Byrd Center Archivist Presenting about the CSS at SAA’s CPR

Note: This post was previously listed under our "News from the Grey Box" blog series ​

Let’s decode that title of acronyms:

I’ll be presenting on the Byrd CLS’s work with the constituent services system (CSS) data at this years Society of American Archivist’s (SAA) meeting which is taking place this week in Washington, DC. I’m a member of the Congressional Papers Roundtable (CPR), and will be talking during one of the sessions on Wednesday.

My presentation will include what these CSS packages look like in the office, what data is exported from these systems into repositories (like the Byrd CLS), and what process we had to go through to make this data available and usable by researchers.

There will be time for discussion after our presentations (one other institution will also be presenting about their work), and I hope to raise important questions regarding legal protection over Congressional “personal papers,” why this data is important, and how we can better archive this data for future generations.

The rest of the conference is filled with really interesting sessions, and I look forward to learning more about what is cutting edge in the field and building our network of like-minded archivists around the country.

An example of a search result from the CSS data set.