SAA 2008: Day 3

InterContinental Mark Hopkins, Room 625, San Francisco, California


Once again, I must demure. There is no way for me to catch up tonight, or to give any adequate review of the day's events. Not yet.

But let me give just a few thoughts on Mark Greene's presidential address. First, great introduction. I wrote down some of Dennis Meissner's roast-like introduction to Mark Greene, and I'll report on some of his choice comments soon enough.

Second, Mark Greene focused as we might have expected he would: on a preliminary assessment of a values statement for archivists. His style of writing and reading aloud is a bit heavy (including numerous quotations from the literature), but his main points about our values were generally sound. I have quibbles, and I'll get to those, and I would have included some different values, and this initial attempt of his is a bit rough. But what Mark did was present what some of the main issues are for us, and on the way he pointed out how we have failed in our quest to be who we are, something I notice frequently enough. Many of his points were ones I've thought of myself, so I had quite a large amount of agreement with what he said, and made an effort to congratulate him after the speech. Rightly so, the speech received a hearty round of applause.

More on all of this once I have the time.

archivity furthers