On the 21st of October 2019, the PCOM members attended the second meeting of the year in Adelaide, Australia for discussing the last updates of the ICA-PCOM professional programmes.
For the second time of the year, the PCOM members (with a few observers in attendance) gathered in Adelaide, Australia for discussing the latest updates on the ICA-PCOM professional programmes. The meeting was part of the ICA governance meetings scheduled from October 19th to the 22nd, which were followed by the ICA annual conference #DTAAdelaide2019. The meeting was focused on the activities of ICA-PCOM professional programmes developed in 2019, priorities for 2020, and PCOM membership.
ICA-PCOM Professional Programmes
In 2019, the ICA Africa Programme was delighted to announce the development of two training sessions in the anglophone and francophone archival community in Africa. The first session, held in Gaborone, Botswana in early August, was designed by Dr. James Lowry (Secretary of the ICA Africa Programme) and Margaret Crockett (ICA’s Training Officer) as a Digital Records Curation Programme (DRCP) – Study School for Archival Educators. The second session, hosted in Dakar, Senegal in late October, was set up by Dr. Basma Makhlouf Shabou (Haute école de gestion in Geneva, Switzerland), following the success of the training course, Preservation of Digital Business Records for Professionals, held in Yaoundé from November 29-30, 2018.
Regarding the New Professionals Programme, the PCOM members had the chance to personally met the 2019 cohort, constituted by a transnational group of young professionals: Forget Chaterera-Zambuko (Zimbabwe); Angela Kim Schilling, Australia/Thailand); Laura Ioana Luca (Romania/United Kingdom); Maria Papanikolaou (Egypt/Greece); Anne-Flore Laloë (France/Germany); Priyanka Kaushik (India).
New Professionals 2019 – 22 October, 2019. From left to right: Angela Kim Schilling, Forget Chaterera-Zambuko, Maria Papanikolaou, Anne-Flore Laloë, Laura Ioana Luca, Normand Charbonneau, Sharon Smith, Priyanka Kaushik. Photo taken by Christine Trembleau.
The summary of professional activities was closed by Margaret Crockett, ICA Training Officer, who presented the results of the two first online courses delivered by the ICA to its membership and extended archival community. The first online course, “Introduction to Records Management”, was launched in early May, followed by the course “Understanding and Using the Universal Declaration on Archives”, which was opened for registrations last September.
PCOM 2020
The VP Programme, Normand Charbonneau, emphasized that the development of the Learning Management System and the work of the Training Officer will be part of the priorities of PCOM for 2020. In addition to this, and as part of the support to the ongoing ICA-PCOM professional programmes, the attention in 2020 will be focused on:
- The transition in the Africa Programme Steering Committee and the second year of the training activities in both French and English-speaking countries,
- The involvement of PCOM members in the general activities of run by the VP Programme and the Programme Officer,
- The possibility of expanding the New Professionnal Programme in the context of the ICA Congress Abu Dhabi 2020 to support the development of the profession and the archival capacity in the region.
PCOM will be also be involved in the funding of the professional activities generated by the Regional branches, Sections, and Expert Groups, and in the development of a more transparent process to designate the chairs and members of Expert Groups as well as PCOM members.
As a first step for this latter action, the PCOM and EB members, Laura Millar, Desi Pratiwi, Meg Phillips, Vilde Ronge, and Deborah Jenkins, formed a working group to reflect and work together to formulate proposals on PCOM’s membership and members selection.
The next PCOM meeting will be held in mid-April in Kew, UK. In this first session of the year, we expected to continue the conversation around diversity and engagement of the ICA/PCOM membership, the updates on the ICA-PCOM ongoing programmes by the first quarter of the year, and the professional programme of the ICA Congress Abu Dhabi 2020.