
There When You Need Us:
Crisis Collecting Support
Webinar
Tuesday, May 2, 2023
1 – 2 p.m. CDT
Cost: Free
Cultural heritage institutions must respond quickly during crises while contending with conditions impacting their lives and work. The Society of American Archivist’s Crisis, Disaster, and Tragedy Response Working Group provides support and connection for empathetic, ethical, and sustainable collecting practices. This webinar will introduce attendees to resources available through the working group as well as what they can do to prepare for collecting during and after both natural disasters or human-made tragedies.
Learning Outcomes
- A general overview of how to stage rapid response collecting
- Understanding who to go to with questions about documenting in times of crisis
Who Should Attend
Cultural heritage professionals and community members who may be responsible for collecting or documenting a disaster or tragedy
Presenters
Vanessa St.Oegger-Menn is the Pan Am 103 Archivist and Assistant University Archivist at the Syracuse University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center in Syracuse, New York. She holds an MA in 20th-Century British Literature from California State University Long Beach and earned her MSLIS from the iSchool at Syracuse University. Vanessa served on SAA’s Tragedy Response Initiative Task Force and is currently co-chair of the Crisis, Disaster, and Tragedy Response Working Group. In addition to her archival work, she is one of the primary advisors to the Remembrance and Lockerbie Scholars program at Syracuse and a member of the Advisory Board of the Victims of Pan Am Flight 103, Inc.
Kara M. McClurken is the Director of Preservation Services at UVA Library and oversees all activities related to physical and digital preservation. She served on SAA’s Tragedy Response Initiative Task Force and is currently co-chair of the Crisis, Disaster, and Tragedy Response Working Group. She also serves on the Advisory Committee for the Academic Preservation Trust and is a past chair of the Preservation Section of the Society of American Archivists and the past chair of the Preservation and Reformatting Section of the American Library Association. Prior to UVA, Kara served as Preservation Field Services Librarian for the Southeastern Library Network and worked in the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College as a project archivist and preservation specialist. Kara has an M.L.S. with a concentration in Archives and Preservation, an M.A. in history from the University of Maryland where she worked in both Special Collections and the Preservation Department, and her A.B. from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio.

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