Hello allies!

I hope that you are all doing well and that you had a great Thanksgiving. It’s been a few months since our last update and since ProjectARCC (and I) went on hiatus for a while. It has been a busy few months (I got married), and as I am sure you agree, a disheartening past few weeks. But alas, the work must go on, now more than ever.

Eira Tansey and I spoke couple of weeks ago and are ready to re-boot ProjectARCC efforts, and we have ideas about how to restructure our goals and the scope of our work.

We think it is time to move away from the Committee structure. Though our efforts and projects were lofty and commendable, the Committees spread us thin. Instead of having multiple groups working on specific projects supported and organized by ProjectARCC, we want to make ProjectARCC more of an organizing space for archivists and interested allies (like journalists, scientists, and librarians) to come together, discuss climate change and its impact on our profession, and facilitate opportunities for archivists to find common ground and potential collaborations with others. To that end, we’re organizing monthly conference calls on the second Tuesday of each month. Eira will serve as the host and point of contact for the conference calls.

1. Evenings on the even-numbered months at 7pm Eastern (December 13th will be the first of these)
2. Daytime on the odd-numbered months at noon Eastern (January 10 will be the first of these)

We also want to keep the blog available and open for anyone to contribute to. We now have an open Google doc for people to sign up for blog posts. For now, I will take the lead on coordinating with writers who sign up and get posts uploaded to the website.

I’ve also unlocked the listserv so that anyone can join anytime without requiring a moderator to approve it (we should have done this long ago!). I am working on a standard template email that goes out to individuals after they join so that they are made aware of meeting times and ProjectARCC contacts.

So in short, for now, ProjectARCC will be less structured and project-focused and more of a space for individuals to 1) organize and discuss via conference calls and 2) share insights with the community via the blog and listserv.

The website has been updated to reflect our new strategy, and Eira and I would love to hear your opinion. We hope that you will still consider ProjectARCC in its new form a valuable community to be a part of. Please feel free to send a message to the listserv and let us know your thoughts.

It is so important that we continue organizing and taking action both collectively and independently. You’ve probably been following the news that the incoming administration has selected a climate denier to lead the EPA transition, and that the President-Elect himself has argued that the concept of climate change was created by the Chinese to make U.S. manufacturing noncompetitive. The progress that has been made over the past eight years is now at stake, and it’s imperative that we stay hopeful and stay active in the fight against climate change.

You may be wondering what you can do now. Right now, I encourage each of you to spread the word about ProjectARCC’s new strategy:

• Share this announcement on social media or on your school or other listserv
• Encourage your colleagues to get involved
• Share your insights and thoughts by contributing a blog post
• Plan to attend our next ProjectARCC meeting and encourage your colleagues to attend as well

Finally, stay informed on what’s happening in the presidential administration transition and don’t be afraid to contact your elected officials and ask them to oppose any efforts taken by the new administration to halt progress combating climate change and transitioning to a clean energy economy.

Thanks so much for your continued action and passion.

In solidarity,

Casey and Eira