Save the date for our annual section meeting in July! On July 12, 2-3:30 p.m., four presenters will share a sneak peek into their 2024 NAGARA presentation titled “Records Management Resurgence: Using Outreach, Education, and Cross-departmental Partnerships to Revive or Jumpstart a Records Program.” In this panel discussion, records management professionals from four different types of institutions will share methods they’ve used to bolster support and appreciation for the work RIM professionals provide.
With over 260 participants, and led by the fabulous and insightful Trevor Owens and Chris Prom, this year’s SAA RMS Records Management Month Colloquium was a success! Thanks so much to everyone involved.
This year we will be highlighting two leaders in information management (and two wonderful humans) as they reflect on digital preservation and email archiving and their relationships to records management: Christopher Prom, author of The Future of Email Archives and Trevor Owens, author of The Theory and Craft of Digital Preservation.
Join us Monday, March 11th, 2024, at 3 pm EST, for “Records Management and Institutional Change”.
Sophia McGuire, Records Management Analyst, City of Gahanna, Jennifer Motszko, Head of Archives at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, and Autumn Oakey, Library Assistant at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater will share their experiences navigating institutional change. They will discuss staff turnover, training, and other strategies they have experimented with during times of change. They will then open the meeting to attendees so everyone can tackle questions and share personal experiences.
The discussion could go in many directions, depending on the interactions of our colleagues. Some questions we will consider are:
What types of change has your organization faced?
What challenges did you encounter while navigating different kinds of change?
What strategies have helped your organization adjust to institutional change?
What advice do you have that we didn’t mention?
What other questions do people have about navigating institutional change as records managers?
Join us February 5th, 2024, at 3pm EST, for “From Chaos to Control: Building a Strong Records Management Program From Scratch.”
Ryan Leimkuehler, University Archivist at Kansas State University, and Daria Labinsky, Records and Information Management Specialist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, will share what they have learned from helping to start records management programs and will discuss how their organizations approached it. They will then open the meeting to attendees, so everyone can tackle questions and share personal experiences.
The discussion could go in many directions, depending on the interactions of our colleagues. Some questions we will consider are:
How did you gain buy-in from your administrators?
What did you struggle with when starting a program?
What are your long-term storage environments?
What advice do you have that we didn’t mention?
What other questions do people have about starting a RM program?
With a delayed start, please welcome this year’s talented Society of American Archivists Records Management Committee. We have some wonderful upcoming events including:
Coffee Chat: Starting a Records Management Program, Feb 5th 2024 3pm EST (information forthcoming)
Coffee Chat: Records Management and Institutional Change, Mar 11th 2024 3pm EST (information forthcoming)
Records Management Colloquium (Email Archiving, Digital Preservation, and AI & Records), April 2024 Stay tuned! The colloquium will highlight three of our favorite experts in the archives, records, and information fields.
Records Management Annual Section Meeting, July 2024! We will be soliciting for lightning talks from our community!
Jessika Drmacich, Chair, former 2021 Chair:
Jessika, Records Manager and Digital Resources Archivist at Williams College Special Collections (Libraries), leads Williams’ campus-wide Records Management Program, web archiving, and digital preservation. Over the past ten years at Williams, Jessika worked closely with the Vice President of Finance, Administration, and Treasurer’s Office to establish a Board of Trustees Approved Records Management Policy and Program. Jessika is passionate about institutional histories, collaborating with campus leadership, committees, student groups, and all units to document and preserve diverse campus conversations. By helping records “get to the right place at the right time” she advocates for campus histories, better business workflows, and for destruction of records that reach disposition. As part of the Records Management Program, Jessika works closely with campus IT, leading records management trainings including: email archiving, digital file management for committees, individualized records trainings for offices/ departments, and most recently the Declutter Your Digital Life series.
Jessika is incredibly enthusiastic about advocating with her colleagues and communities that records management should be a field of creativity and that personal curation, being your own archivist, and records management, in itself, is more important than ever!
Sophia McGuire, Vice-Chair
Sophia has been working in government records and archives for the majority of her nine years working professionally. She currently serves the City of Gahanna, Ohio, as the city’s records management analyst, where is she resurrecting a records management program. Sophia’s focus is educating others on the importance and value of a records management program, as well as collecting and preserving city history. She is currently working toward her Certified Records Manager designation. Outside of work, Sophia spends her time with her large family and their newest member, a leopard gecko named Rosemary.
Ryan Leimkuehler, Recent Past-Chair,
Ryan Leimkuehler is an accomplished professional with a diverse background in library science, history, and records management. He earned his Master of Library Science with a focus on Archives from Emporia University in 2017, following his completion of a Master of Arts in History at Missouri State University in 2012 and a Bachelor of Science in History and Education in 2010 from the same institution. Currently serving as the Associate Professor and University Archivist at Kansas State University since December 2022, Ryan is responsible for leading the development of the university archives program. His expertise extends to archival theory, records administration, and compliance with archival standards and legal regulations. Ryan has also been involved in academia as an Adjunct Instructor at Emporia State University since 2019, teaching courses on records management and introduction to archives. Prior to his current role, he served as the University Records Manager at Kansas State University from August 2017 to December 2022, where he played a pivotal role in establishing records management priorities, training program, and ensuring compliance with the Kansas Open Records Act.
Hillary Gatlin, Committee Member
Hillary Gatlin is the Records Manager for the Duke University Archives. She works with offices and departments across the university to help them identify and transfer their historical records. Prior to joining Duke University in 2018, Hillary worked as the University Records Manager at Michigan State University and as a Records Management Specialist at George Mason University.
Daria Labinsky, Committee Member
Daria Labinsky has been a records and information specialist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service since May 2021. She is the regional records officer for the Mountain Time Zone offices and is based in Lakewood, Colorado. Previously she worked as an archivist and preservation technician for the National Archives and Records Administration. She has an MLS from Emporia State University and a BS and MSJ from Northwestern University. She loves to travel, and years ago, she and her family spent 15 months living on the road, mostly in an RV. She is the coauthor of several books, including the historical biography Frank Applegate of Santa Fe, and used to write and edit publications about craft beer and brewing.
Autumn Oakey, Committee Member
Autumn Oakey is a Library Assistant at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where she has worked in archives and libraries for three years. She manages physical records transfers, provides staff and departmental records management training, and updates university retention schedules. She graduated with her bachelor’s degree in history in from UW-Whitewater in 2021 and is currently studying archives in the MLIS program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
More soon on other committee member, Jennifer Motsko!
Please join the Records Management Section for their Annual business meeting and presentations on records management and AI!
We will have Patricia Franks from San Jose State University School of Information and a prominent voice in the records management field and Stephanie Decker from the University of Birmingham whose work focuses on establishing archival and historical methods to study organizations.
Please find the agenda below and registration link:
Are you seeking an opportunity to expand your network and get further involved in the records management community? If so, come join the RMS Steering Committee! Please consider nominating yourself or a colleague for one of these positions:
Vice Chair/Chair-Elect
Steering Committee (3-year term)
Steering Committee (3-year term)
Sorry for the tight turn around, but I would need to know the below information by June 1st.
Candidate Name
Job Title and Institution
Headshot (high resolution)*
Bio and Candidate Statement (1-2 paragraphs)
You can find examples of bio/candidate statements from previous years on our SAA section page or our blog site here: https://saarmrt.wordpress.com/
If you are interested please contact me at Ryan Leimkuehler, Chair – rleimkue@ksu.edu
Thank you to all the presenters and attendees for the RIM Month Colloquium it was another successful year with great presentations and questions from the audience. We had on average 83 people in attendance and a good amount of questions and community building in the chat throughout. Please find the recordings and slides for the colloquium below:
RMS RIM Month Colloquium 2023 Folder (for all the files in one place, chat log, transcript, slides): RMS_Colloquium_2023
Big thank you again to all attendees, presenters, and steering committee! Please let me know if you have any problems with the resources: rleimkue@ksu.edu
Please join the SAA Records Management Section Steering Committee for its third annual Colloquium for Records and Information Management (RIM) Month! We will have 4 short presentations from the records management community highlighting current projects. There will also be time for Q&A and discussion. The RIM Colloquium will take place virtually on Zoom on Thursday, April 27 from 3-4:30 pm ET.
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. The event is free for any interested parties.
The recording and presenter slides will be made available after the event.
Here’s a new idea from Durango, to improve the records transparency of your institution by devoting a document type to the purpose of leading an online researcher into the myriad types of records you manage. It’s what archivists do all the time; the novelty of this project is that it shows how a records manager can do the same thing: provide one portal for anyone to locate the records they’re seeking—in whatever the format.
The Retention of Culture: Recordkeeping as a DEI Practice
Jes Neal, MIT and Jessika Drmacich, Williams College
Jes Neal and Jessika Drmacich will present ways records managers and archivists can create space to collect more inclusive institutional histories that ensure campus wide representation for the future. Their conversation will detail how discussing and deconstructing traditional ideas of valuable records and institutional records management practices allows for more members of the campus community to understand the importance of their roles in campus operations, culture creation, and preservation. Join us!
Preparing an Essential Records Packet
Christine Zielinski and Tina Morrell, FEMA
We will be discussing preparing an Essential Records Packet. We will touch on what Essential Records are and the importance of identifying them, the basic components of an Essential Records packet, and conducting a risk analysis.
Black Women Organizers as Recordkeepers: Documentation Practices in Justice Work
Jes Neal, MIT, and Dr. Charmaine Lang, Consultant
Recordkeeping practices are essential to how activists and organizers, specifically in the nonprofit sphere, document justice-centered efforts, organizational histories, and provide evidentiary resources to the communities they serve. A critical step in building sustainable recordkeeping practices in organizations is establishing a records management program for the layperson. Using tenets of Black Feminist Thought, Dr. Charmaine Lang and Jes Neal will share personal experiences with recordkeeping and discuss their guide to documenting social change organizations.
For questions or concerns, please reach out to Ryan Leimkuehler at rleimkue@ksu.edu.
The Schedule 