The Association for Documentary Editing will host a Seminar on Critical Issues—Advocacy on Thursday, 4 August 2016, from 2:10 to 3:45 p.m. at the Astor Crowne Plaza Hotel, 739 Canal Street, New Orleans, Louisiana. The seminar is offered in conjunction with the ADE’s 38th Annual Meeting, as a plenary session on the opening afternoon.

The 2016 ADE Seminar on Critical Issues—Advocacy is a collaborative learning exercise in which a panel of experts with varying experience will lead a general discussion on an important issue facing the documentary editing discipline. The seminar will approach the concept of advocacy in a broad manner: advocacy targeting Congress in both Washington and district offices, advocacy targeting state legislatures and humanities councils, advocacy targeting local audiences, advocacy targeting host institutions and administrators.

The goal is to help documentary editors learn how to promote their projects and their discipline to a variety of influential audiences in a polished and proactive manner. The seminar will address such questions as: What individuals or organizations ought to be educated about the value of documentary editing? How are they to be approached? What arguments might appeal to them? What strategies or concerns does the experience of both panelists and participants suggest?

As the different scenarios to be explored in the seminar on advocacy lend themselves to different speakers, we are assembling a panel of five experts. Each panelist will make a 10-minute presentation on their niche—Congress, states, local audiences, or host institutions—and then participate in the general discussion.

The panelists will include:

• Lee White, Executive Director, National Coalition for History
• Mary Jo Binker, Consulting Editor, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project, George Washington University
• J. Kent Calder, Acquisitions Editor, University of Oklahoma Press
• Joshua J. Smith, Associate Editor, Franz Boas Papers: Documentary Edition, University of Western Ontario
• Thomas P. Slaughter, Director, Seward Family Archive Project, University of Rochester

Lee White, who guided the design of the seminar, will also chair the panel.

The ADE Seminar on Critical Issues is funded in part by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), an affiliate of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).