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Arizona Convocation 2003

Building collaboration between libraries, archives, and museums
to support preservation of Arizona’s cultural heritage
and to promote resource sharing.

Sunday Evening & Monday
2–3 March 2003
Radisson Hotel
7171 N. Scottsdale Road
Scottsdale, Arizona

The Convocation provides people interested in preserving Arizona's cultural heritage with a chance to share interests and expertise, and to discover opportunities for collaboration and resource sharing. The Convocation invites people who work in libraries, archives, and museums to a program that is thoughtful, inspiring, and motivating. Most important, it is an invaluable opportunity to network with colleagues from around the state. The Convocation brings together people who do many different jobs in a variety of cultural institutions, providing opportunity for creative insights into how we can continually improve how we preserve and promote Arizona’s heritage.

Sunday Evening

Award-winning journalists immersed in the news will offer their thoughts on how the past influences the present, as well as how current events will influence the future. Have we collected the right things? What should we be collecting now? Panelists include

An editorial columnist for The Arizona Republic who writes on public policy with an emphasis on Latino affairs. Before coming to the Republic in 1999, Pimentel was managing editor of the Tucson Citizen. He has been a correspondent from Washington, D.C. reporting on Congress, federal agencies, and the Supreme Court. Pimentel is the author of two novels, House with Two Doors and Voices from the River.

A journalist for twenty years who writes for The Arizona Republic columns on the economy, growth and public policy. Talton is a fourth generation Arizonan who attended Kenilworth School and Coronado High School. He has degrees from Arizona State University and Miami University of Ohio. Talton is also a novelist. His mystery Concrete Desert is set in the Valley, and his next book, Camelback Falls, is due this January from St. Martin's Press.

A long-time Arizona journalist and author who is both a columnist for Phoenix Magazine and the special projects editor of True West Magazine. She has won numerous awards, including Arizona's Journalist of the Year. Her debut book, The Trunk Murderess: Winnie Ruth Judd was “made possible by the great librarians and archivists of Arizona, and she is eternally grateful.”

Monday

The graying of America will have profound and unexpected impacts on cultural institutions. Libraries, archives, and museums will want to adapt their programs to a changing audience. However, if presented with the right opportunities, the growing number of retiring baby boomers can be a great source of talented, experienced, and motivated retirees. Marc Freedman, author of Prime Time: How the Baby Boomers Will Revolutionize Retirement and Transform America, will talk about ways retirees can have personally rewarding and rejuvenating experiences that can also make a lasting, meaningful contribution to their communities.

Freedman is President of Civic Ventures. He is a graduate of Swarthmore College and holds an MBA from Yale. A former fellow of Kings College, University of London, he was the recipient of the 1995 Atlantic Fellowship in Public Policy. He is a frequent commentator in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and National Public Radio.

Betsy Fahlman will speak on Lon Megargee, Arizona’s original cowboy artist. Megargee lived a life of mythic proportions, leaving behind a colorful trail and ribald stories that will make you laugh, sigh, and blush. He was commissioned to paint fifteen murals for the new Capitol in 1912, and his painting, The Last Drop from His Stetson, is still reproduced inside the Western hats.

Fahlman is Professor of Art at Arizona State University. Her master’s and doctorate are from the University of Delaware. A specialist in American art, she is currently writing a book on New Deal photography and culture in Arizona.

A variety of breakout sessions will give participants a chance to share with their peers and discover opportunities for collaboration and resource sharing.

Electronic Records: Helping The Public Find Information In The Online World

Discuss tips and share information about the benefits and challenges of making your records and collections available online. Be prepared to talk about the types of information you're providing online (or want to), how it can be accessed, by whom, and how you are managing those records. What are the copyright, privacy, and confidentiality issues to consider when placing information on the Internet? What are the real costs and challenges of electronic records?

Meeting Your Community’s Information Needs
Are you planning with the needs of the community in mind? Are your institutional priorities in sync with your customers’ expectations? How do we know we have met the communities’ needs? What are the consequences if we don't? How does access to information vary by organization type (archive, library, museum, records center)? Is outreach part of your mission?

Preservation
How do you protect and preserve your valuable collections and resources to ensure that these materials will be available for future generations? How do you guard against theft and deterioration? What’s effective and affordable? Topics may include active treatment, environmental controls and security.

Bargains and Penny Pinching
With everyone feeling the budget crunch, where do you purchase supplies and materials? How can you negotiate the best deal? How can you use Maricopa County’s purchasing agreements to get discounts with hundreds of vendors? Where can you buy books at discounted rates? How can you save money buying archival materials? Bring your thoughts on how to maximize buying power.

Exhibits and Displays
Once exclusively in museums, exhibits and displays are now common in libraries and archives. What are some of the unique challenges faced by archives and libraries when displaying art and artifacts? What can museum exhibit professionals share about design, labels, interpretation and traffic flow? How can libraries, archives, and museums build collaborative exhibits in different spaces? Who has traveling exhibits and where can we get them? Just a few of the many topics that the group may wish to discuss about exhibits.

Library, Museum And Archives Directors Forum
A special opportunity for directors to meet, discuss current issues and trends, and to address your institutions’ roles in the communities. The group will consider topics of mutual interest, including strategies for dealing with declining revenue, managing organizational change, and maintaining staff moral, and should feel free to bring up other relevant concerns.

Workshops

Pre-Convocation Fund Raising Workshop
Take advantage of a free workshop on successful fund-raising strategies and meet individuals from granting organizations. A chance to think creatively about projects and how to get support for them. Sunday from 1:00 to 4:30.

Post-Convocation Tribal Workshop
A special program on language preservation will be offered for tribal libraries, archives, museums, and cultural centers on Tuesday, 4 March.

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