RUSA History Section Annual Report
July 31, 2015
Submitted by Jenny Presnell, History Section Past Chair
History Section Objectives
Over the past year, the History Section has pursued the following objectives:
 Maintain many of the new initiatives begun by the previous chair, Michelle Baildon.
o Critical was the nurture and development of the Communications Committee to not only advertise our
functions and activities, but to connect members to the history section committees.
o Maintain and nurture the cohesion of the Executive Committee through regular meetings virtually and in
person.
 Increase awareness of the section activities with its membership, including more active use of the history-l, and other
social media accounts.
 Increase continuing educational opportunities, specifically webinar offerings.
 Balance the needs of the genealogists and local history librarians with the needs of academic librarians.
History Section Activities
 Review of “Using Primary Sources on the Web”. A subgroup of the Instruction & Research Services Committee has begun
review and revision of the popular History Section pages “Using Primary Sources on the Web,” written in 2003 and
last updated in 2008: http://www.ala.org/rusa/sections/history/resources/pubs/usingprimarysources: new
site to be functional sometime in September, 2015:
http://www.ala.org/rusa/sections/history/resources/pubs/usingprimarysources2014. The group includes librarians
who use these pages in their library instruction, and they have made good progress so far. The group is co-led by
Eileen Bentsen (Baylor) and Olga Perkovic (McMaster University).
 Creation of New Draft Guide to Free Online Primary Sources. The History Section was given a free Libguides account by
Springshare. A sub-group of the Instruction & Research Services Committee has developed content guidelines and
draft procedures, as well as an initial draft guide to freely available online primary sources in U.S. history. The first
look at the guides are here: http://rusahistory.libguides.com/american-history and
http://rusahistory.libguides.com/primarysources NOTE THESE ARE NOT YET READY FOR PUBLIC
CONSUMPTION, IN DRAFT FORMAT. Next steps include establishing best practices for constructing other
subject guides and include the broader membership in the creation of other guides. The group is co-led by Theresa
Mudrock (U. of Washington) and Chella Vaidyanathan (Johns Hopkins).
 Webinars. The section held two webinars, one free and one paid. Both were well received.
o
Exploring Partnerships with Faculty and Other User Groups for Digital Humanities Project.
Planner: Chella Vaidyanathan (Johns Hopkins) (May 12, 2015). This webinar demonstrates how
librarians can form successful partnerships with their user groups and play an active role in digital humanities
projects.
o
Engaging the Community Around Digital Archiving. Free Webinar. Planners: Jennifer Dorner
(University of California, Berkely), Bill Modrow (Miami University), and Sue McFadden (Indiana University
East). (June 2, 2015). Increasingly individuals are interested in archiving their personal histories and
preserving the correspondence, diaries and journals, photographs, audio and film recordings, and other
materials they have generated throughout their lives. Some may want to convert their physical documents into
digital form, others may be working with born digital materials.
 Improved communication to membership. The previous chair established a Communications Committee that worked this
past year to publicize events through our social media outlets, and contribute to RUSA Update and history-l. The
committee established a communications toolkit. (http://goo.gl/vH8hRO) to facilitate communication between the
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committees and the Communications Committee.
 Revised the Genealogical Publishing Company award description. It was inconsistent in several places. In the coming year,
we will work on a section handbook which will fix some of these inconsistencies.
Events at ALA Conferences
 At all conferences, the section tries to have a “field trip” to local places of historical interest. We think this provides a
social contact for anyone interested in history and in the section. This is easier to do in some cities than others: in
Philadelphia we just met at 2 different historic sites, in Chicago a blizzard cancelled our plans; in Las Vegas and San
Francisco, we had to hire transportation.
 The all committee meeting is somewhat new to us at annual. We have a significant, and vocal minority that continues
to be upset at this practice. We have offered to schedule additional meetings for committees that require in-person,
quiet rooms to do work (only one committee has done this). This will continue to be an issue until more committees
have meetings virtually.
 Both discussion sessions have become mini programs with presentations that stimulate conversation.
History Section Events at ALA conferences
 Midwinter, Chicago, IL
o Friday 8:30-4:00 PM Genealogy Preconference. Hyatt Regency Chicago. Columbus GH
o Saturday 4:30-5:30 PM Genealogy and Local History Discussion Group. McCormick Place West W 176a
o Sunday 8:30 Breakfast at Yolk (http://eatyolk.com/menus/) 1120 South Michigan Avenue
o Sunday 1:00 – 2:30 History Librarians Discussion Group. McCormick Place West W 181c. A panel of
speakers from the University of Iowa and the University of Louisville will talk about their experience working
with crowdsourcing projects at their institutions.
o Sunday 3:00 PM Glessner House Museum Tour. Meet outside: McCormick Place West W 181c if you want
to go as a group. LIMIT of 9 people. http://www.glessnerhouse.org/. [Cancelled due to Blizzard]
o Monday 8:30 AM History Section Executive meeting – all are welcome! McCormick Place West 186c
 Annual, San Francisco, CA
o Friday, June 26th, 8:30-4:30, Genealogy Symposium: Parc 55 San Francisco
o Friday, June 26th, Angel Island Field Trip, ticketed event
o Saturday, June 27th, 8:30 -10:00 RUSA History Section All Committee Meeting Moscone Center 200-212 –
open to all
o Saturday, June 27th, 1-2:30 Program: Connecting Communities: Documenting and Sharing Asian American
Heritage, Moscone Center 2004 West: Panel discussion about Asian American Records and Local History.
o Saturday, June 27th, 4:30-5:30, Genealogy Discussion Group: Saturday Marriott Marquis, Yerba Buena Salon
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o Sunday June 28th, 1:00-2:00. History Librarians’ Discussion Group. Mosocone Center, 3-12 W. Focuses on
scholars’ use of ebooks
o Sunday, June 28th, 5-6:30, RUSA Awards Ceremony Westin, St. Francis, California West
o Sunday, June 28th, 6:45 -, History Section Dinner, Hopwater Distribution, 850 Bush St. (between Mason St.
and Taylor St.)
o Monday, June 29th, 8:30-10:00, History Section Board Meeting Marriott Marquis, San Francisco, Club Room.
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Issues and Trends
The History Section faces the following issues and trends:
 Recruitment of members, specifically genealogists. This remains an issue from last year. We struggle to fill committee positions
in those areas of particular interest to genealogists and local history librarians. This year the chair of the Genealogy
Pre-conference had to resign midyear. We struggle to find chairs for committees as well.
 Meeting the needs of academic librarians. Our largest committee is the Instruction and Research Services. To accommodate
the needs as well as volunteers, we have the committee divided into subgroups. For the academics we need to focus
on digital humanities issues (many of our programs and discussion sections have examined dh) as well as collection
development issues.
o For example the section has its on Information Literacy Guidelines (), but the American Historical
Association has also come out with “Guidelines for the Professional Evaluation of Digital Scholarship in
History” (http://historians.org/teaching-and-learning/current-projects/committee-on-professionalevaluation-of-digital-scholarship-in-history) and the Society of American Archivists are working on a similar
document. The History Section needs to work with these external groups.
 Communication. The Communications Committee’s Toolkit goes a long way in solving many of the problems we have
had with advertising programs. In the coming year it is anticipated that the committee will expand their role and use
social media to connect the membership to trends in history librarianship.
 In-person meetings. This is the first year we did not meet in person with committee chairs at Midwinter. Next year the
Executive Committee will no longer meet in person at Midwinter. The all committee meeting at Annual is of issue.
See above.
 Increase continuing education opportunities. The webinars were well received. We need to at least maintain our offerings in
the coming year.
 Section Review. Our section is up for review this year. We have formed a committee of Agnes Widder (Michigan State),
Curt Witcher (Wayne County Public Library) (both past chairs), and Nancy Bunker (Whitworth University) who will
organize the review. It is expected that they will interact with all the committees. Jenny Presnell is working on a survey
for the entire History Section membership.
 Organizational issues. We need a manual (Sara Morris and Helene LaFrance will work on). There is no central place for
information concerning common practices or even award descriptions.
 Field Trips. Recent field trips have been popular with members and non-members alike. We need to use these
opportunities to gain membership.
 Genealogy Pre-conference. This event, generously sponsored by Proquest, is a staple of the History Section’s
offerings to our membership. Over the last 3-4 years the Pre-conference has had numerous challenges with changes in
leadership and difficulties with registration and interaction with ALA. In working with ALA staff, we believe we have
figured out how to keep the event nearly free (thanks to Proquest), but need to stabilize the leadership, advertising,
and communication around the event.
Awards
The History Section presented the following awards in 2015:
 ABC-CLIO Online History Award: Joanne Murry, Drexel University College of Medicine, Historian and
Director, The Legacy Center. as Principal Investigator of the online history project called “Doctor or
Doctress?: Explore American history through the eyes of women physicians.” The first runner up was Jason
Roe for “The Civil War on the Western Frontier”; the second runner up was Robin Katz for
TeachArchives.org.
 Best Historical Materials, 2014: http://www.ala.org/news/press-releases/2015/02/annual-list-besthistorical-materials-selected-rusa-s-history-section
 Gale Cengage Learning History Research and Innovation Award: David J. Gary, Yale University, Kaplanoff
Librarian for American History
 Genealogical Publishing Company Award: Michael D Kirley, Los Angles Public Library, History and
Genealogy Department.
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Sponsors
The History Section extends sincere thanks to ABC CLIO, Gale Cengage, the Genealogical Publishing Company,
and Proquest for sponsorship of our awards and preconference.
Executive Committee Roster, 2014-2015
Jenny L. Presnell (Chair)
David C. Murray (Vice-Chair)
Michelle M. Baildon (Past Chair)
Helene Lafrance (Secretary)
Nancy A. Bunker (Member-at-Large)
Christina Thompson Shutt (Member-at-Large)
Chella Vaidyanathan (Member-at-Large)
History Section Committee Chairs, 2014-2015
ABC-CLIO Online History Award Committee: Joshua Lupkin
Communications Committee: Laura Hibbler
Gale Cengage Learning History Research and Innovation Award Committee: Michelle Baildon
Genealogical Publishing Company Award Committee: Helen Gbala
Genealogy Committee: Michael J. Hall
Genealogy and Local History Discussion Group: Curt Witcher
Genealogy Preconference Planning Committee: Josh Taylor/ Amy Johnson Crow
Historical Materials Committee: Matthew J. Wayman
History Librarians Discussion Group: Chella Vaidyanathan
Instruction and Research Services Committee: Eileen Bentsen
Local History: Jenny McElroy and Janalyn Moss
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