University of Maryland

GENERAL UPDATES: A Summer of Progress!

As we move into the summer, the SNAC Cooperative continues to build momentum through new partnerships, expanded training opportunities, technical improvements, and member engagement. This issue highlights recent accomplishments across our working groups, important updates on membership and infrastructure, and opportunities to help shape SNAC’s future. Thank you for being an essential part of the collaborative community that makes this work possible.

Membership Billing Update

As many of you know, this has been a year of substantial administrative transition at the University of Virginia, with new leadership across the libraries, university administration, and research offices. As a result, invoices for the 2026–2027 membership cycle are running a bit behind schedule while new workflows are finalized.

Please know that your membership status will not be affected during this transition, and we expect to share additional information in the coming weeks.

We Want Your Feedback—The Operations Team is actively working to strengthen the value of SNAC membership for institutions of all sizes and to refine our mission and strategic goals for the future. To help guide that work, we’re asking members to share their thoughts on:

  • What would make SNAC membership most valuable to your organization and staff?
  • Feedback on our revised draft mission statement and goals.

If you haven’t already, please take a few minutes to complete our brief member feedback survey by the end of today, June 15, 2026:

TAKE THE SURVEY!

 

Also, keep an eye out for an upcoming survey from the Technical Infrastructure Working Group, which will help prioritize future development and discovery enhancements for SNAC.

We’re Going to SAA!

For those heading to SAA in New Orleans, we look forward to seeing you at our in-person SNACSchool event on July 29 at Tulane University’s Howard Tilton Memorial Library! We will be offering our standard Create and Edit course with SNAC Director Jerry Simmons and SNAC Outreach Working Group Chair Scotty Beland from 1-5 pm.

Register for the July 29th Event Here!

We will also be representing SNAC at an information table on the first two days of the conference, so please drop by and chat with us!

We have also had a productive season engaging with various SAA sections lately:

  • On May 22, 2026, Jerry Simmons and Ugoma Smoke presented to the SAA Description Section. Jerry is no stranger to presenting to this group and started this lightning talk off with a recap of what we have been up to. Ugoma took over to discuss major developments from the Editorial Standards and Policy Working Group and also mentioned our Fall Edit-a-thon and upcoming Fall Merge-a-thon occurring on November 12, 2026! View the slide deck here!
  • On May 28, 2026 by Ugoma Smoke made a presentation to the Native American Archives Section (NAAS). This presentation was more focused on the IndigenizeSNAC Project, the Indigenous Description Group, collaborative work with the NABS dataset, and upcoming updates to the Editorial Guide for Indigenous Entity Description. View the slide deck here!
  • On June 4, 2026, Ugoma Smoke and Maristella Feustle are representing the Cooperative at the SAA Metadata and Digital Object Section (MDOS) June MetaChat. This felt like the perfect place for us to talk about SNAC, how it works, and dig a little deeper into some of our technical developments and public workshops that we have been able to offer. Ugoma led us through a SNAC overview and Maristella finished off with a discussion of the benefits to incorporating OpenRefine into your SNAC workflows and beyond. View the slide deck here!

SNACSchool: New Faculty and Upcoming Dates

As many of you will recall, we unveiled SNACSchool 5.0 earlier this Spring and were excited to revamp our Train the Trainer program to bring on 4 new SNACSchool trainers!

  • Abby Hardy (University of Maryland)
  • Glen Wiley (University of Miami)
  • Grace Acton (Preservation Society of Newport County)
  • Maristella Feustle (University of North Texas)

Registration is now open for our Summer and Fall 2026 SNACSchool sessions:

  • July 8: Research and Reference (Virtual) Register Here!
  • July 29: Create and Edit (In-Person at SAA/Tulane University) Register Here!
  • August 26: Create and Edit (Virtual) Register Here!
  • September 23: Research and Reference (Virtual) Register Here!
  • October 14: Create and Edit (Virtual) Register Here!
  • November 12: Merge-A-Thon (Indigenous Peoples Month tie-in) More info coming soon!
  • December 14: Tech Workshop More info coming soon!

Indigenous Description Group (IDG)

We are thrilled to announce that Evangeline (Evie) Giaconia has stepped into the role of Chair for the Indigenous Description Group (IDG). Under this new leadership, the IDG will serve as the advisory body for our ongoing Mellon project. 

We are also proud to share our official IndigenizeSNAC video! We hope this will be an integral and well-received piece of material in our process of outreach and partnership building in the future. Watch the video (2 minutes)!

Technical Sustainability and Service Updates

To ensure long-term stability, we are beginning a major refresh of the SNAC servers. This process will involve moving to a new operating system and utilizing containers to improve efficiency. Please be advised that this will result in the first production downtime in five years. The transition will include a brief “read-only” period for the production snaccooperative.org later followed by a multi-day downtime as we migrate to the refreshed system.

As always, the strength of SNAC lies in the commitment and collaboration of its members. Whether you are contributing records, participating in working groups, attending SNACSchool, or helping shape our future through surveys and feedback, your involvement makes this cooperative possible. We look forward to connecting with many of you over the summer and sharing more updates as these initiatives continue to grow.