Alison Fraser and Rachel Makarowski

RBMS 2024 Conference Preview

We are just a month away from RBMS 2024 and we hope you are as excited as we are! The Conference Program Planning Committee received an overwhelming response to our call for proposals on the theme of momentum, and we are thrilled to bring you the second hybrid RBMS conference with the help of our host sponsor University of California, Irvine. Whether you are joining us in sunny southern California or online from your favorite chair, we hope you have a transformative, informative, and collaborative experience at RBMS’s sixty-fourth annual conference.

We are gratified that members from the Community Archives Lab at UCLA will give the opening plenary. Co-director Dr. Thuy Vo Dong and graduate student researchers Sadaf Ahmadbeigi and James Epps will discuss their work supporting identity-based memory organizations throughout Southern California and beyond, such as La Historia Historical Society and Museum in El Monte and the Texas After Violence Project. 

We are equally excited for our closing plenary, led by Holly A. Smith, College Archivist of Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, who will be joined in conversation by Elvia Arroyo-Ramírez, a digital archivist at UC–Irvine. They will discuss the theoretical and practical applications of stewardship and social justice and their relationship with community, capacity, and intentionality. Both plenaries will be livestreamed and available for both in-person and virtual-only attendees.

The RBMS community submitted a staggering number of exceptionally strong proposals to our call for papers. While the selection process was incredibly difficult, we are proud of the richness and depth of the lineup, which will include in-person, livestreamed, and virtual-only panels, discussion sessions, seminars, workshops, and posters. Attendees can expect topics ranging from preserving gay cowboy archives, to diversity and inclusion hiring practices, to cataloging bound-withs in Alma. We hope that this program reflects the needs and interests of the community, whether you work in public services or technical services, are new to the profession or have been a member for decades. A full schedule can be found on the RBMS 2024 website. We look forward to the productive conversations and information-sharing these sessions will initiate, and we thank everyone who submitted a proposal.

The RBMS conference is not all work, however: we have also planned a schedule of in-person and virtual social and casual gatherings. If you are joining us in Costa Mesa, the conference will be held at the Hilton Orange County Costa Mesa, a fifteen-minute drive or less from UC–Irvine, the John Wayne Airport, and Pacific Coast beaches. From the conference hotel, walk to the anti-mall, the LAB (“Little American Business”) Anti-Mall and the CAMP, two alternative retail developments with public art, independent stores, and plenty of great restaurants. If you are participating virtually, join us for a lively discussion of the weirdest objects you have in your collection and for post-plenary discussions with other virtual members. However you attend RBMS 2024, we look forward to seeing you soon!

Editor’s note: The authors served as Co-chairs for the 2024 RBMS Conference Program Planning Committee. While this contribution was solicited, the content remains solely that of the authors. Other than adjustments made to conform with house style, the Co-chairs’ statement is presented here without revision, except to correctly name two Costa Mesa locations.