University of Maryland

GENERAL UPDATE: Ops Committee Fully Chaired

We’re thrilled to announce the Maristella Feustle (University of North Texas) has agreed to Chair SNAC’s Technical Infrastructure Working Group! Maristella is the Music Special Collections Librarian at UNT and has incorporated SNAC into her published research, including the Society of American Archivist’s Fellows’ Ernst Posner Award winning (2025) article “Archival Authority Records and the Potential of Human-Centered Archival Description” (2024). This comes hot on the heels of a subaward for University of Virginia which will allow for SNAC’s Original Developer, Robbie Hott, to join us in an official capacity as well. This is excellent news in terms of getting some technical ideas and projects done and integrated for full use for all of our researchers, editors and member institutions.

On the horizon:

    • The integration of an OpenRefine update and an OpenRefine training session
    • The integration of new datasets from the National Museum of the American Indian and the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, and an accompanying Controlled Concepts Module
    • Updates to the SNAC website “About” (portal.snaccooperative.org) pages
    • The IndigenizeSNAC Edit-a-thon (November 14, 2025)

 

The Indigenous Description Group (IDG) is also recruiting new members! The IDG, founded in Spring 2023 within the Social Networks and Archival Context (SNAC) cooperative, has 3 main goals:

  1. Improve accessibility to archival collections for Indigenous Tribal communities; 
  2. Mitigate harm caused by extractive collecting processes; 
  3. Engage in reparative description across systems, at scale, and in an interoperable way.

Interested individuals should fill out this Google Form!

 

The final SNACSchool Event in our IndigenizeSNAC Fall 2025 Series is scheduled for October 14 and 15! There are still some seats available for anyone interested in learning how to create and edit SNAC records. 

SNAC Create and Edit is a multi-module course geared towards those interested in editing in SNAC. Some archival research training or experience is recommended before taking this class, and previously recorded sessions and PDFs of slide decks are available to revisit steps and refresh your memory. Attending both days is required to “graduate” the Create and Edit modules. REGISTER HERE!