2014 Election and Candidate Information

Election Results are in: http://www2.archivists.org/groups/metadata-and-digital-object-roundtable/2014-election-results


This year we are electing a junior Co-Chair (2 years service, plus a possible additional year as Steering Committee member) and a steering committee member (3 years).  Additionally, we will be filling a single-year slot on the Steering Ccommittee as one member is leaving early (the new person can then run for re-election after a year).

Voting for Co-Chair and Steering Committee membership is separate; votes in one area do not apply to the other.  For those candidates running for both positions, the one with the most votes for Co-Chair will be dropped from consideration for the Steering Committee.  

We will also be voting on a few bylaw changes (see below).

 



Candidates for Co-Chair:  PLEASE VOTE FOR ONE!


Pam Mitchem

Pamela Mitchem is Assistant Professor and Preservation and Digital Projects Archivist for Special Collections at Appalachian State University, a position she has held for the past four years. Prior to that she was Assistant Archivist in the University Archives at Appalachian State for ten years. She has an MA in Appalachian Studies and an EdS in Higher Education, both from Appalachian State University.

Pam is interested in digital humanities as it applies to Appalachian studies research, crowdsourcing for metadata, and sustainable metadata workflows.

Pam is interested in either the Co-Chair or the Steering Committee position.You may vote for her for Co-Chair, steering committee, or both. The elected Co-Chair will be dropped from consideration from the Steering Committee.

 


 

Kari Smith

Kari R. Smith  is the digital archivist for the MIT Institute Archives and Special Collections.  Prior to joining MIT Libraries, she headed the Visual Resource Collections for the History of Art at Univ. Michigan, Ann Arbor.  She has a long-standing interest in and professional engagement with using, developing, and promoting metadata for archival, special and visual material collections. Her professional work with digital material spans two decades in a variety of organizational settings.

"My interest in serving on the MDOR steering committee stems from my desire to be more engaged with SAA members and to give back to the Society.  I have been actively involved in using, developing, and advocating for metadata in the service of description, management, and preservation of analog and digital material since my first electronic records position in 1994. I have been professionally engaged with the Visual resources Association (chair, data standards committee and co-chair, embedded metadata working group) and serves on the technical program committees for the Society of Image Science and Technology annual conference (Archiving) and the SAA Research Forum. One of the roles that I would bring to the MDOR is that of outreach and inreach.  My engagement with communities and societies outside of SAA and the archival communities allows me to share external perspectives and efforts that intersect or might inform the MDOR members’ work and the roundtable’s engagement."

Kari is interested in either the Co-Chair or the Steering Committee position.You may vote for her for Co-Chair, steering committee, or both. The elected Co-Chair will be dropped from consideration from the Steering Committee.

 



 

Candidates for Steering Committee: PLEASE VOTE FOR ONE!


Tyler ClineTyler Cline is the digital archivist at the University of Wyoming’s American Heritage Center. He oversees the born-digital and mass digitization programs. Previously, Tyler was a processing archivist in Anchorage, Alaska. He received his MA in Public History with a concentration in Archives.

Tyler's interests are in improving the technical capacities to preserve bitstreams through preservation metadata, migration to open formats and emulation, as well as the role digital objects play in preserving public memory.

 


 

Stephen Fletcher

Stephen J. Fletcher is the North Carolina Collection Photographic Archivist, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in Wilson Library. Before his current position at UNC (appointed in 2003) he has worked as the Assistant Curator and then Curator of Photographs at the California Historical Society (1983 to 1988), and Curator of Visual Collections at the Indiana Historical Society (1988 to 2002). In 1988 he also worked as a consultant to the Sierra Club, organizing and providing access through a Hypercard database to its library's photographic collection.

"For the past several years I have been working along with other members of the Visual Materials Section to build greater awareness within the section about the issues unique to born-digital photographs.  As a digital photographer and a photographic archivist, I have a basic understanding of how photographers create born-digital photographs and their workflows, and the types of embedded metadata they and their cameras create that differentiates born-digital photographs from other born-digital records.  My interest in becoming a MDOR Steering Committee Member-at-large is to serve as a liaison between the roundtable and the Visual Materials Section so we can learn and share from each other efforts.   Working at UNC with seasoned archivists and software developers, it has been extremely useful for us to work together and share experiences while acquiring and processing with our first major acquisition of born digital photographs.  I hope to bring that same sense of mutual benefit to the MDOR Steering Committee."

 


 

Jane Zhang is an assistant professor at the Department of Library and Information Science, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC. She holds a PhD from Simmons and a joint MAS/MLIS from University of British Columbia, Canada. Jane previously worked at Harvard University Archives and University of Calgary Archives.

“I would be interested in having an opportunity to serve MDOR members and work with them to explore how archival materials can be best described and represented in the digital environment, how new metadata schemas can work along with traditional archival description standards, and how digital content can be made more accessible while its archival context can be preserved.”

 


 

Nick ConnizzoNick Connizzo currently serves as Digital Librarian in the Special Collections Research Center at George Washington's University's Gelman Library. He leads the library's digitization program and coordinates their digital archival activities, including digital preservation, description, and access. Nick serves on the Education Committee of the PBCore Metadata standard, is Secretary of the UMD iSchool Alumni Association, and holds an MLS from the University of Maryland and a BA in Classics from Dartmouth College.  

"First, thank you for considering me as a candidate for Steering Committee Member. Since I graduated from library school I've been immersed in the archives world and exposed to all aspects of the archival process, but what piqued my interest most was the continued (necessary) development of standards and best practices related to the long-term preservation and access of digital materials. Of particular interest is the adoption of linked data modeling in an archival context - something that we as a community are working on, but still trail behind our librarian colleagues and the information management community. I'm part of GW's BIBFRAME testbed team,which allows me to engage with the cataloging community, and I truly believe that the way we describe archival materials is going to change drastically in the next few years, especially due to the expected massive influx of born-digital materials.. Being a part of MDOR gives me the opportunity to help lead the discussion and ensure that our core values (provenance, context, accessibility) are preserved in a rapidly changing landscape. Our job at MDOR is to ensure that we stay at the forefront of research and technology in these areas, and to help condense and disseminate these innovations to the rest of the community. I've got the technical and administrative experience to do both of these, so I'd love the chance to try my hand at it!"

 


 

Rebecca GoldmanRebecca Goldman is the Media and Digital Services Librarian at La Salle University, where she oversees the University Archives and digital projects. She's the founder and past chair of the Students and New Archives Professionals (SNAP) Roundtable, and currently serves on the Steering Committee for the College and University Archives Section.

 "One does not simply walk into MDOR's Steering Committee--here's why I'd be excited to serve. Like many of you, I'm responsible for completing digital projects with limited resources, and I'm interested in ways that MDOR can better support smaller repositories. I also believe that roundtables should be an active, engaging presence within SAA, not only at the Annual Meeting but throughout the year. When you're as big as MDOR, encouraging wider participation can be a challenge, but it's a challenge worth taking on."

 

 


 

Arcadia Falcone

Arcadia Falcone: "As Discovery Metadata Librarian at Yale University, I focus on transforming and enhancing metadata to improve user discovery. Previously I worked on metadata for digital collections at the Harry Ransom Center and the Bancroft Library. I hold a MSIS with a specialization in Archives, Metadata, and Digital Collections from the University of Texas at Austin.

"My experience spans metadata for physical, digitized, born-digital, and hybrid archival collections, delivered in systems ranging from primarily archives-centric (the Online Archive of California) to encompassing all kinds of library resources (Yale's Blacklight installation, currently in development). In dealing with archival metadata across such different contexts for description and discovery, the technical skills and tools to transform metadata programmatically have become increasingly important. If elected to the Steering Committee, I would encourage MDOR to consider how it might further its goals of promoting collaboration and communication among its members in this area: for example, by expanding the MDOR resource guides to include a space for sharing tools, scripts, stylesheets, etc., that could provide practical models for how these strategies apply to the specific challenges of archival metadata. Such resources could consolidate effort in addressing common issues, offer support for archivists seeking to develop their technical skills, and showcase what MDOR members have accomplished. I would welcome the opportunity to contribute my efforts and enthusiasm to forwarding MDOR's mission, and bringing benefits to its members and the profession."
  
  

 

Pam Mitchem

Pamela Mitchem is Assistant Professor and Preservation and Digital Projects Archivist for Special Collections at Appalachian State University, a position she has held for the past four years. Prior to that she was Assistant Archivist in the University Archives at Appalachian State for ten years. She has an MA in Appalachian Studies and an EdS in Higher Education, both from Appalachian State University.

Pam is interested in digital humanities as it applies to Appalachian studies research, crowdsourcing for metadata, and sustainable metadata workflows.

Pam is interested in either the Co-Chair or the Steering Committee position. You may vote for her for Co-Chair, steering committee, or both. The elected Co-Chair will be dropped from consideration from the Steering Committee.

 


 

Kari Smith Kari R. Smith  is the digital archivist for the MIT Institute Archives and Special Collections.  Prior to joining MIT Libraries, she headed the Visual Resource Collections for the History of Art at Univ. Michigan, Ann Arbor.  She has a long-standing interest in and professional engagement with using, developing, and promoting metadata for archival, special and visual material collections. Her professional work with digital material spans two decades in a variety of organizational settings.

"My interest in serving on the MDOR steering committee stems from my desire to be more engaged with SAA members and to give back to the Society.  I have been actively involved in using, developing, and advocating for metadata in the service of description, management, and preservation of analog and digital material since my first electronic records position in 1994. I have been professionally engaged with the Visual resources Association (chair, data standards committee and co-chair, embedded metadata working group) and serves on the technical program committees for the Society of Image Science and Technology annual conference (Archiving) and the SAA Research Forum. One of the roles that I would bring to the MDOR is that of outreach and inreach.  My engagement with communities and societies outside of SAA and the archival communities allows me to share external perspectives and efforts that intersect or might inform the MDOR members’ work and the roundtable’s engagement."

 Kari is interested in either the Co-Chair or the Steering Committee position. You may vote for her for Co-Chair, steering committee, or both. The elected Co-Chair will be dropped from consideration from the Steering Committee.




 

Bylaws changes

We are proposing three changes to the MDOR Bylaws, to correct oversights.  

1) These two statements are alternatives;  please select only one.

  • In section IV. Governance C. Nominations, after the first sentence, add:  "MDOR Co-Chairs may be nominated from the general membership or the steering committee."
  • In section IV. Governance C. Nominations, after the first sentence, add: "Only MDOR steering committee members may be nominated for MDOR Co-Chair positions." 

Please vote yay or nay on each of these:

2) In section IV. Governance D. Elections, change "The Co-Chairs are to be elected annually by the membership in an electronic election." to:  "Co-Chairs and Steering Committee members are to be elected annually by the membership in an electronic election."

3) In section IV. Governance E. Appointments, add after the first sentence: "These leadership roles shall have one-year (renewable) terms, as decided by a majority vote of the Steering Committee."