MAC Statement of Values: MAC's Commitment to its Membership and the Wider World

As an organization, MAC is committed to advancing the archival profession and community. Further, MAC's organizational commitment to social responsibility reflects the accountability, stewardship, transparency, fairness, professionalism, and balance that make up an individual archivist's core values. MAC’s values are clearly manifested in its meeting planning, programming, and publishing processes.

Meeting planning

In considering host cities and meeting/hotel venues, MAC (represented by members who propose a potential meeting venue, the Meeting Planner, the Local Arrangements Committee, and MAC Council) considers that its primary responsibility to the MAC membership is to provide a convenient, cost-effective, and stimulating meeting environment. MAC will do its best to ensure that meetings occur in venues that reflect the organization’s values, but it is not MAC’s intention or mission to arbitrate or take sides in labor disputes, and its decisions do not reflect support or disrespect for one side or another. That said, MAC recognizes and endorses the following areas of social responsibility relating to meeting planning:

Responsibility of proposers of potential host cities:

To gather and provide information (to the best of their ability) about the site’s living wage ordinances, environmental programs and policies, and the status of major/potential hotels vis à vis unionized staff, and present/past labor disputes

Responsibility of MAC Meeting Planner:

To include in RFP and/or hotel contract language stating MAC’s values and requesting potential hotels to address fair labor practice in their proposals to MAC [see suggested language below]
To consider hotels’ labor practices as a factor in making final decisions
To notify MAC Council of issues (past, current, potential) with short-listed hotels

Responsibility of Council, Meeting Planner, and LAC:

To make available to MAC membership proof of MAC’s due diligence during the hotel contract process
To keep membership informed if issues arise after the contract is signed

Suggested Language for RFPs and contracts:

"The core values of the Midwest Archives Conference as an organization include accountability, stewardship, transparency, fairness, and professionalism. MAC will give preference to vendors who endorse practices that comply with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) or equivalent standards, and will take vendors' commitment to social responsibility into consideration as a factor in making final decisions."

Programming and Publishing

Two other aspects of MAC activities also demonstrate MAC’s values in terms of commitment to sustainability, diversity, and openness to new technology and global perspectives: program planning (for workshops, sessions, symposia, and keynote speakers, etc.), and publishing (solicitation and selection of articles and topics for the newsletter and journal).

Program planners and editors should work to elicit presentation and publications topics which:

Focus on problem-solving strategies, methods, research, trends, and tools that enable us (and demonstrate our ability) to sustain our archives and the archival community
Address our local and global responsibilities for archival preservation
Creatively engage and report on new technologies and social dynamics
Include and address a diverse membership with sessions and articles that appeal to a range of audiences, (for example, newcomers and veterans, processors and administrators, practitioners from large and from small repositories, etc.).
Examine how a global perspective and the international archival context enrich the professional discussion.

Approved by MAC Council, April 18, 2013