11 Earn Digital Archives Specialist Certificates from SAA

Congratulations to the 11 new Digital Archives Specialists (DAS). These archivists, who represent a variety of repositories from around the country, earned a DAS Certificate from the Society of American Archivists (SAA) after completing required coursework within twenty-four months and passing comprehensive examinations in April 2018.

The innovative DAS Curriculum, developed by experts in the field of digital archives, is structured around seven core competencies: understanding the nature of records in electronic form; defining for a variety of audiences the requirements, roles, and responsibilities related to digital archives; formulating strategies and tactics for appraisal, description, management, organization, and preservation; integrating technology to provide access to digital collections; planning for the integration of new tools for successive generations of technology; curating, storing, and retrieving original masters and access copies of digital archives; and providing dependable organization and service to designated communities across networks. Participants complete nine required courses from four tiers addressing these competencies.

The new Digital Archives Specialists are: Deborah Gayle, NARA; Mary Goolsby, Baylor University; Heather Hershey, University of Colorado Boulder; David Kingma, Gonzaga University; Matthew Kruse, University of Florida; Zachary Liebhaber, University of California, Santa Barbara; Jamie McFarlane, Monarch Library System, Wisconsin; Constance Merz; Jade Snelling, Virginia Tech; Brian Song, Leatherby Libraries, Chapman University; and Lydia Tang, Michigan State University.

A total of 395 people have earned Digital Archives Specialist certificates since the program began in 2011. For more information, visit www2.archivists.org/prof-education/das or contact SAA Education (education@archivists.org).