The Women Archivists Roundtable speaker for the 2005 Society of American Archivists' Conference is Emilie "Lee" Leumas, CA, archivist for the Diocese of Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Lee is a New Orleans native, a member of the SAA section on Religious Collections and is currently pursuing her PhD in French at Louisiana State University.

Lee became a professional researcher traveling to hundreds of repositories searching for documents dealing with Louisiana history. She also worked for a number of authors, performing primary research for upcoming books and novels. Her graduate work has taken her to the Centre d'Archives d'outre mer in Aix en Provence and the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris in search of colonial Louisiana documents.

Now as an archivist in a Catholic Diocese, Lee has had the opportunity to witness the change of women's roles in the Church. As more women hold positions such as Chancellors and Vice-Chancellors, the role of women is increasing within the Church administration.

Lee's perspective as both archivist and researcher, here and abroad, will provide a unique glimpse into user services, international research, and religious collections. This, along with her photographs of Aix en Provence and remarkable stories of authors spoken with her lilting Louisiana accent will make this talk "The Big Easy" for all who come to listen!

Proposed by: Bernadette G. Callery
Institution: Carnegie Museum of Natural History
Mailing Address: 4400 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15213
Phone: 412.622.8870
Fax: 412.622.8837
E-mail: [email protected]

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1. SESSION TITLE

Beyond the Obvious: Finding Social History in Institutional Records

2. TYPE OF SESSION

Traditional

3. This proposal is not generated by an SAA group.

PARTICIPANTS

Chair
Name: Marisa Bourgoin
Contacted/Agreed to Participate: Yes
SAA Member: Yes
Institution: The Corcoran Museum of Art
Mailing Address: 500 17th Street NW, Washington, D.C. 20006-4804
Phone: 202.639.1721
Fax: 202.639.1778
E-mail: E-mail: [email protected]

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Name: Bernadette G. Callery
Contacted/Agreed to Participate: Yes
SAA Member: Yes
Institution: Carnegie Museum of Natural History
Mailing Address: 4400 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15213
Phone: 412.622.8870
Fax: 413.622.8837
E-mail: [email protected]
Title: Plaster and Dynamite: Using Field Records and Correspondence from the Carngie Dinosaur Expeditions as Evidence of Paleontological Rivalries in the Early 20th Century

Name: Sarah Demb
Contacted/Agreed to Participate: Yes
SAA Member: Yes
Institution: International Records Management Trust
Mailing Address: 21 John Street, London WC1N 2BP, UK (England)
Phone: 44.2078314101
E-mail: [email protected]
Title: The Rebel Record: Anthropological Fieldnotes Documenting the Victorian Iconoclast

Name: David H. DeVorkin
Contacted/Agreed to Participate: Yes
SAA Member: No
Institution: National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution
Mailing Address: P.O. Box 37012, Washington, D.C. 20013-7012
Phone: 202.633.2425
Fax: 202.786.2947
E-mail: [email protected]
Title: Beyond the Obvious in a Museum Context: The Changing Role of Women in Astronomy

Name: Kristin Parker
Contacted/Agreed to Participate: Yes
SAA Member: Yes
Institution: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Mailing Address: 280 The Fenway, Boston, MA 02115
Phone: 617.278.5173
E-mail: [email protected]
Title: Transported by Travel: How the Travel Diaries of Isabella Stewart Gardner Captured her Fascination with World Culture and Led to the Creation of her Museum

4. PROPOSAL DESCRIPTION

A. Content Description
Beyond the Obvious: Finding Social History in Institutional Records

While institutional records of museums have evidential value as documentation of the activities of the organization, these records also have informational value in that they reveal the development of the scientific or artistic discipline practiced and the cultural evolution of the researchers, collectors, curators, and donors involved in acquiring the collections. Museum visitors often see only the results of activity by curators and other museum staff, not the process or personalities revealed in the supporting archival record. Speakers will examine anthropological and archaeological fieldnotes that reveal the relative social freedom of Victorian anthropologists, discuss travel diaries that record both a spiritual as well as a physical journey in the formative period of amassing great and eclectic art collections, discover the women missing from the public record of astronomy, and explore the field records of paleontological expeditions as a source of information about the scientific rivalry between competing museums.

B. Role of Each Speaker

Chaired by an art museum archivist, a curator of astronomy and archivists serving art, anthropology and natural science collections will present brief papers on the uses of the institutional record beyond that of serving the immediate needs of the institution. Speakers will examine such diverse records, as travel scrapbooks, anthropological fieldnotes, a major exhibition on the history of astronomy and expedition correspondence, as resources for the discovery of the social context in which these records were created, used and interpreted.

C. Audience for the Session

The audience for this session is museum archivists and curators serving all types of museums and other cultural institutions, historians and exhibition planners.

D. Purpose of the Session

The purpose of this session is to illustrate, through case studies, that institutional records are a rich resource of cultural information about all those who contributed to the accumulation and interpretation of museum collections - be they donors, curators or the subjects of study.

5. AV REQUIREMENTS

Computer projector and attached PC supporting use of Microsoft PowerPoint