Fellow: Audra Eagle Yun

Audra Eagle Yun, head of special collections and archives and university archivist at the University of California Irvine (UC Irvine) Libraries, will be inducted as a Fellow of the Society of American Archivists (SAA) during an awards ceremony at the Annual Meeting of SAA in Chicago, IL. The distinction of Fellow is the highest honor bestowed on individuals by SAA and is awarded for outstanding contributions to the archives profession.

Eagle Yun, who holds a master of library and information science degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, began her career as a local history librarian and archivist in North Carolina, later serving as an archivist and then head of special collections and archives and university archivist at UC Irvine. Throughout her career, Eagle Yun has dedicated herself to the work of community-centered archives practice, advancements in archival collection management, and nurturing leadership in the field.

She co-led a research grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) establishing quantitative and qualitative findings that articulated how participatory, student-centered approaches in building archives can transform engagement between ethnic studies, community-based archives, and academic libraries. She currently co-leads a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to cultivate commitment among higher education institutions to community-centered archives approaches, solidifying the ability and responsibility of academic libraries to engage critically and contribute to social justice-focused scholarship, training, pedagogy, and partnerships in their communities. Her collaborative work has made UC Irvine a leader in furthering community-centered archives practice.

Eagle Yun’s writing stands out for its massive contributions to the archival profession. She has written widely on community archives practice, archival description, reducing backlogs, and ethical collection building. In 2021, SAA published Eagle Yun’s Archival Accessioning, a seminal work on a core component of archival processing. As editor, she provides a clear introduction to the practices and use of accessioning and brings together ten other voices to provide new perspectives and exercises. Eagle Yun is also a coauthor of “Guidelines for Efficient Archival Processing in the University of California Libraries” (2012; 2020) as well as a contributor to the 2019 Statement of Principles for SAA’s Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS). She is currently co-editing the third edition of Selecting and Appraising Archives and Manuscripts, part of SAA’s Fundamentals Series.

Eagle Yun’s committed and compassionate leadership is evident in the many projects she has undertaken. She participated in the 2013 cohort of the Archives Leadership Institute and currently serves as part of the Steering Committee for the 2024–2026 iteration of the program. Eagle Yun is also an active member of SAA. She has served on numerous committees and, in 2016, was elected to SAA Council. During the third year of her Council term, she served on the Executive Committee as well as the Working Group on Section Assessment and the A*CENSUS II Working Group. Presently, Eagle Yun is an active member of the Waldo Gifford Leland Award Subcommittee and numerous SAA sections. She often speaks at both national and regional archival meetings, providing insights into community-institutional partnerships, archival debt, and management of teams.

One supporter noted, “Audra is a talented archivist, a generous colleague, and a skilled theorist. She has an excellent grounding in archival theory and practice which has served to allow her to lead the call for evolution in the profession.” Another wrote, “Audra often serves as a guiding light in our profession. She is a person who truly lives her values, and it is inspiring to all of us around her to see her ethics and principles ignite her ambition.”

Fellow: Christina Zamon

Christina Zamon, head of Special Collections and Archives at Georgia State University, will be inducted as a Fellow of the Society of American Archivists (SAA)  during an awards ceremony at the Annual Meeting of SAA in Chicago, IL. The distinction of Fellow is the highest honor bestowed on individuals by SAA and is awarded for outstanding contributions to the archives profession.

 A multi-hyphenate archival practitioner who has held many roles—including solo archivist, department head, educator, fundraiser, author, and mentor—Zamon earned her MA and MLIS from the University of Maryland. To solidify her professional trajectory in archives, she became a Certified Archivist through the Academy of Certified Archivists in 2005. In 2013, she demonstrated her trailblazing mentality by becoming one of the first Digital Archives Specialists through SAA.

Alongside these qualifications, Zamon has spent more than twenty years as a professional archivist, over the course of which she has served in increasingly responsible and challenging positions. She dove into all aspects of the profession as a solo archivist at the National Press Club (NPC) in Washington, DC. In this role, she largely established the archives as an institution adhering to best practices as defined by SAA and other professional organizations. Notably, she was instrumental in finding and acquiring a suitable space to house the NPC's archival records. Following her successful tenure at NPC, Zamon took on the role of head of Archives and Special Collections at Emerson College in Boston. No longer a solo act, she supervised the work of two full-time staff members as well as student workers and interns. Her work on the American Comedy Archives was pivotal in the establishment of Emerson's new Comedic Arts Major and Comedy Center. Since 2016, Zamon has led the Special Collections and Archives (SCA) team at Georgia State University. Most recently, Zamon successfully sought and acquired nearly $350,000 in funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities for a new 9,800 sq. ft. media preservation facility, significantly improving the library's ability to preserve fragile formats. In the past five years, Zamon has helped to secure over $1 million in grant funds for the department, increasing accessibility and preservation of important cultural heritage records.

Zamon’s success is not just limited to these places. Many archivists were introduced to her and her care and concern for archivists and archival work through her seminal work, The Lone Arranger: Succeeding in a Small Repository, published in 2012 by SAA. Created to help archivists working in small, underfunded repositories succeed, the guidance and support articulated in the text transcends institution types and has been used to build and sustain archival programs across the country, thus making it one of the most impactful SAA publications. It’s been so well received that Zamon was asked for a completely revised and new edition that is now re-written, expanded, and retitled. Alone in the Stacks: Succeeding as a Solo Archivist was released in May 2024.

Since joining SAA in 2001, Zamon helped formalize the Lone Arrangers Section, now the Solo Archivists Section. Additionally, she has served as the College and University Archives Section’s vice-chair and chair and co-chair/chair of the Awards Committee. Through these positions, she worked to have the section be responsible for the “Campus Case Studies” peer review process. More recently, Zamon has served on the steering committee and is currently the co-chair/chair of the Archives Management Section. In the past, she founded the Boston Area Archives and Records Consortium, bringing together archivists to support and share resources. She is also an active member of the Academy of Certified Archivists and has served in a variety of capacities with the Society of Georgia Archivists (SGA). Zamon served as the president of SGA in 2023. During her term, she helped move their strategic plan forward and restructured the organization to improve efficiency.

Her high degree of initiative, resourcefulness, commitment, and service to the field and SAA is best described by one supporter who wrote, “Christina is an absolute powerhouse who gives her all for this amazing profession.” Another added: “It would be easy to list Christina’s many professional accomplishments, but it would not do justice to the outstanding and long-lasting impacts that Christina continues to make on the archives profession.”

Fellow: Elizabeth Joffrion

Elizabeth “Beth” Joffrion, director of archives and special collections at Western Washington University Libraries, will be inducted as a Fellow of the Society of American Archivists (SAA) during an awards ceremony at the Annual Meeting of SAA in Chicago, IL. The distinction of Fellow is the highest honor bestowed on individuals by SAA and is awarded for outstanding contributions to the archives profession.

Joffrion has been active in the archival profession since 1989. She holds an MLS with an archives focus from the University of Maryland, College Park and an MA in American history and archives and records management from the University of New Orleans. Joffrion has held professional positions at the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art; the National Portrait Gallery; North Carolina State Archives; and the Historic New Orleans Collection. She has taught graduate courses on archives and special collections at Catholic University and Western Washington University. In 1998, Joffrion accepted a position as head archivist at the Center for Pacific Northwest Studies at Western Washington University. Here, her leadership efforts resulted in the launch of the Northwest Digital Archives (NWDA) website, which became a key resource of the Orbis Cascade Alliance (now known as Archives West). At the time, it was only the second regional finding-aid database. She also forged key partnerships with other regional institutions and engaged in significant collections management, collections development, outreach, and community documentation projects.

In 2006, Joffrion became a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Senior Program Officer in the Division of Preservation and Access, where she was responsible for the administration of multiple national funding programs that addressed critical problems in preservation and access to humanities resources found in library, archival, and museum collections. Joffrion then became director of Archives and Special Collections and associate professor at Western Libraries at Western Washington University. In this role, she supervised the libraries’ Special Collections, the University Archives and Records Center, and the Center for Pacific Northwest Studies.

Joffrion has served in leadership roles at national, regional, state, university, and community levels for more than two decades. She has served on conference planning committees, scholarship committees, and working groups for various organizations, including the executive committee for the American Library Association’s Rare Books and Manuscripts Section. She currently sits on the SAA Foundation Board of Directors. Joffrion has worked consistently with Native communities to promote and fund Indigenous-centered archival practices and projects, including advocating for the use of the Protocols for Native American Archival Materials and co-authoring the piece “Broken Promises: A Case Study in Reconciliation,” which received an honorable mention for the Margaret Cross Norton Award. Joffrion also co-authored the recent SAA Fundamentals book Advancing Preservation for Archives and Manuscripts, which delves into a broad variety of preservation topics, including social, cultural, political, and policy issues. Through her work at NEH and the SAA Foundation, Joffrion has been a key figure in diversifying methods for funding archivists.

In the multiple teaching positions Joffrion has held throughout her career, she is widely regarded as a generous and enthusiastic mentor. One supporter noted: “She both modeled effective and inclusive leadership as well as encouraging and guiding my own leadership skills. ... Beth has contributed so much to the archival world. At the center of that work is a collaborative spirit and the desire to increase opportunities for others.” Another supporter praised Joffrion for her dedication and devotion to the archival profession, stating that she is “consistent as a visionary and advocate for archives and special collections.”

Fellow: Jennifer Meehan

Jennifer Meehan, director of the Library of Congress’ Special Collections Directorate, will be inducted as a Fellow of the Society of American Archivists (SAA) during an awards ceremony at the Annual Meeting of SAA in Chicago, IL. The distinction of Fellow is the highest honor bestowed on individuals by SAA and is awarded for outstanding contributions to the archives profession.

Meehan, who holds a master of archival studies degree from the School of Library, Archival, and Information Science at the University of British Columbia, has been an advocate for increased accessibility and inclusion in the archives throughout her career. She has worked as a professional archivist in six different institutions over the past twenty years, beginning as a manuscript archivist at Virginia Tech. Meehan moved from there to a project archivist position at the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. She assumed her first supervisory role at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, where she began as accessioning archivist and later took on the role of head of processing. From Yale, Meehan became associate director of the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library at Emory University, directly overseeing the processing and cataloging, reference and instruction, born-digital archives, digitization, university archives, and records management operations of the unit. She made the move to repository leadership in 2019, becoming the head of the Eberly Family Special Collections Library at Penn State University, where she provided leadership and strategic direction for all of Penn State's archives and special collections activities. In 2022, Meehan joined the Library of Congress, where she continues to provide leadership for its six special collections divisions.

During her time as an archivist and administrator, Meehan has been an active contributor in many organizations, such as the Association of Research Libraries, the Big Ten Academic Alliance Heads of Special Collections, the Archives Council of the Atlanta Regional Council for Higher Education, and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference. 

Meehan’s impact is best demonstrated through her leadership, scholarship, and commitment. She has had a profound intellectual effect on the field through the quality, quantity, and breadth of her writing, and her work has been highly cited throughout the literature of archives and related fields. She has published five peer-reviewed articles in American Archivist, Archivaria, and Archival Science, and two essays in edited monographs. Perhaps her most important piece of professional writing is “Making the Leap from Parts to Whole: Evidence and Inference in Archival Arrangement and Description.” This American Archivist article has been a staple on the syllabi of archival education courses since its publication in 2009. Meehan’s work also pushes the profession to examine and understand the broader meaning of the archival endeavor, particularly evidenced in her article “Towards an Archival Concept of Evidence” (Archivaria, 2006) and her essay “Archival Intangibles: Empowerment Through Story and Meaning” (Archival Values: Essays in Honor of Mark A. Greene, 2019).

In addition to her writing, Meehan’s contributions to the profession are evident in her leadership in SAA. She was one of the instructors of the SAA workshop “Implementing More Product, Less Process,” which was offered nine times from 2010–2012. This workshop provided archivists with a new intellectual framework for assessing backlogs and processing projects, along with techniques for appraising, arranging, describing, and preserving archives. Meehan also served on the American Archivist Editorial Board for eight years and was elected to leadership roles as vice chair/chair for both the Description Section and the Research Libraries Roundtable. Meehan has been a part of many other committees including the 2017 Annual Meeting Program Committee, the Calvin Pease Award Subcommittee, the Description Section Steering Committee, the Leland Award Subcommittee, and the Membership Committee. As co-chair for ARCHIVES*RECORDS 2020, a fully virtual conference due to COVID-19, Meehan and the rest of the committee seized the opportunity to create a program that allowed the Society to convene productively online, addressing new issues related to working in a pandemic and confronting racial injustice as a much greater imperative for the field. Her leadership in this area represents another significant demonstration of Meehan's commitment to change and action in seeing archives help create a more just world. 

As one supporter noted: “The breadth and depth of Jennifer’s contributions to the field are truly impressive, and she has an admirable track record of active, engaged, innovative, and visionary professionalism.” Another added: “Like many archivists, she thinks deeply about the work she is engaged in; what sets Jennifer apart, however, is her ability to articulate her ideas in accessible ways and her commitment to sharing her ideas widely through writing, teaching, and presenting.”

Fellow: Meredith Evans

Meredith Evans, director of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library & Museum, will be inducted as a Fellow of the Society of American Archivists (SAA) during an awards ceremony at the Annual Meeting of SAA in Chicago, IL. The distinction of Fellow is the highest honor bestowed on individuals by SAA and is awarded for outstanding contributions to the archives profession.

Evans, who holds PhD in library science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has over twenty-five years of management and leadership experience. In addition to her doctorate, Evans earned a master of arts in public history from North Carolina State University and a master of arts in public history from Clark Atlanta University. She began her professional career as curator of printed materials in archives and special collections at the Robert W. Woodruff Library, where she collaborated with Boston University and the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center on a Mellon grant to process and digitize the papers and books of Morehouse College’s Martin Luther King Jr. Collection. Evans then became the director of the special collections research center at the Estelle and Melvin Gelman Library at George Washington University and later worked as the associate university librarian for special collections and digital programs at the J. Murrey Atkins Library at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. In 2015, Evans became the director of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and Museum, where she collaborates with numerous stakeholders to create successful, engaging programming.

Evans’s dedicated and innovative leadership has shaped many careers and archival projects. Her work on advancing digital preservation, web archiving, and racial justice in the archives profession has been particularly influential. She was instrumental in the creation of Documenting Ferguson, a collaborative project from Washington University Libraries in St. Louis that aims to preserve the local and national history around the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. This project, as well as the Documenting the Now project, have been foundational for the establishment of similar endeavors to ensure activism around racial justice is represented in the archives. Evans has also provided her expertise on numerous advisory boards. Throughout her career, she has served on the DocNow Advisory Board at Washington University, the RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage board, the Board of Visitors at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and many others. More recently, Evans served as an inclusivity consultant to the newly developed robotics archives at Carnegie Mellon University. Her invaluable insights led the team to a more collaborative and pragmatic approach managing the complexities of a multimodal robotics collection.

Within SAA, Evans has had a profound impact. She has served on the SAA Foundation Board of Directors, the A*CENSUS II Working Group, and the Committee on the Selection of SAA Fellows. In 2018, Evans became the 74th president of SAA. While terms typically last a single year, Evans stepped up to fill the role for a second term when the vice president/president-elect had to resign for professional reasons. Under her leadership, SAA facilitated numerous open conversations around archivists for Black Lives, instituted the practice of writing a DEIA statement for those seeking SAA Positions, implemented the A*CENSUS II, and much more. These diverse initiatives continue to have an impact, and many of them have been integrated into the Society’s DEIA work plan.

Evans has also been a guide for many other members of the archival profession. She has served as a mentor through SAA’s Mentoring Program and provided encouragement to other members seeking to serve in leadership capacities. As one supporter noted, “I would not be where I am today, were it not for the wise counsel, support, and friendship of Dr. Evans. I have no doubt that there are other archivists who would say the same thing.” Another supporter added, “She demonstrated genuine care and dedication, offering thoughtful advice tailored to my professional growth. Dr. Evans has consistently gone above and beyond to assist me, always making herself available despite her busy schedule.”

Fellow: Polina E. Ilieva

Polina E. Ilieva, associate university librarian for collections and university archivist at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), will be inducted as a Fellow of the Society of American Archivists (SAA) during an awards ceremony at the Annual Meeting of SAA in Chicago, IL. The distinction of Fellow is the highest honor bestowed on individuals by SAA and is awarded for outstanding contributions to the archives profession.

Ilieva, who is a Certified Archivist with over twenty–five years of archival experience, received her MA in international relations and the international equivalent of a doctoral degree in history at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO). She began her career as a research fellow for international research at MGIMO, and after immigrating to the United States, she accepted a position as a research associate at the Center for Southeast Asia Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2000, she became an archival specialist at the Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University, where her work focused on documenting the Russian diaspora and later arranging and processing materials of the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty collection. Six years later, Ilieva accepted a position with Truth Tobacco Industry Documents (TTID, formerly known as Legacy Tobacco Documents Library) at UCSF. Since then, she has demonstrated a keen ability to take on complex and increasing responsibility. In 2021, Ilieva was appointed the associate university librarian for collections and university archivist. Her work at UCSF has resulted in an impressive expansion of the archives program and the continued growth of the UCSF Industry Documents Library (IDL). Initially focused on the tobacco industry’s impact on public policy and the lives and health of generations of Americans, that digital library has since expanded and now contains archives of other industries which influence public health, including the opioid, chemical, food, drug, and fossil fuel industries.

Ilieva’s commitment to diversity and accessibility is readily apparent in her mentorship and teaching work. From 2018 to 2020, she initiated and led two internship taskforces at the UCSF Library to provide equitable and paid opportunities for student workers. The taskforces created guidelines and best practices for the program, advocating for and securing permanent funding. As she strives to increase the diversity of archival collections, Ilieva is committed to including the voices of everyone affected by healthcare and institutional inequities. She developed a robust exhibition program at UCSF and launched a public lecture series that has researchers discuss their experiences with the University’s collections. In 2019, Ilieva initiated an Artist in Residence program to promote health humanities by exposing and repurposing historical materials. The first project from the residency, "The City is a Body: System Vulnerabilities in the time of COVID-19,” was presented by artist Farah Hamade in 2020. The program will host five artists beginning in July 2024. A successful grant writer, Ilieva obtained a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to unite three San Francisco institutions—UCSF, San Francisco Public Library, and the GLBT Historical Society—to more fully document the biomedical, social, cultural, and economic legacy of the AIDS epidemic. Most recently, Ilieva initiated the UCSF Digital Health Humanities program with the goal of providing educational resources to encourage and develop researcher capabilities using data science and techniques to analyze “archives as data.” She also collaborated with the UCSF faculty to develop and teach the ”Anatomy of an Archive” course to build competency in archival science and understanding of historic records for graduate students.

Within SAA, Ilieva has had a profound impact. She served on numerous committees and sections, and she received an appointment to the Committee on Ethics and Professional Conduct in 2020, first as a member and then as co-chair. During that time, the committee reviewed and revised SAA’s Core Values Statement and Code of Ethics. Ilieva is also active in the Society of California Archivists and has made significant contributions to the Medical Heritage Library (MHL). During her tenure as president of Librarians, Archivists, and Museum Professionals in the History of Health Sciences (LAMPHSS), Ilieva convened two significant committees: one to develop guidelines for handling hazardous materials in collections, and the second to focus on the ethical management of historical human remains in archives, libraries, and museums dedicated to the history of health sciences.

Speaking about Ilieva’s approach to her work, one supporter noted that she has “a fundamentally humanistic outlook and empathy that has prompted her to take on some complex projects that many might have tried to avoid.” Another supporter remarked, “Polina was a supportive and encouraging mentor who taught me many valuable lessons in leadership. She helped me develop skills that have been invaluable in my professional development, and she illustrated to me the importance of building community within the field and participating in professional organizations and community outreach.”

Fellow: Tawny Ryan Nelb

Tawny Ryan Nelb, president of Nelb Archival Consulting, will be inducted as a Fellow of the Society of American Archivists (SAA) during an awards ceremony at the Annual Meeting of SAA in Chicago, IL. The distinction of fellow is the highest honor bestowed on individuals by SAA and is awarded for outstanding contributions to the archives profession.

Nelb earned a BA in American Studies in 1975 from the University of Notre Dame in one of the first classes that included women. In 1983, she obtained an MA in American history. After serving as an archives and museum assistant at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library from 1975–1976, Nelb spent the next decade holding increasing positions of responsibility at Yale University Library’s Manuscript and Archives department. Beginning as a public services assistant, she became a project coordinator of National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) and National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant-funded projects. Nelb eventually served as the head of the Yale Architectural Archives Project. In 1986, she became an independent archivist/historian. As president of Nelb Archival Consulting, she has provided collection needs assessment analyses, archives designs, processing plans, archives policies and procedures, disaster plans, oral history projects, and book and grant writing for clients including the Michigan History Center; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; UCLA; Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia; and the new Indiana State Archives building design currently under construction. She also provides archival services for families and individuals.

Nelb's commitment to the profession and service to others reaches from the local to the national level. She is a past president of the Historical Society of Michigan and served for eight years on the governor's Michigan State Historical Records Advisory Board in Lansing, Michigan. She is a past member of the executive board for the Midland Center for the Arts and served on the advisory board of the Midland County Historical Society (MCHS) for eleven years before rejoining the advisory council in 2021. During the same year, Nelb received the “History Hero” award from the Historical Society of Michigan for her “extraordinary dedication to community service and contributions to Michigan history.” In 2023, she was one of the finalists for the Citizen of the Year award for her volunteer work in Midland, Michigan. Within SAA, Nelb has had a profound impact. She co-founded the Architectural Records Roundtable (now the Design Records Section), co-taught numerous architectural workshops for the Society, lectured at many conferences, and served for eight years on SAA’s Publications Board. Nelb has also mentored many archivists, helping to build the next generation of SAA professional leaders, and is recognized by her peers and her students as an excellent and creative lecturer.

Nelb is nationally recognized for having co-authored Architectural Records: Managing Design and Construction Records, which won the SAA Waldo Gifford Leland Award in 2007 for "writing of superior excellence and usefulness in the field of archival history, theory, or practice." Her writings have largely focused on promoting local history and advocating for the importance of archives in community preservation. She has authored 8 books or booklets, including The Tittabawassee Boom Company: A Mixed Blessing of the Lumbering Industry (2023), and over forty articles on local history or archival management.

One supporter wrote that Nelb’s “efforts to ensure the continued preservation, use and promotion of our local community's historical record has been tireless." Another complimented her work in May 2020 when MCSH's history center and archives flooded due to a dam breaking, stating that Nelb’s tireless volunteer work was instrumental in both immediate emergency recovery efforts and the long-term securing of a consultant to guide them through the creation of a new archive facility: "It is difficult to put into words the impact Tawny has had on her local community as a professional archivist and as a mentor. She has been an inspiration for what an archivist means to the community, advancing and advocating for the importance of archives in preserving a community's history and memory.”