As 2018 winds down, we'd like to share some news about our members and remind you that CAA's membership year ends with the calendar year, so now is a great time to renew! Just login, click "View Profile" in the upper right hand corner of the page, and click the "Renew" button to the right of your profile.

Audra V. Adomenas, President, Lithuanian Archives Project, Chicago, IL has been nominated as Central United States Ambassador for the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA). IASA was established in 1969 in Amsterdam to function as a medium for international co-operation between archives that preserve recorded sound and audiovisual documents. IASA is a growing and dynamic organization, which aims to create an international network of cooperation among like-minded professionals. For questions regarding IASA membership, or how you can get involved, please contact Audra by phone at: 312-940-3940 or by email at: LithuanianArchivesProject@gmail.com. There are many exciting opportunities for us in the Midwest to participate in this important work internationally. In October, Audra attended the IASA Conference, which was held in Accra, Ghana. See below for a photograph of Audra with IASA colleagues at the Department of African Studies, University of Ghana. 

IASA has members from 70 countries representing a broad palette of audiovisual archives and personal interests which are distinguished by their focus on particular subjects and areas, e.g. archives for all sorts of musical recordings, historic, literary, folkloric and ethnological sound documents, theater productions and oral history interviews, bio-acoustics, environmental and medical sounds, linguistic and dialect recordings, as well as recordings for forensic purposes. 

Rebekah McFarland, archivist for the Sisters of the Living Word, and Nancy Freeman, director at the Women and Leadership Archives at Loyola University Chicago, received honorable mentions in SAA's 2018 Archives Short Fiction Contest! Take a reading break and check out Rebekah's "Ester Jones Diaz", and Nancy's "Risk Versus Benefit"!

We're always looking to highlight the work our members are doing. Let us know your or your colleagues' news at info@chicagoarchivists.org or by emailing the co-chairs of the Outreach and Member Engagement Subcommittee: Brittan Nannenga (brittan.nannenga@northwestern.edu) and Jill Waycie (j-waycie@northwestern.edu). 

Image description: Audra V. Adomenas, in bright green sweater, with IASA colleagues at University of Ghana, Department of African studies. To the right of Audra is Lindsay Kistler Mattock, University of Iowa.