Published: October 27, 2025 by Rea Sandhu

This past August, I had the honor of attending the annual Society of American Archivists conference and presenting a poster for the first time. With the conference being located in Anaheim this year, I was able to attend thanks to an iSchool grant that covered my stay and registration fees. 

As it was my first time attending and presenting, I was feeling pretty nervous prior to the event. However, I had a lot of support and encouragement from my former internship supervisors, Mantra Roy and Carli Lowe, whom I confided in and whose support allowed me to gain a lot of confidence prior to the conference. I also signed up for SAA’s Navigator program for first-time attendees, in which I was paired with Jacqueline Devereaux, a professional in the field who also provided me with great advice about presenting and taking breaks during the conference week as needed. 

On Monday, August 25th, the first official day of the conference, I headed to the Exhibit Hall to set up my poster. My poster, titled “Exploring the skills needed to effectively run an oral history archive,” showcased my perspective as a student assistant/intern for the “Desis of Silicon Valley Speak: An Oral History” archive held in SJSU’s Digital Collections. I got to highlight my experience working with metadata, editing transcripts, and even getting to co-conduct one of the interviews, all while advocating for more BIPOC representation within archival spaces.

Since I would be presenting in the late afternoon and didn’t know exactly what to expect of the session yet, I decided to take it slow during the day as I attended a couple of sessions and took a nice, long lunch break to ease into the conference.

When I finally got to the poster session, I was able to chat with peers around me, which helped to alleviate some of the nerves. By the time the session started, there were so many people coming and going, stopping by to ask questions. Seeing their enthusiasm and interest to learn more about my project made me even more excited to talk about it and discuss my work with them. Before I knew it, time flew by quick! 

That same night, I also attended the iSchool’s networking event in the hotel lobby and got to meet a lot of new people, ranging from new and current students to alumni. This made for some fun interactions and conversations, which was a great way to end the first day.

On Tuesday morning, I met with my navigator Jacqueline in person during the coffee chat hour. We had a wonderful conversation, and it was so nice to connect with her over my interest in born-digital archiving work and get to ask her questions about her current job and career. I highly recommend other first-time conference attendees to sign up for the Navigator program as a way to ease into the event! After meeting with Jacqueline, I attended “Plenary 2: Resisting Erasure, Building Trust, and Cultivating Safety and Equity,” which was hands down one of my favorite sessions from the conference. Hearing the panelists speak about issues in community archiving with all their knowledge and expertise was very inspirational and made me feel not only excited, but relieved to learn about all the work that was being done to prosper such archival efforts. 

After a quick lunch, I headed to my second poster session of the conference, which went by smoothly. I was definitely feeling more confident during this session following the first day. A couple of my iSchool classmates also came and visited, which was very reassuring and comforting. For my last session of the day, I attended “Emerging Voices in Archives” which featured a panel of current students and graduates. This was another very inspiring session, as getting to see fellow peer research made me feel more excited about the prospect of getting to do more interesting work in the future.

On Wednesday, I got to relax a bit more after my poster presentations were over and really take the time to enjoy the last few sessions of the conference. I also made sure to reach out to my classmates so we could link up during the sessions and catch up before the end of the conference. While it was hard to pick from the diverse list of sessions to view, I attended the ones that interested me the most, such as “Sustaining Queer Archival Projects in a Repressive Political Climate,” “Indigenous Archival Sovereignty: The Protocols at Twenty, and Global Perspectives,” and “Minding the Gap: Oral History in the Archives.” These were all very informative sessions, and I felt very grateful to learn from so many professionals in the field about their research and the practical ways they are making change in their communities. 

Overall, I had an amazing first conference experience. After starting my MLIS degree last year, I knew I wanted to join SAA and get a feel for the field myself, but I certainly did not expect to be doing a poster presentation at the Annual Meeting while gaining so much strength and interest in my research and work. Despite feeling a little bit of imposter syndrome leading up to the event, I was able to enjoy the fruits of my labor and come to acknowledge my own work while celebrating it alongside my peers and other professionals in the field. I’m definitely looking forward to attending again next year!

To anyone else looking to expand their horizons and opportunities at such conferences, I recommend going for it and making the most out of these experiences in grad school. Remember — you can’t always do it all alone, so finding mentors in the field to help guide you to your victories can be a major game changer.

Editor’s Note: The SJSU iSchool highly encourages students to attend professional conferences but also realizes that it can be cost prohibitive. Travel grants are available to eligible students to help lessen the financial burden and increase conference participation. iSchool student Rea Sandhu​ received one of these travel grants.