SAA Annual Meeting Centers Archival Accessioning (and the work of Bancroft’s Accessioning Archivist Jaime Henderson!)

Lanyard with buttons created at the Accessioning Best Practices Symposium at the SAA Annual Meeting, 2024
Lanyard with buttons created at the Accessioning Best Practices Symposium at the SAA Annual Meeting, 2024

The Society of American Archivists Annual General Meeting took place in Chicago between August 14th and August 17th. For many of the archivists at The Bancroft Library, this was the first in-person SAA meeting we have attended in years and we had lots to do, talk about, and even celebrate.

Most notably, Bancroft Accessioning Archivist Jaime Henderson helped put on a day-long symposium introducing a new archival standard: the Archival Accessioning Best Practices. The product of a few years of hard remote and in-person work by the Archival Accessioning Best Practices Working Group (of which Jaime is a member), these best practices are the first of their kind. The efforts of the Working Group were made possible by generous funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Archivists all over the country are excited to see dedicated best practices that center archival accessioning as a key component in ethical archival practice and management.

The Archival Accessioning Best Practices were recently submitted to the Society of American Archivists’ Standards Committee (currently chaired by yours truly) for approval as an official SAA standard and will be published as a GitBook document soon.

The Archival Accessioning Best Practices Working Group was also honored with an SAA Council Exemplary Service Award at the annual business meeting this past Saturday. We all congratulate Jaime and her colleagues for this well-deserved honor.

Bancroft Library Accessioning Archivist Jaime Henderson with SAA Council Exemplary Service Award
Bancroft Library Accessioning Archivist Jaime Henderson with SAA Council Exemplary Service Award, August 17, 2024.