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2026 Virtual Fall Caucus
Growing with Intention!
Thursday, October 22, 2026 / 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. (Mountain)
The CIMA Education Committee is excited to announce the 2026 CIMA Fall Caucus.
When: October 22, 2026 from 11:30 a.m.–3:30 p.m. MDT
Where: Virtual
11:30 AM–11:40 AM | Welcome
Kelly Rovegno, Vice President and Chair of Education Committee, CIMA
11:40 AM-12:40 PM | Session 1 Featured Presentation - Accessible by Design: Advancing Accessibility in Archival Work
Dr. Lydia Tang
Dr. Lydia Tang is an archives and accessibility consultant based in East Lansing, Michigan. She holds CPACC certification through the International Association of Accessibility Professionals and Department of Homeland Security Section 508 Trusted Tester certification. For the last 5 years, she was Senior Outreach and Engagement Coordinator for Lyrasis, where she led business development for the ArchivesSpace hosting program and advanced accessibility across the organization. Prior to that, she held archivist positions at Michigan State University, the Library of Congress, and numerous graduate positions at the University of Illinois, where she received her MLIS and Doctor of Musical Arts degree. She is the 2020 recipient of SAA’s Mark A. Greene Emerging Leader Award and was recognized in three SAA Council resolutions as a co-founder of the Archival Workers Emergency Fund, for the Accessibility & Disability Section’s “Archivists at Home” document, and for her work revising SAA’s “Guidelines for Accessible Archives for People with Disabilities.
12:40 PM–12:55 PM | Break
12:55 PM–1:15 PM | Session 2 - Archives in the Classroom: Extending Outreach with K–12 Lesson Plans
Session will be recorded
Ruthie Huskinson, Undergraduate Library Peer Mentor
Braydon Wright, Outreach and Instruction Assistant
Utah State University
As part of the Utah State University Archives Outreach and Instruction department, we created lesson plans and classroom resources for K-12 teachers and parents. This came from feedback we received at an outreach event. Aligning our lessons with national and state educational standards, we have created opportunities for K-12 students to learn about archives and work with primary sources. These resources help students engage in local history and folklore. Inspiration for the project came from feedback received at an outreach event. Our materials have received unanticipated engagement and at public outreach events, we have found this to be a meaningful opportunity to engage with community members. For our presentation, we will talk about our project and opportunities for outreach with lesser-known collections or demographic groups we might not traditionally reach with the archive.
1:15 PM–1:35 PM | Session 3 - Streamlining Instruction Through Lesson Menus
Session will be recorded
Elspeth Olson, Outreach and Public Services Archivist
University of Nevada, Reno
Primary source instruction, once a rare treat or declined entirely, is rapidly-growing area of library and archives services to students in higher education. Finding ways to scale up instruction programs often challenges staff to do more without an increase in hands or resources. This is especially true with smaller archives teams, which must often manage instruction without subject specialists to share the load. Course instructors wish to give their students a chance to learn about conducting archival research, but many never had a library session of this type when they were students. Consequently, they often have no idea what to ask for or what the archives can offer, or they only ask for the introductory lesson without considering which of their students have already had the experience. Over the past four years, the University of Nevada, Reno has revolutionized their approach to primary source instruction. By offering not just a request form but lesson plan frameworks based in the Guidelines for Primary Source Literacy, an instruction team of one can manage lessons from any discipline, recommend more advanced, targeted lessons to upper division or graduate classes, and provide students with a variety of skill development to facilitate their future academic and professional work.
1:35 PM–1:45 PM | Break
1:45 PM–2:15 PM | Session 4 - Emergency Planning at the Utah State Archives
Session will be recorded
Dr. Genesie (Gen) Miller, Administrative Program Specialist and USHRAB Executive Secretary
Valerie Jacobson, Support Services Coordinator II
As the saying goes, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” This same can be said of planning ahead to prepare for a sudden emergency situation that can impact an archive. In addition to keeping the state-mandated Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP) up to date, the Utah State Archives’ Hazard and Emergency Negation (HEN) Team has undertaken a number of projects, particularly in the wake of the 2020 earthquake to better prepare for natural or human-made disasters. This presentation will share the measures we have undertaken so far and what is on the horizon to be better prepared to protect our staff and collection.
2:15 PM–2:35 PM | Session 5 - Turns Out Facebook Is Still a Thing! Or, How I Accidentally Became a Social Media Influencer
Session will be recorded
Dan Davis
Photograph Curator and Archives Instruction Coordinator
Utah State University
As the saying goes, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” This same can be said of planning ahead to prepare for a sudden emergency situation that can impact an archive. In addition to keeping the state-mandated Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP) up to date, the Utah State Archives’ Hazard and Emergency Negation (HEN) Team has undertaken a number of projects, particularly in the wake of the 2020 earthquake to better prepare for natural or human-made disasters. This presentation will share the measures we have undertaken so far and what is on the horizon to be better prepared to protect our staff and collection.
2:35 PM–2:45 PM | Break
2:45 PM–3:25 PM | Session 6 - Reluctant Use of AI: How to Engage with AI When You’re Morally Ambivalent
Session will be not recorded
Kimberly Anderson
Director, Distinctive Collections
University of Nevada, Reno
This session will transparently discuss one person's wary use of AI and provide practical tips on how to lessen the environmental, cognitive, and intellectual property concerns of AI use, with full acknowledgment that all AI is problematic. The session will go over how I got started with AI, my evolving thinking and continued ambivalence with AI, samples of projects and problems I use AI to help with, and how I have refined my tool of choice (Claude) to assist me in (hopefully) less evil ways.
This session is best suited for people unfamiliar with Claude or who are new to AI work. Participants will gain ideas on how to interact with AI and how it might be useful for work without feeding data into the AI while also hopefully gaining clarity on their own positionality regarding the ethics of AI use. I am a person whose first language is English and I do not belong to any communities with culturally sensitive information. My perspective will therefore be from a narrow band of experience.
3:25 PM–3:30 PM | Conclusion and Final Announcements
Kelly Rovegno
Schedule and session details are subject to change.