More Changes for SAA Roundtables

I received an email today on the SAA Archival History Roundtable listserv that SAA Council had voted this past week to remove the two roundtable limit for members. This is a good move. Membership in some roundtables should soar now, though I am unclear after looking at the list of which other roundtables I might want to be a member of.

This one topic of protest at last year's leader orientation at the SAA Annual Meeting in San Francisco. No one seemed to know of this rule, or so it seemed, until it was brought up by someone big in SAA.

SAA came out with new guidelines for roundtables about two years ago and there were some provisions in there that passed and later on, when someone pointed them out to the leaders, were contested. The first was the 50 member minimum to sustain a roundtable - gotten rid of at the SAA Council's February meeting. This is the second one (two roundtable limit) and I wonder what will be the third?

I have an inkling it will be the election of a convener/chair every year. To my knowledge, few roundtables are doing this. The Lone Arrangers Roundtable has co-chairs that are elected every other year, one one year the other the next. This does not comply with the guidelines now in place. The Archival History Roundtable has a vice-chair/chair-elect, as if she will assume the chairmanship without a separate election. I wonder how many others are the same? Will there be more changes back to the "old" ways? Will the new guidelines be replaced one provision at a time to be exactly like the old guidelines were?