[1] The society supports its members and the archival profession through strong publication and professional workshop programs and semi-annual meetings.

The tension and debate between the two fundamental functions of archives would continue into the 1950s, spilling into elements like elections and where to hold annual meetings.

In 1942, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected as an honorary member of the SAA due to his commitment to archiving federal, state and local government documents.

These committees helped legitimize the society, which aided them in a 1956 dispute with National Association of State Libraries over the differences between their two professions.

This eventually lead to a joint committee between the American Library Associate and SAA to discuss the nuances and differences of the two professions.

Coming out of the 1960s, there was a large movement of activist archivists, with members taking a greater interest in political and social issues.

[2] Social historians like Howard Zinn and Sam Bass Warner brought their views to the annual SAA meeting 1971, challenging archivists to re-examine policies and assumptions.

[5] The struggle for creating a professional identity continued as standards for education programs, certification, and institutional evaluation became the forefront of discussion.

A Task Force on Goals and Priorities, created in 1982, aimed to amend those issues, attempting to unify the organization under one professional umbrella.

EAD is an XML Document Type Definition and a standard for encoding archival finding aids, allowing them to be made accessible online.

[7] In November 2017, SAA released a Strategic plan for 2018–2020, which outlined four major goal areas for the future: advocating for archives and archivists, enhancing professional growth, advancing the field, and meeting members' needs.

"[10]Also in the report, "no person should be nominated as a candidate for an SAA office who, in her or his job, flagrantly espouses or practices discrimination in regard to race, sex, nationality, or political or religious ideology.

[9] In 1981, archivists Diana Lachateñeré and Paula Williams drafted a resolution for the task force and members of the SAA approved the group.

[9] Diana Lachateñeré was chosen as the SAA representative for the Joint Committee on Minority Recruitment, replacing Phil Mason.

Some of their recommendations were to:Many of these goals were met and the creation of the task force proved immediately to be a vehicle for broader minority participation in the SAA, especially in leadership.

Nine SAA members helped to found the roundtable: Diana Lachatanere, Wilda Logan, Carol Rudisell, Karen Jefferson, Ervin Jordan, Clifford Muse, Thomas Battle, Jo Ellen El-Bashir, and Brenda Banks.

In less than a year, Battle returned to the SAA with a high percentage of popularity and interest in the newsletter among not just African Americans but all archivists.

In 2012, a directory was listed on the AACR website including only the name, job title and contact information of the archivist.

Several members of the roundtable, including Wilda Logan, helped to establish the Harold T. Pinkett Minority Student Award in 1993.

[13] The award is sponsored by the AACR and funded through the SAA, named after Harold T. Pinkett who was the first African American archivist to serve at the National Archives.

[9] From this came the creation of the Task Force on Diversity, chaired by Brenda Banks with members Anne Difffendal, John Fleckner, Susan Fox, Karen Jefferson, Deborah King (Burns), Joan Krizak, and Kathleen Roe.

SAA believes that these commitments are essential to the effective pursuit of the archival mission “to ensure the identification, preservation, and use the nation's historical record.

New ideas would likely be stimulated in areas that include, but certainly are not limited to, donor relations (for instance, how to approach and document members of growing communities of color most effectively) and reference/access (determining how to improve services as user groups become increasingly diverse, or how to attract a more diverse pool of researchers if society's changing demographics are not reflected.

It functions as a catalyst for new diversity-related initiatives, developed in coordination with various SAA entities, and as the organization's "conscience" in monitoring, evaluating, advocating, and reporting on matters pertaining to the diversity of archival practitioners and documentation.

[10]In 2007, Elizabeth W. Adkins gave her presidential address at the SAA annual meeting in Chicago and highlighted the importance of diversity.

Adkins compares this with the national population, which is about 25% of nonwhite people, claiming "both SAA and the profession have a very long way to go to achieve racial and ethnic diversity.

Some of the approved motions on diversity from these meetings are:At the 2014 Conference, Bergis Jules and Edward Summers conceived the idea of a set of tools to work with Twitter data.

[18] The overall membership population of women had grown since the SAA's inception, but few had risen to the positions of president, officer, or council member.

[22] In 2000 and 2001, the WAR Steering Committee created a survey to analyze the relationship between women archivists and the archival profession.

[23] The survey found that most of the members (77.1%) came from East of the Rocky Mountains and 50.2% represented the academic sector as professional staff (69.6%) or archivist (53.2%).