Oral History Section 2013 Candidate Bios

Oral History Section 2013 Candidate Bios

Vice Chair/Chair Elect Candidate

Bertram Lyons
American Folklife Center

Steering Committee Candidates

Sarah-Jane M. Poindexter
University of Louisville Archives and Special Collections

Alan Stein
Consortium of Oral History Educators 

Bergis Jules
The George Washington University

Linda Meyer
Colorado State University Libraries 

Beth Ann Koelsch
University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Vice Chair/Chair Elect

Betram Lyons

Bertram Lyons, Certified Archivist, works as Folklife Specialist and Digital Assets Manager with the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, where he supports archival projects such as the Veteran's History Project, StoryCorps, the Occupational Folklore Project, and many other oral historical and folklore projects in the collections of the Library. Previously he served seven years as Archivist at the Alan Lomax Archive (Association for Cultural Equity) in New York and two years as Media-Preservation Specialist at the University of Kansas Libraries. He is a member of the Society of American Archivists (appointee to the Membership Committee), the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (Editor and Executive Board Member), and the Association of Recorded Sound Collections. Over the past seven years he has published articles regularly on archival principles and practices and he presents research at professional and academic conferences, such as the Society of American Archivists, the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives, and the Society for Ethnomusicology. Lyons received a Master's degree in Museum Studies and American Studies from the University of Kansas. 

Personal statement: Since 2002, my work as an archivist has been steeped in collections of oral history, folklore, and other forms of intangible cultural heritage, such as ritual, song, and spoken word. I value the work of the Oral History Section because it is situated as an alternative voice for the validity of oral documentation and human memory in a Society that stems from a tradition of written documentation and physical evidence. Not only do I applaud the Section's willingness to develop projects to involve SAA members and fellow archivists as oral historians, but I am excited to be a part of an SAA Section that reminds its colleagues that not all that is valuable is written, and not all that is valuable will be written: history is spoken by the people who live it. I would be honored to serve as Vice Chair of the Oral History Section of the Society of American Archivists.

Steering Committee Members (2)

Sarah-Jane M. Poindexter

Sarah-Jane Poindexter is Archivist of Manuscripts and Co-director of the Oral History Center at the University of Louisville Archives and Special Collections.  In this position she administers over 2,000 oral history interviews, consults with individuals and community organizations conducting oral history projects, and initiates projects which document the history of the greater Louisville area as well as the University of Louisville. Currently, she is planning a project to document and preserve the history of Louisville’s GLBTQ community. This project strives to address the absence of information in the regional historical record regarding the voices, experiences, and history of this under-documented community.

Sarah-Jane has a Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from the University of Louisville and a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science from Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts.  As part of her graduate training, Sarah-Jane conducted a series of interviews with WWII conscientious objectors, thus igniting her interest in and appreciation of oral history.  She served as an editor for the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky from 2008-2009.  She has also participated in and consulted on numerous private oral history projects, including work by the Kentuckians for the Commonwealth to document its thirty-year history.

Alan Stein

Al Stein is Past Chair of the SAA Oral History Section and OHA Education Committee. He is regular contributor to Oral History Review (the peer-review journal of the OHA) and Preparing the Next Generation of Oral Historians: An Anthology of Oral History Education (2007). He recently co-authored “Oral History, Folklore and Katrina” with Dr. Gene B. Preuss for the Routledge Press anthology There Is No Such thing as a Natural Disaster: Race, Class and Hurricane Katrina. That essay received the OHA Best Article Award in 2010, and is available at: http://www.louisianafolklife.org/LT/Articles_Essays/LFMoral.html

Stein is also the recipient of the SAA Spotlight Award in 2007 for his efforts to promote greater public awareness of the role of archivists and their role in cultural preservation, especially during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. He has presented at numerous conferences, and interviewed William J. Maher (Past-President of SAA) for the SAA Oral History Section Project, directed by Lauren Kata. Stein is currently Director of the Consortium of Oral History Educators.

Bergis Jules

Bergis Jules is the University Archivist at The George Washington University in Washington D.C.  Previously he was the Project Director and Archivist on two grant projects for the Black Metropolis Research Consortium at the University of Chicago. Bergis completed an M.L.S. with a Specialization in Archives and Records Management and an M.A. in African American and African Diaspora studies at Indiana University, Bloomington.  He currently serves as chair of the Society of American Archivists' Diversity Committee.

Linda Meyer

Linda Meyer grew up in Fort Collins, Colorado, and earned undergraduate and master’s degrees in history at Colorado State University. During her graduate studies, she collected oral histories and worked as a research assistant to a professor who authored a comprehensive history of the university.

In her current position as archivist for the Agricultural and Natural Resources Archive in the Archives and Special Collections department of Colorado State University Libraries, Ms. Meyer continues to collect and curate oral histories related to the agrarian and resource heritage of the state.  She has published articles in the Journal of Archival Organization,Colorado Libraries, and the Journal of Western Archives, and is a past president of the Society of Rocky Mountain Archivists.

Beth Ann Koelsch

Beth Ann Koelsch has been the curator of the Betty H. Carter Women Veterans Historical Project (WVHP) at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro since 2008.  The WVHP traces the contributions of women to the U.S. military since World War II and consists of almost 550 individual women veterans' collections that include 350 oral histories. The oral histories are transcribed and the transcriptions are posted online (http://library.uncg.edu/dp/wv/). The WVHP current collecting focus is on oral histories from UNC Greensboro student veterans and local community veterans, but the WVHP’s holdings include artifacts, uniforms, photographs, letters, diaries, scrapbooks, ephemera, and published materials.  Koelsch previously worked as a project archivist at the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture at Duke University, Durham, NC.  She received her Masters of Library Science from the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in 2007 and her undergraduate degree from Duke University in 1990.