23:52.000 --> 00:24:03.000 And so we wanted to avoid that and some of the other logistic issues that came up with giving the host organization the award versus giving a person. 00:24:03.000 --> 00:24:08.000 In this case the resident, the award. So that is partially why we made that decision, both between Irs guidelines, but also administrative logistics. 00:24:08.000 --> 00:24:22.000 Again, just prioritizing the Resident and getting that full award amount, and I will pass it on. 00:24:22.000 --> 00:24:29.000 I think I am. Next we're going to take a little bit of a detour to disrupt your day with the pandemic again. 00:24:29.000 --> 00:24:37.000 So our First Residency launched in the spring of 2020. 00:24:37.000 --> 00:24:58.000 Everything was going great, and then, unfortunately, along with the rest of the world, we learned to love the power of remote residencies, which was a thing that prior to this I would not have necessarily advocated for an archival internship, so our first internal applicant was fortunately able to complete their 00:24:58.000 --> 00:25:15.000 Residency. Remotely they had to kind of restructure their project a little bit, but for the most part they were able to achieve everything and then some that they set out to do during that, and we'll get to the residents that we have selected here in a minute so since that point we 00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:23.000 now require all applications to have a contingency plan for what to do. 00:25:23.000 --> 00:25:35.000 If they are. If there is some kind of a disruption that would present prevent them from working on site again, and we're also now open to remote residencies. 00:25:35.000 --> 00:25:58.000 So this ultimately in a lot of ways, resulted in developing again a more flexible program that, okay, the door potentially to more kinds of projects and more app, more resid, more different types of residents and host institutions as well and the way we've decided to structure this is that the 00:25:58.000 --> 00:26:01.000 host institution has to be located within the Nwa. Region. 00:26:01.000 --> 00:26:05.000 So again, Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington. 00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:26.000 But so long as the host institution is within our region, we are willing to allow applicants from anywhere in the United States so long as they have a willing partner somewhere in the Pacific Northwest for that project, and this is kind of an exciting potential because it allows us to connect with more potential 00:26:26.000 --> 00:26:41.000 students, and eliminates the requirements to temporarily move to the site of the host institution, and which is really a barrier for many applicants and early career archivists, especially just for a 3 month. 00:26:41.000 --> 00:26:55.000 Project Oregon, or the the Pacific Northwest, also does not have a lot of library schools, so this is a good opportunity on that front as well can you go to the next slide alright? 00:26:55.000 --> 00:27:08.000 Thanks. The other kind of pandemic effect that we experienced is that it became increasingly obvious that there's been an impact to professional networks. 00:27:08.000 --> 00:27:14.000 As a result of the pandemic, I kind of isolating all of us over the last 3 years. 00:27:14.000 --> 00:27:17.000 So, despite having really strong applicant numbers for the programs. 00:27:17.000 --> 00:27:34.000 First 2 years, in 2022, we ended up having 0 applicants in our first round, so there are probably a few reasons for this, but we believe that most of the costs for the lack of applicants was that the pandemic disrupted those networks between students and early career archivists and the 00:27:34.000 --> 00:27:38.000 professional networks, that of established archivists in the field. 00:27:38.000 --> 00:27:49.000 So without having students on campuses and physically in ourives, it is really difficult for those connections necessary for this kind of a program to develop organically. 00:27:49.000 --> 00:27:56.000 And it's also likely that last year there was a major capacity problem for both potential residents and for hosts institutions. 00:27:56.000 --> 00:28:13.000 We were all stretched then last year, and many of us were still operating isolated in survival mode and with reduced staffing and some severe pandemic fatigue, and the way that we kind of addressed this issue is we don't that the best approach instead 00:28:13.000 --> 00:28:19.000 of doing a second round of call for applications was to reach out to the top 3 applicants. 00:28:19.000 --> 00:28:35.000 Not selected from 2021. They all had very strong project proposals and we would have gladly funded all of them had we had the money in 2021, and so we reached out to them to see if any of them were interested in updating their project and reapplying for the 20 00:28:35.000 --> 00:28:44.000 22 Residency, and this pivot was successful, and we were able to keep the program active without doing a second call for applications. 00:28:44.000 --> 00:28:51.000 But a couple of takeaways from this incident, where that it's really important to have active outreach through multiple channels and to try and find ways to match residents and host institutions more proactively. 00:28:51.000 --> 00:29:04.000 And it also reinforced how fragile and essential those professional networks are for early career archivists. 00:29:04.000 --> 00:29:14.000 So with that we'll go back to the application process. 00:29:14.000 --> 00:29:37.000 Alright, and that's me. So going back into against sort of the specifics of how it operates, the requirements for application, we have requirements for our residents and requirements for host institutions, the applicants for the residents position must be either currently enrolled in a 00:29:37.000 --> 00:29:43.000 Graduate Level program or have graduated within 2 years of the year of application. 00:29:43.000 --> 00:29:47.000 And we set that to march thirty-first, just for the sake of specificity. 00:29:47.000 --> 00:30:14.000 We made the conscious choice not to define the type of graduate program, because we wanted to encourage both traditional students from, you know, library and archives programs as well as you know, disciplinary programs and students from other fields going into ourives in recognition of the fact 00:30:14.000 --> 00:30:22.000 that the master of information, science is not the only way to get into the archival field. 00:30:22.000 --> 00:30:41.000 Of course, Northwest Direct List welcomes diversity in all respects, including, but not limited to age, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, nationality, and personal background, and, as already covered, there's no requirement for the resident to actually reside in the 00:30:41.000 --> 00:30:54.000 Northwest, whether in general or during the program itself, hosts may be any archival organization in the geographic region covered by Northwest Archivist membership. 00:30:54.000 --> 00:31:16.000 Again. That's Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington, and we defined Archival organization as an institution or agency responsible for custody, study, teaching, control, or use of records, archives of personal papers again, to recognize the diversity of organs northwest 00:31:16.000 --> 00:31:18.000 archivist represents, and as already covered it, the opportunity now supports both in person and remote work. 00:31:18.000 --> 00:31:44.000 Models. So beyond the hardline, eligibility, and the general quality of an application things we were looking at included the question of whether the budget was reasonable, and whether it made good use of the available stipends. 00:31:44.000 --> 00:31:50.000 We did not encourage applicants to come in under budgets. 00:31:50.000 --> 00:32:09.000 We wanted to see them use the full stipend to calculate a fair wage for a fair project, and then we also wanted to be sure that the project was reasonable and beneficial. 00:32:09.000 --> 00:32:10.000 So that meant that we wanted to be certain that the project was a match for the applicants. 00:32:10.000 --> 00:32:20.000 Abilities, as well as the resources and support offered by the host. 00:32:20.000 --> 00:32:21.000 Institution, and then we also wanted to be sure that it would be doable in the proposed timeframe. 00:32:21.000 --> 00:32:28.000 So that's sort of how we approach the question of you know, if we're accepting interdisciplinary applicants, how are we? 00:32:28.000 --> 00:32:31.000 Certain that this is going to be a beneficial archival project. 00:32:31.000 --> 00:32:40.000 Well! 00:32:40.000 --> 00:32:44.000 It comes down to what is their existing experience? What is their existing skill, level? 00:32:44.000 --> 00:32:54.000 And what is the level of support they will receive, and what we did center residence in all of this program design. 00:32:54.000 --> 00:32:55.000 We do want this to be beneficial to the host institution as well. 00:32:55.000 --> 00:33:01.000 While it's not meant to be a stopgap major to just get some collections work done and move on. 00:33:01.000 --> 00:33:21.000 We do want to see projects that are going to be valuable both to the Resident in terms of their professional development as well as valuable to the host institution in terms of doing meaningful work within their organization. 00:33:21.000 --> 00:33:43.000 Beyond that, though in the longer range we also want to see how see the host interpretation articulate, how the archivist and residence program can help them work toward that long range goal of eliminating unpaid work and as a concrete example of that and 00:33:43.000 --> 00:34:05.000 we would accept all kinds of different answers. That question, but as a concrete example, the awards we gave out last year went to a host institution that had a paid internship program that had been lost due to budget cuts, and in their application, they specifically stated that one of their reasons 00:34:05.000 --> 00:34:08.000 for applying for the architects and residents. 00:34:08.000 --> 00:34:30.000 Program was that they could have a successful Residency and be able to use that as an example in this leverage in future negotiations with their stakeholders as they attempted to reinstate their own internally funded annual paid internship program so I was really happy to 00:34:30.000 --> 00:34:39.000 see that in their application see such clear plan of action, right? 00:34:39.000 --> 00:34:54.000 Let's see, I think we can move on to the next, which is formalizing. I don't have full notes, but it's going to be Sarah. 00:34:54.000 --> 00:35:04.000 So all you know, all of this work. It's it was hard, and it was successful, and it was well. 00:35:04.000 --> 00:35:13.000 Received across the profession. And yet all this time the committee was basically doing it. 00:35:13.000 --> 00:35:18.000 On our own right for many reasons. Again, let's just blame the pandemic for all things. 00:35:18.000 --> 00:35:30.000 The board had not wanted, had not had the capacity really to take up the question of how to make this permanent. 00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:38.000 The intent. When we started out was for the the pilot to be one year we'd see how it went. 00:35:38.000 --> 00:35:47.000 See how the fundraising went. See if we got any applicants, and if everything look good, we'd consider making it a permanent program. 00:35:47.000 --> 00:35:48.000 Well, you know, things happen, and everyone was stretched very thin. 00:35:48.000 --> 00:35:55.000 I think we've talked about this before, and everyone's felt it. 00:35:55.000 --> 00:36:03.000 I'm sure, and after several years of doing this we are kind of like, hey? 00:36:03.000 --> 00:36:13.000 You know, let's we have. We have to either make this permanent or make a change, because the committee was getting tired. 00:36:13.000 --> 00:36:26.000 People were moving on, and we wanted to have board recognition of the work that had been done to make these. 00:36:26.000 --> 00:36:35.000 These efforts permanent to institutionalize what we'd had, what we had achieved. 00:36:35.000 --> 00:36:42.000 And so in it was just in 2022. 00:36:42.000 --> 00:36:52.000 It was early 22, really, just after we had gone through the application process we started to have internal discussions again with the Board at that time I was still a part of it. 00:36:52.000 --> 00:37:02.000 I think I may have been the only member of the Board who was you know, was on the board this whole time. 00:37:02.000 --> 00:37:15.000 The President rotates every year in Nwa. So it was really a constantly changing cast of characters, and so a proposal was written up for the Board in June of 22. 00:37:15.000 --> 00:37:18.000 In that proposal up for the board in June of 22. 00:37:18.000 --> 00:37:21.000 In that proposal we requested 50% of the total award money to be provided by Nwa. 00:37:21.000 --> 00:37:50.000 With the requirement right that the other half of the money would come from fundraising, either from major donors or from the membership, and that if that money from Nwa was not used in a given year, it would go back into the association costers if we had raised money from donors and the 00:37:50.000 --> 00:37:56.000 membership that could roll over from year to year, but that half of the money that would come from Nwa. 00:37:56.000 --> 00:38:19.000 If we didn't have an applicant that year. It went straight back into the general fund, and then, finally, everyone was very sure that what we didn't wanna do was, you know, make this as we've said, one of these residencies that is, developed in them never looked at again. 00:38:19.000 --> 00:38:24.000 We didn't want it to become just $7,000 every year from now until the end of time, and it became an increasingly inequitable opportunity. 00:38:24.000 --> 00:38:42.000 So every 3 years. The proposal stated this program would be reviewed to make sure that the funding was adequate, that the level of support was what achieved. 00:38:42.000 --> 00:39:00.000 And you know, to look at how things were going, and so that proposal was put before the Board in June of 2022 we didn't meet again until September, but in September we met and we talked about this proposal and I'm not 00:39:00.000 --> 00:39:07.000 going to lie to you. There were. There were people who were very hesitant about providing that level of funding again. 00:39:07.000 --> 00:39:12.000 It's just a regional professional organization. Everybody's a volunteer. 00:39:12.000 --> 00:39:25.000 The money mostly comes from memberships, you know. That's a it was a big chunk of change, and people wanted to make sure that that the oh, that's the organization was protected right? 00:39:25.000 --> 00:39:33.000 So did we have the funds available right now. 00:39:33.000 --> 00:39:38.000 Luckily we did could we accommodate for inflation? You know? 00:39:38.000 --> 00:39:44.000 Maybe not. That remains to be seen. Hopefully, we'll take care of that. 00:39:44.000 --> 00:39:52.000 With the 3 Year Review, but really the other major component of the discussion was around the workload. 00:39:52.000 --> 00:39:57.000 You know everyone is burned out. Everyone is being asked to do too many things. 00:39:57.000 --> 00:40:10.000 How can we have yet another subcommittee that's gonna require beating the bushes for some volunteers and and can we really make this ask of the membership? 00:40:10.000 --> 00:40:17.000 You know we we try not to ask them to do too much. 00:40:17.000 --> 00:40:21.000 I think the fact that the original members had stuck around long enough to see this thing to fruition, and had really been passionate about it. 00:40:21.000 --> 00:40:35.000 Made a huge impression on the board that this was something that many people in the profession are are very passionate about. 00:40:35.000 --> 00:40:44.000 They're very interested in getting involved. They they have been, maybe the on the wrong end of a poorly supported poorly funded residency. 00:40:44.000 --> 00:40:56.000 Maybe they did a lot of, you know, unpaid internships in the course of their early career and they want to give back. 00:40:56.000 --> 00:41:19.000 And I think that it's it's not unreasonable to ask people to do a little bit now that they're establishing their career to help out, and, as we have seen, at least for now, members have been willing to step up and fill this committee 00:41:19.000 --> 00:41:24.000 and again with the 3 Year Review requirement. If we're not getting the volunteers and we're struggling to make the program function, we can look at it that time. 00:41:24.000 --> 00:41:35.000 My hope is that that will not, that won't be a factor. 00:41:35.000 --> 00:41:45.000 So, having considered those things we did approve to make the program permanent part of Nwea. 00:41:45.000 --> 00:41:56.000 And, in fact, just yesterday I received word that the new policies and procedures manual for Nwa, which includes the archivist and residence program, has been posted and is live on the end of a web site. 00:41:56.000 --> 00:42:08.000 If anyone wants to go check it out. So we have now officially made the big time. 00:42:08.000 --> 00:42:15.000 So next slide. 00:42:15.000 --> 00:42:18.000 So I'll step in now and talk about fundraising. 00:42:18.000 --> 00:42:37.000 And the question how to pay for it, because, of course, that was like one of the big questions that we needed to address early on when we first launched the pilot program, and then again, when we were very much encouraging and ushering the program to become permanent and wa the whole fundraising question was revisited 00:42:37.000 --> 00:42:44.000 yet again. So we're going to take a little timeout and talk about how we funded it, fundraising the strategy to put behind it. 00:42:44.000 --> 00:42:54.000 First of all, part of the reason. When I first thought of the idea of I would really love to support a paid internship, when and where. 00:42:54.000 --> 00:43:13.000 How does it make sense? How can I help create it? And Nwa, as a professional organization, was the first idea that came to mind because it keeps it local for me, and in how I conduct my business a priority for our the decisions, I make is how can I support my local ecosystem and make 00:43:13.000 --> 00:43:16.000 it healthier for everyone. So me, based in Oregon and as an Nwa. 00:43:16.000 --> 00:43:23.000 Member, my priority was to try and partner with Nwa. 00:43:23.000 --> 00:43:32.000 If they were interested and of course, the benefit of partnering with a professional organization is that for the most part they should be set up as a nonprofit. 00:43:32.000 --> 00:43:43.000 That's the case for Nwa and as a nonprofit, that means that fundraising is a little easier in the sense that we can encourage and solicit membership donations. 00:43:43.000 --> 00:43:54.000 Those are tax, deductible, similar. We are also soliciting corporate sponsorships, which I'll get into more detail and in a moment those are tax deductible. 00:43:54.000 --> 00:44:03.000 And so having that nonprofit piece, both in terms of providing some structure and in an organization that has some local reads. 00:44:03.000 --> 00:44:05.000 But also that it's a 501 c. 3. 00:44:05.000 --> 00:44:13.000 And there's reasons as to why it would be beneficial to make a donation to a nonprofit organization. 00:44:13.000 --> 00:44:18.000 So that was the choice to partner with Nwa. On this idea. 00:44:18.000 --> 00:44:26.000 One of the first ideas for fundraising that we pursued has an exploratory committee was corporate sponsorships for our organization, as with many regional organizations. 00:44:26.000 --> 00:44:34.000 Whenever we host a conference, there's usually several corporate sponsors that help to sponsor various aspects of that conference to help subsidize the cost. 00:44:34.000 --> 00:44:42.000 So the concept of corporate sponsorships and that partnership in this case with Nwa was not a stranger. 00:44:42.000 --> 00:44:58.000 Unique concept. And so we were able to translate that fairly well when we started approaching different corporate sponsors and talking about the relationship that already exists between the regional organization and the corporation. 00:44:58.000 --> 00:45:08.000 And also talking about the importance of paid internships and supporting a healthy profession that was one of the main. 00:45:08.000 --> 00:45:09.000 It's the main impetus of the program. 00:45:09.000 --> 00:45:15.000 But also we wanted to make sure that that message was clear to our corporate sponsors. 00:45:15.000 --> 00:45:34.000 So it was an invitation also for them to join us in advocating for a healthier profession one where all of us and all of our work is valued, which ended up being very appealing to corporate sponsors not only for like that marketing brand awareness perspective as being a sponsor for 00:45:34.000 --> 00:45:37.000 the program, but also because they're doing a good thing. 00:45:37.000 --> 00:45:42.000 It's not just a conference sponsorship which those are great. 00:45:42.000 --> 00:45:58.000 We appreciate them, but to be able to participate in sponsoring something as unique and as exciting as a paid residency was very appealing for our corporate sponsors, and I'm happy to say, for all of the years that we have worked with our corporate sponsors quite a few of them. 00:45:58.000 --> 00:45:59.000 Have been consistent year to year. Sponsors of the program and we've been able to make up at least 50%. 00:45:59.000 --> 00:46:16.000 Usually more of that Total Redidency Fund with those corporate donations which in the earlier years, while the Residency was housed under N-a. 00:46:16.000 --> 00:46:21.000 We did not receive directly any N-wa. Budget funds until this last year, when it became in a permanent program. 00:46:21.000 --> 00:46:34.000 So we were in heavy-duty. Fundraising mode, for beyond just the pilot year, and what ended up being 3 to 4 years. 00:46:34.000 --> 00:46:38.000 So we did get pretty good at it. Is the plus side of that. 00:46:38.000 --> 00:46:43.000 In addition to corporate sponsorships. We also asked membership for donations. 00:46:43.000 --> 00:46:50.000 The Nwa. Membership fee is fairly low, especially compared to other professional organization fees. 00:46:50.000 --> 00:47:04.000 And so we wanted to give membership an opportunity to also join us on this Residency journey and give them an opportunity to support that with their donations as well, and as a nonprofit organization, we're a little bit of a tax incentive. 00:47:04.000 --> 00:47:14.000 We have gotten great membership donations, many ranging from $5 to a couple $100 every year. 00:47:14.000 --> 00:47:21.000 And it's been a small but I think very powerful percentage of donations from our membership showing their support. 00:47:21.000 --> 00:47:24.000 And then we've gotten creative, especially over the last couple of years. 00:47:24.000 --> 00:47:31.000 I've hosted a couple of webinars, and this next week, at our Endwa Conference we'll be sponsoring a workshop. 00:47:31.000 --> 00:47:41.000 That's pay what you can donation. And so anybody who hads they don't have to pay anything, but if they do, those are all donations towards the Arivist and residence fund. 00:47:41.000 --> 00:47:51.000 So again, you're bringing in money and just helping to keep us cash-positive, and I have a little bit of a nest egg for the finances in the Residency, and then, as of this year, being a permanent program. 00:47:51.000 --> 00:47:57.000 Now under the Nwa. Organization, we will have our own budget line item, and a 50% match of the funds that we raise each year. 00:47:57.000 --> 00:48:10.000 So we are moving into very solid financial territory in terms of the Residency. 00:48:10.000 --> 00:48:12.000 We will continue to do fundraising because of course, we need to make up that 50%. 00:48:12.000 --> 00:48:32.000 But fortunately with our strong and loyal corporate sponsorships and our membership, that really strongly believes in the power of paid residencies, we're in pretty good financial shape, and from my perspective, while it was a challenge to be solved it wasn't 00:48:32.000 --> 00:48:43.000 insurmountable, so I don't want the the or the logistic of needing to raise funds for your residency to be a stopper, because it's absolutely possible. 00:48:43.000 --> 00:48:51.000 And it was easier than I thought. 00:48:51.000 --> 00:49:05.000 So I'll do a quick summary of residencies just to give you an idea of the type of projects we've gotten, and to sprinkle in a couple anecdotes of challenges that popped up that we were able to solve for our first resident was Abby maynard 00:49:05.000 --> 00:49:13.000 and she was based at the labor Arives of Washington, and that's under the auspices of the University of Washington. 00:49:13.000 --> 00:49:27.000 Libraries, and Abby's project was to put together a processing plan for one of the labor advocacy collections that they have, and as part of the enterprise of that doing updates to the Ead. 00:49:27.000 --> 00:49:36.000 Record for that collection. Originally this Residency was envisioned as a in-person Residency back before pandemic times, and of course, right when the Residency was supposed to start for Abby. 00:49:36.000 --> 00:49:58.000 That's when the pandemic hit. It was a very interesting, like weird few months that everybody never knows, but we were able to work with Adby and her host, Supervisor to eventually adjust the Residency to where it could be performed remotely in tandem with staff are 00:49:58.000 --> 00:50:05.000 volunteers that could access different parts of the rich collection as and when Abby needed them. 00:50:05.000 --> 00:50:27.000 So, while it was a Residency, very much meant to be in person, it was also able to be translated into just as influential and is supported to Abby's experience as possible while still benefiting in this case the labor Archives at Udub our next resident was Valeria Davila 00:50:27.000 --> 00:50:38.000 and she was working with the moving image of preservation of Puget Sound or me Pops, as we refer to them fondly and for Valeria's application. 00:50:38.000 --> 00:50:46.000 It was very strong. She has such a great varied experience, especially in audio visual media type collections that know about this application. 00:50:46.000 --> 00:50:57.000 While it was strong we felt that Valeria's experience in education actually exceeded the amount that they had proposed to pay her. 00:50:57.000 --> 00:51:07.000 So in this case, we actually went back to the Valeria and her host institution and asked them to rescope the project so that they could pay Valeria more. 00:51:07.000 --> 00:51:11.000 And so in this case, it's a nice emphasis of for us. 00:51:11.000 --> 00:51:13.000 It doesn't necessarily matter the priority is not to try and get as much as we can out of the Resident at the expense of the Resident. 00:51:13.000 --> 00:51:24.000 Our priority is that our resident has a good experience, and that they're paid appropriately. 00:51:24.000 --> 00:51:34.000 So in this case it was a great example. We were able to work with the Host institution, who was thrilled to pay Valeria more and be able to scope down the project appropriately. 00:51:34.000 --> 00:51:38.000 And so it was a great experience for all of us being able to navigate that together. 00:51:38.000 --> 00:52:02.000 Her project was working with closed captioning, doing research on open source tools to try and improve auto captioning and putting together a guideeline for organizations to use and replicate in their own transcript and accessibility work and our most recent resident Sarah pettinger did her 00:52:02.000 --> 00:52:08.000 residency at Yellowstone National Park, Sarah had worked to their previously under a different internship, and for this Residency she constructed it from the outset, has a remote residency. 00:52:08.000 --> 00:52:19.000 She was able to use her past knowledge of being there in person, and be able to perform collection, research and collection work remotely from where she was based. 00:52:19.000 --> 00:52:37.000 Elsewhere. So this was an excellent example of Residency from the inception being designed to be remote, meaning that Sarah could continue living out of state in this case, where she was, while still working with an Nwa. 00:52:37.000 --> 00:52:46.000 Membership state in Montana. I'm happy to say we've just recently selected our next applicant, and they will be announced at the Nwa. 00:52:46.000 --> 00:52:55.000 Conference next week. 00:52:55.000 --> 00:52:58.000 So kind of wrapping up, now bringing us, bringing us home. 00:52:58.000 --> 00:52:59.000 We've already touched on many of the challenges that we faced in developing this program and keeping it alive. 00:52:59.000 --> 00:53:12.000 And developing this program and keeping it alive. And I don't think this impact of the pandemic can be overstated. 00:53:12.000 --> 00:53:17.000 We actually built pandemic response. Now into the application. 00:53:17.000 --> 00:53:22.000 You know you have. The host has to be able to tell us what the plan is. 00:53:22.000 --> 00:53:26.000 If no one can show up for what they're supposed to do. 00:53:26.000 --> 00:53:50.000 Every thing about this program was impacted in some way or other, by the pandemic, and not only in how we approached it, and how we asked people to write their applications, but just in institutional capacity. 00:53:50.000 --> 00:53:52.000 You know. I think everybody feels burned out. I think we all expended our adrenaline. 00:53:52.000 --> 00:54:08.000 Maybe in the first year, first couple of months, I mean, some people last is a little bit longer, but at some point everybody just kind of fell over on their face for at least a little while, and said, I can't I can't do this anymore. 00:54:08.000 --> 00:54:14.000 I'm not getting out of bed, and so they've been very hesitant to commit themselves right to new things. 00:54:14.000 --> 00:54:19.000 New new processes, new applications like, what is this thing? 00:54:19.000 --> 00:54:21.000 I I can't do it. 00:54:21.000 --> 00:54:30.000 But even without the pandemic, I think a lot of institutions just don't feel like they have the capacity to take this on. 00:54:30.000 --> 00:54:35.000 This is not a fill in the blanks. 00:54:35.000 --> 00:55:05.000 Sort of application. This is a collaborative process between a resident and a host to get together to fill out the application collaboratively, to develop a project collaboratively, and the application asks the host institution basically to tailor everything about this process to a single individual this even if you invest in this you can't 00:55:08.000 --> 00:55:10.000 cut and paste from this one to next year's application. 00:55:10.000 --> 00:55:30.000 You know, this is a unique project for a single person that the host institution needs to invest this time and effort into, and part of the application asks, What are you as the host institution going to do to help this Resident succeed? 00:55:30.000 --> 00:55:37.000 You know I think it's pretty obvious from the application that we are centering the resid we are not centering the institution. 00:55:37.000 --> 00:55:58.000 So you need to support this person. You need to convince us that you understand what it takes to host a resident to train them to give them all the resources they need to be around when they have questions and how are you going to do that and many institutions they don't have the time for that 00:55:58.000 --> 00:56:07.000 one of the other questions. The application asked is, How is this going to further your addity initiatives? 00:56:07.000 --> 00:56:09.000 What are you doing, and how are you gonna take this opportunity? 00:56:09.000 --> 00:56:12.000 If if we give you this money, if you have this resident, how are you? 00:56:12.000 --> 00:56:19.000 Gonna try to parlay this into something else down the road. 00:56:19.000 --> 00:56:24.000 In these are big questions I mean, you can't just crank this thing out overnight. 00:56:24.000 --> 00:56:26.000 So in in many institutions, you know, there are like Grant writing bigger institutions. 00:56:26.000 --> 00:56:35.000 There are Grant writing like shops right? You get somebody to write your grant. 00:56:35.000 --> 00:56:40.000 You fill it in, you can't really do that with this application. 00:56:40.000 --> 00:56:49.000 There's, I think that helps a little bit with the inequity between large and small institutions. 00:56:49.000 --> 00:56:59.000 You know many large institutions that have agreed workflow people are comfortable writing grants they've done it before they have time to do it. 00:56:59.000 --> 00:57:02.000 Small institutions, especially single-person shops. You know. 00:57:02.000 --> 00:57:12.000 You don't have all that support but in some ways we've tried to level the playing field a little bit by making it an application that can't be just spit out by a grants professional somewhere. 00:57:12.000 --> 00:57:28.000 But we try not to perpetuate right this inequity that we see in the profession between large and small institutions. It's still a challenge. 00:57:28.000 --> 00:57:36.000 We're still trying to address that's what we're trying to do. We're going to give you a little bit of a little bit of that. 00:57:36.000 --> 00:57:41.000 We're going to recent grads, current students or the career professionals find a host. 00:57:41.000 --> 00:57:52.000 How do we help a host find a good fit in an early career, or, you know, emerging professional, we send this application announcement out to library schools. 00:57:52.000 --> 00:58:00.000 We send it out to all kinds of cultural heritage listservs for people who maybe aren't in Nwa. 00:58:00.000 --> 00:58:15.000 We tried it. We tried to advertise it as probably as possible, but I know I've certainly received feedback outside of the application process. 00:58:15.000 --> 00:58:21.000 I'm sure we all have where someone says, Oh, I love this! 00:58:21.000 --> 00:58:26.000 But how do I find somebody to help me? How do I find somebody to pair up with? 00:58:26.000 --> 00:58:30.000 And so this is something we continue to think about. And how can we? 00:58:30.000 --> 00:58:36.000 How can we address this going forward? And finally, we have. 00:58:36.000 --> 00:58:49.000 We have a new challenge. It's it's a happy coincidence that equity initiatives have really become much more. 00:58:49.000 --> 00:59:02.000 Widely applied. People are very interested in in justice and diversity, and so there are just more paid internships and residencies there now than when we started. 00:59:02.000 --> 00:59:10.000 And we've got some competition out there. So actually, we're okay with that, we love that. 00:59:10.000 --> 00:59:14.000 That's great! That's actually what we were hoping to do. 00:59:14.000 --> 00:59:24.000 So yeah, now we'll talk about our successes a little bit. 00:59:24.000 --> 00:59:28.000 Alright. Yeah. 00:59:28.000 --> 00:59:34.000 In terms of our successes. Like she said. We're very excited to have competition. 00:59:34.000 --> 00:59:53.000 I see the archivist in residence program as part of a larger shift in our profession, and I think it's also a larger shift that we're seeing in society where people are becoming collectively more aware and more vocal about the value of our labor and in our specific case the value 00:59:53.000 --> 01:00:08.000 of archivists later. And where it's becoming sort of more of an expectation and more of a normal reality to get, or at least expect, fair compensation for the work you do. 01:00:08.000 --> 01:00:09.000 I was commenting to my fellow panelists. 01:00:09.000 --> 01:00:29.000 We met last week, that when I was in graduate school just a decade ago, all the talk was about advocating for archives and all of that discussion was centered on the value of the collections, and it's only been recent years that we've gone hey? 01:00:29.000 --> 01:00:40.000 Wait a minute. We need to. We need to advocate for architects as well, and not just sacrifice ourselves on the altar of collections. 01:00:40.000 --> 01:00:54.000 Care, and really the point in all of this is just to set the stage for institutions to launch their own paid internships, step the stage for our own competition to hopefully knock us out of business, eventually. 01:00:54.000 --> 01:00:58.000 And I'd say we really do. 01:00:58.000 --> 01:01:05.000 We've done something with us when we saw it get adopted and adapted by other regional organizations. 01:01:05.000 --> 01:01:08.000 The first one was the Society of Southwest Archivists. 01:01:08.000 --> 01:01:11.000 They have their own archivist in residence program . 01:01:11.000 --> 01:01:37.000 Of southwest architivists covers the region, including Arizona, Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas, and the sort of descriptive text of their program is extremely similar to what we established in Northwest archivists they 01:01:37.000 --> 01:01:42.000 did make few changes to eligibility. So there's a few specifics that do differ. 01:01:42.000 --> 01:01:55.000 And then, more recently, the Society of Rocky Mountain Archivists launched their own pilot project for the Archives fellowship, and I believe that just launched this year as a pilot project. 01:01:55.000 --> 01:02:00.000 Srma. Covers Colorado and Wyoming. 01:02:00.000 --> 01:02:07.000 They did make a few bigger changes, including the fact that they do allow undergraduate applicants. 01:02:07.000 --> 01:02:29.000 And I was interested to find out from their website that their archives fellowship is actually operated by their diversity and Inclusion Committee, because for them it's explicitly a tool that they're using to increase equity, not only for new professionals in general but specifically 01:02:29.000 --> 01:02:37.000 for individuals, from traditionally marginalized or underrepresented communities which I think it's just a fantastic. 01:02:37.000 --> 01:02:42.000 Take on this whole thing. That's really what I had. There. 01:02:42.000 --> 01:02:50.000 I'll pass it off to Rachel to talk about how such a regional program could get started. 01:02:50.000 --> 01:02:55.000 Thank you, Catherine, and just want to plug. You know we have our residency. 01:02:55.000 --> 01:03:02.000 A couple, other professional organizations have followed suit, and so Merrick won't you join us? 01:03:02.000 --> 01:03:08.000 And we partnered with both of those regions. We happily shared our documentation so honestly. 01:03:08.000 --> 01:03:10.000 If anybody at Merik is interested in starting like we would be happy to help support you with that. 01:03:10.000 --> 01:03:19.000 So please feel free to copy our stuff, how to get started. 01:03:19.000 --> 01:03:40.000 First, I recommend exploring where the potential internship or residency can be housed, whether that is your home institution, which is totally an option, or if you want to approach your regional organisation, to get a residency, or fellowship started also identify potential funding sources fundraising helps but I 01:03:40.000 --> 01:03:45.000 do want to advocate that it should eventually be supported by a permanent budget line. 01:03:45.000 --> 01:03:48.000 Whether that is 100% funded which would be awesome by a budget line, great or partially, as with N. 01:03:48.000 --> 01:03:56.000 To be way, maybe a 50 50 match like you can really get creative here. 01:03:56.000 --> 01:04:12.000 But it is going to be a partnership, a fun raising, and then having that budget to support you. 01:04:12.000 --> 01:04:14.000 School mindset of internships happen in the summer, which especially with pandemic days, I feel like it doesn't matter when anymore. 01:04:14.000 --> 01:04:25.000 So we've completely, at least from my mindset, like it doesn't have to be in the summer. 01:04:25.000 --> 01:04:32.000 It can be any time that year really, it's up to you, and how you want to build it. 01:04:32.000 --> 01:04:39.000 We also recommend spending some time on crafting the criteria and eligibility, for who can apply as an intern? 01:04:39.000 --> 01:05:00.000 It was a great discussion we had as an exploratory committee, and because we came with different perspectives and different backgrounds I felt like we really benefited and created as open as possible eligibility and criteria to encourage really anybody to help come into the profession and contribute to our field and then 01:05:00.000 --> 01:05:13.000 I recommend thinking of a couple of discrete projects, especially if you're thinking of housing an internship at your own organisation, coming up with a couple ideas of projects that would be great to pair with an intern or rather resident. 01:05:13.000 --> 01:05:18.000 I do recommend. Of course, we center the Resident and their experience. 01:05:18.000 --> 01:05:19.000 So I recommend you be flexible in the projects you're thinking about, and how they may benefit a new professional. 01:05:19.000 --> 01:05:42.000 And then, when you do find potential residents or interns, we do recommend that you work with them collaboratively to make sure that yes, the host organization benefits, but really also that the new professional benefits, because really that's what internships are all about. 01:05:42.000 --> 01:05:48.000 I do have a resource I want to point out I did a webinar on how to create paid internships so it's a whole hour of how to go about creating it, including fundraising. 01:05:48.000 --> 01:05:57.000 So you can check it out on Youtube later. If you want some more step-by-step guidelines, there. 01:05:57.000 --> 01:06:02.000 But please feel free to take a look at the Northwest Archivist, Archivist and residents website. 01:06:02.000 --> 01:06:20.000 Feel free to copy that. Take a look at the webinar, reach out if you have any questions, because, quite honestly, we are all very happy to support and create even more competition for our paid residents. 01:06:20.000 --> 01:06:27.000 Alright! Thank you for attending, and it is now 12. 01:06:27.000 --> 01:06:34.000 Oh, 6. We have until 1220. So we're gonna open it up, for I haven't had chance to look at the chat or the yet. 01:06:34.000 --> 01:06:38.000 So I'm gonna take a second to do that. 01:06:38.000 --> 01:06:51.000 Yeah, we have 1 one question so far in the. And I saw at the beginning that the Conference organizers have asked us to put questions in the rather than in the chat. 01:06:51.000 --> 01:06:58.000 So I'll just go ahead and read this one out, and then, whichever of the panelists wants to to take it, please jump in. 01:06:58.000 --> 01:07:06.000 Can you speak a little bit about the involvement? If any, with the institutions where students were current students? 01:07:06.000 --> 01:07:10.000 I know that there are some grad programs that require internships of their degree candidates, but also don't allow paid internships to count for course, credit or fulfill that requirement. 01:07:10.000 --> 01:07:23.000 Separate of credit, to graduate, despite all the equity reasons, we, as the profession, have highlighted. 01:07:23.000 --> 01:07:26.000 So anyone wanna take a pass it that one? 01:07:26.000 --> 01:07:32.000 I mean I can. I can speak. I mean this they're excluded from this, based on a bureaucratic decision and part of our approach to this, or at least for that specific requirement. 01:07:32.000 --> 01:07:49.000 I think the answer to that is to start pushing back on those institutions about why they student can't be compensated for their labor while they're actively working in the field. 01:07:49.000 --> 01:07:52.000 If the goal is to gain professional experience and their opportunities for them to get paid. 01:07:52.000 --> 01:08:01.000 The reality. Is that right? Now, the way those programs are set up, you have to pay to do work. 01:08:01.000 --> 01:08:04.000 And that's that that's inequitable. 01:08:04.000 --> 01:08:11.000 On a lot of fronts. 01:08:11.000 --> 01:08:12.000 Uhhuh. 01:08:12.000 --> 01:08:15.000 A lot of institutions have started to reverse or remove. 01:08:15.000 --> 01:08:16.000 Okay. 01:08:16.000 --> 01:08:21.000 That can't be paid for credit, situation, because there's there's really no actual like Irs, reason or otherwise why that needs to exist. So yeah, I echo. 01:08:21.000 --> 01:08:33.000 Laura's pushback on that, because it is Bullshit. 01:08:33.000 --> 01:08:35.000 And I'll just. I'll just highlight one of the things I saw scroll by in the chat where it looks like. 01:08:35.000 --> 01:09:01.000 Eric is very excited, perhaps, to join our our Mary band, and but it, you know, it was noted that there really is this potential for burnout, and I think you know all of us having been on the committee for so many years during the pandemic when I think it was me I me 01:09:01.000 --> 01:09:04.000 personally, I'll just speak for myself. It was, you know, is really challenging. 01:09:04.000 --> 01:09:12.000 Some days to like pretend to be an adult. I think you know it's it is one of those. 01:09:12.000 --> 01:09:16.000 It's not like one of those committees where you're rewriting the bylaws, you know, or like redoing the website and arguing over the photos. 01:09:16.000 --> 01:09:25.000 This is one where I feel like people really, really get a lot back for what they put in. 01:09:25.000 --> 01:09:39.000 And I know I have felt so satisfied and so proud of being part of this group, that honestly, I might do it forever. 01:09:39.000 --> 01:10:05.000 They might have to kick me off at some point so hopefully, this would be an option for people to really experience a positive volunteer professional organization, opportunity and and take what they learn, and all the great discussions that happen around this program and do even more outside of the professional organization I really feel 01:10:05.000 --> 01:10:11.000 like this is one of those kinds of opportunities so hopefully, it's something that doesn't burn out. 01:10:11.000 --> 01:10:13.000 But actually restores. 01:10:13.000 --> 01:10:17.000 I, kind of echoing what you said. I stepped down last year because I had a couple of pretty major projects. 01:10:17.000 --> 01:10:35.000 At work, and I already really miss it, and if there's space next year I might be back, because it's just such a rewarding project to be part of and I have so much pride when I talk about it, and I listen I don't know if we don't get more questions that come 01:10:35.000 --> 01:10:47.000 in a thing that I would be interested in is to hear why each of you decided to join in on this this project, but I know for me I was someone who took a bit of a non-traditional path to getting into archives and I came into library. 01:10:47.000 --> 01:11:07.000 School with a lot of professional experience already, and it it was really hard to go back to being treated like someone who was an 18 year old who didn't know what they were doing. 01:11:07.000 --> 01:11:26.000 And one thing that I think is really important that I really value in this is that we are presenting this as an opportunity for a an experienced professional with graduate level education to come into a place and do graduate level work and be recognized for that level of work and the's something that I think a lot of 01:11:26.000 --> 01:11:29.000 the way internships are structured doesn't really successfully do. 01:11:29.000 --> 01:11:37.000 And so I am really proud of that. That facet of the project. 01:11:37.000 --> 01:11:42.000 Oh, no! I just wanna jump in to say like I've been saying like, Oh, I'm so tired! 01:11:42.000 --> 01:11:58.000 On this, and like I also stepped down last year, partly because I moved to upstate New York so you know, I'm a really good and yeah, I kind of dragged U 3 into this. 01:11:58.000 --> 01:12:00.000 It's like, Hey, do you want to present this to Eric? 01:12:00.000 --> 01:12:03.000 Do you want to try to get married to this? And so I don't know. 01:12:03.000 --> 01:12:13.000 I might I might be interested in this like helping start it up over here, but I guess I was in response to that. 01:12:13.000 --> 01:12:16.000 Why why join? Join like? Why get involved in this? At the time? 01:12:16.000 --> 01:12:25.000 I responded and came. Remember the exploratory committee. 01:12:25.000 --> 01:12:37.000 I was at the Cm. Russell Museum in Great Falls, Montana, and sort of high angle on it was the difficulty in getting paid. 01:12:37.000 --> 01:12:58.000 Internships, and getting paid internships to work in Montana, and it was kind of a happy coincidence that this said the program ended up being so supportive of remote operating as a so-called for that because institutions small institutions and more remote areas can have 01:12:58.000 --> 01:13:05.000 a really hard time matching up with residents, even if there are residents that need an internship and just an example. 01:13:05.000 --> 01:13:14.000 The Yellowstone National Archives. One of the challenges they were were running up against is that there's a severe housing crisis, and gardener. 01:13:14.000 --> 01:13:15.000 So even if the Resident could afford to move out there for the summer, there might not be a house for them to live in. 01:13:15.000 --> 01:13:28.000 So, anyway, it was. It was good to get to address some of those challenges. Pass it off to anybody else who wants to speak to that. 01:13:28.000 --> 01:13:35.000 Sarah, would you like to before? I hop in? Okay for me? 01:13:35.000 --> 01:13:36.000 I think my I have always been very passionate about being paid. 01:13:36.000 --> 01:13:54.000 Our worth, and the advocacy for that back in my traditionally employed days I was in positions where that was always an issue, and so I started developing strategies and resources early on, I guess. 01:13:54.000 --> 01:14:09.000 But for me launching my business, actually having to figure out how to calculate my worst, so that I could charge it as a consultant was like, Ok, there's nothing that exists out there in terms of an equation that can help me so like let's built this. 01:14:09.000 --> 01:14:19.000 And what really became clear through these discussions and through my in bin, paid our worth and standing in our value is that it starts with the internships. 01:14:19.000 --> 01:14:33.000 If we are not paying our new professionals, if we are not valuing them literally, then it becomes so much harder for us to make the argument that we ourselves should be paid our worth as professionals. 01:14:33.000 --> 01:14:45.000 So for me it really became a like. This is the foundational issue that we can actually address right now and make some changes as people who can be in a committee and make those decisions. 01:14:45.000 --> 01:14:54.000 But also ask people who are in these now organizations that can make change both in the organization as well as with the professional organization. 01:14:54.000 --> 01:15:02.000 So that's been really gratifying to see this sense of our value in general for internships. 01:15:02.000 --> 01:15:08.000 Yes, but also for ourselves. So it's been such a pleasure working with the group, figuring that out. 01:15:08.000 --> 01:15:19.000 I did want to speak a little bit to capacity. I know in our first year, as we were researching and figuring this all out, it did take time for us to do that, but once we got like the fundraising email templates created. 01:15:19.000 --> 01:15:27.000 Once we got the application created. Perhaps I think maybe after that it was maybe 10 h a year of our time. 01:15:27.000 --> 01:15:30.000 Does that sound right? I'm not good with time. Okay? 01:15:30.000 --> 01:15:36.000 So after the first year, Myeric, once you get it set up, and you can definitely still our templates. 01:15:36.000 --> 01:15:40.000 It's while it is a big program. It's an important program. 01:15:40.000 --> 01:15:45.000 You can put structure in place where it doesn't take a lot of healthy lifting. 01:15:45.000 --> 01:15:46.000 I kind of going off of what you mentioned, Rachel, about needing to. 01:15:46.000 --> 01:15:52.000 Argue and calculate, for your work as a consultant. 01:15:52.000 --> 01:15:57.000 I currently work at an institution where we have been a unionized museum since 1991. 01:15:57.000 --> 01:16:23.000 So we have a a fairly strong history and relationship, sometimes for better or worse, as an institution of advocating for our labor, and having those discussions about how inflation should or should not factor in to compensation, and negotiating, having having those conversations internally a lot more than a lot of other places 01:16:23.000 --> 01:16:39.000 do, and so that that really helped me in the way I was starting to think about this program and the value of those conversations that a lot of other institutions are now kind of starting to talk about getting unionized or having stronger support for their staff. 01:16:39.000 --> 01:16:57.000 But another question that I know we talked about during planning was the 2 of you on the board are consultants, and I you know I don't want to like, turn this into promoting your consultant businesses, but I do think it's an important point of do you see a place. 01:16:57.000 --> 01:17:08.000 For consultants, as more and more people are going that route in ethical labor practices in the archival field. 01:17:08.000 --> 01:17:15.000 That is a good question, Katherine. Did you want to hop in first? 01:17:15.000 --> 01:17:18.000 I mean, I'm not sure I'm still trying to form my opinion on that. 01:17:18.000 --> 01:17:20.000 Honestly, even though I'm a go ahead. 01:17:20.000 --> 01:17:35.000 Okay, yes. So it's been interesting in my work with this, and in a couple of other spaces, for example, I was part of Saas Advocacy committee for a few years. 01:17:35.000 --> 01:17:42.000 So as I become more and more out there, people are aware of my passion and information for this area. 01:17:42.000 --> 01:17:52.000 I have been asked to consult with organizations, to craft, physician descriptions, and what the appropriate compensation should be so it is fascinating. 01:17:52.000 --> 01:18:04.000 I never expected to be brought in as a concerultant, but for telling people how much they should pay their staff, which I love because that's part of the advocacy piece. 01:18:04.000 --> 01:18:17.000 So that's been really gratifying and sort of a pleasant surprise in my work with clients, because I tend to work with a lot of like emerging collection programs, or like reviving collection programs. 01:18:17.000 --> 01:18:21.000 Part of that work is like building staff capacity. What do you need? There? 01:18:21.000 --> 01:18:28.000 And so I always build in as part of my recommendations and reports, a discussion of resources. 01:18:28.000 --> 01:18:29.000 What it takes to run a collections program and meet the goals. 01:18:29.000 --> 01:18:39.000 They say they want to meet, and how much that is going to cost or how much it should cost, because you're paying for per professionals right? 01:18:39.000 --> 01:18:46.000 So yeah. Now that you asked that question, Laura, I realize I sort of bring that with me. 01:18:46.000 --> 01:18:58.000 So regardless of the Project type, there will always be a little bit of a discussion on like, make sure you're paying your staff appropriately. 01:18:58.000 --> 01:19:11.000 What are the questions we got, which are sort of amusing, I have found I would love to hear your all's taste is the worry about what if the Resident is a dud like? What if they don't show up and do their work? 01:19:11.000 --> 01:19:16.000 Or what if it's like a disappointing? 01:19:16.000 --> 01:19:38.000 I feel like we self select for that by making the application, not something you can just fill in in an hour someone who is willing to go out and find a partner, host, institution and propose a unique to them, project isn't just filling out forms capacity 'cause their mom told them. They needed something to do for the summer these are people who 01:19:38.000 --> 01:19:46.000 are very excited to enter this field and have definite goals of what they want to achieve, and so I mean, there's always life happens. 01:19:46.000 --> 01:19:51.000 Things happen. There's always that inevitability when you're unappro like this, that something is going to prevent that internship from happening. 01:19:51.000 --> 01:20:04.000 But thus far we haven't. And if we if that happens, it happens, you know, you just roll the money into the next year, and it's okay. 01:20:04.000 --> 01:20:16.000 Well as you can see, the 4 of us could probably talk about this all afternoon, and yet by my clock I see that it is 8 20 Alaska, 2 which means it's 1220. 01:20:16.000 --> 01:20:20.000 Maritime, which I think right means, Katherine, that. 01:20:20.000 --> 01:20:25.000 Yeah, that means we're at a time. 01:20:25.000 --> 01:20:26.000 Goodness, thank you for showing up on Alaska time. 01:20:26.000 --> 01:20:32.000 We're out of time. Thank you all so much for thank you all for joining me. 01:20:32.000 --> 01:20:34.000 Yes, and thank you all. That's great. 01:20:34.000 --> 01:20:39.000 Alright! Thanks.