George Apodaca, Candidate for Council

George L. Apodaca

Administrative Fellow,
Harvard University Archives

"I became intimately familiar with the notion of stewardship, recognizing that the delivery of culturally-sensitive information is as, if not more, important when the overall health and well-being of the community is concerned.”

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

• Administrative Fellow/Visiting Project Archivist, Harvard University Archives, 2016–present.
• Affiliate Assistant Librarian/Pauline A. Young Resident, University of Delaware Library, 2014–2016.
• Digital Curation Fellow, Office of Science and Engineering Laboratories, US Food and Drug Administration, 2014.

EDUCATION

• MLS, School of Information Resources and Library Science, University of Arizona, 2013.
• BA, Latin American Studies, University of Arizona, 2009.

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

• Society of American Archivists: Latin American and Caribbean Cultural Heritage Archives Roundtable, Online Communications Liaison and Co-chair (2014–2017).
• Association of College and Research Libraries, Rare Book and Manuscripts Section: Poster Committee (2015–2016).  
• American Library Association, REFORMA: Tucson chapter, Vice President (2012–2013).

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS AND AWARDS

• “Breaking Down Borders: Dismantling Whiteness through International Bridges” with Natalie Baur and Margarita Vargas-Betancourt, Topographies of Whiteness: Mapping Whiteness in Library and Information Science, ed. Gina Schlesselman-Tarango (Sacramento: Library Juice Press, 2017).
• SAA Diversity Award, SAA Latin American and Caribbean Cultural Heritage Archives Roundtable Webinar Series, “Desmantelando Fronteras/Breaking Down Borders,” 2016.
• IMLS-RBS Fellowship for Early Career Librarians, 2014.
• ARL-DLF Fellow from Underrepresented Groups, 2014.

Council members’ responsibilities include providing collaborative leadership and direction for the Society and its component groups to ensure achievement of SAA’s goals. Please describe how your leadership experience will help you balance engaging the general SAA membership while being responsive to SAA’s strategic goals, including but not limited to the objectives of diversity, inclusion, and transparency.

CANDIDATE'S RESPONSE

I am very fortunate to have fulfilled leadership roles in varying capacities at a number of educational and outreach organizations whose stated goals have been to ameliorate the lack of information services faced by historically underrepresented communities, particularly those related to Latinx and Indigenous populations. Most recently, I served on the Latin American and Caribbean Cultural Heritage Archives Section—first as Online Communications Liaison, then as Jr. and Sr. Co-chair—where I helped conduct an innovative webinar series that provided a collaborative space for North American, Latin American, and Caribbean archivists to share their projects, experiences, and takeaways while fostering bilateral communication between professionals across the Americas.

While I pursued an MLS, as vice president of REFORMA’s Tucson chapter, I participated in leading efforts to communicate the importance of digital literacy and equitable language services at public libraries and schools through annual fundraisers and roundtable conferences, channeled the organization’s commitment to diversity and inclusion by advocating for the development of Spanish-language and Latinx-oriented archival collections, and promoted public awareness of archives and archival work among Latinxs and historically underrepresented populations. I also was part of a select cohort of Knowledge River scholars—an MLS fellowship motivated by culturally competent principles germane to Latinx and Indigenous issues of equitable access and representation within information environments—and fostered an understanding of information issues from the perspective of these communities. This included promoting pedagogy entrenched in an understanding of others, as well as an active and critical analysis of deconstructing the representations of ethnicity and immigration in America’s archives.

During two summers as a Latin American Studies undergraduate major, I was eager to engage with the southern hemisphere and traveled to rural communities in Brasil and Paraguay with a volunteer organization meant to empower young leaders through collaborative community development projects. On both projects, I engaged with children and adults who had a determinate spectrum of educational and experiential backgrounds and executed my first role as a cultural information broker making dental, health, and environmental hygiene information accessible. For my senior capstone, I interned at the Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology, where I assisted with the implementation of community-based initiatives aimed at improving the quality of access to basic services in a Mexican town located on the US-Mexico border. Within both of these contexts, I became intimately familiar with the notion of stewardship, recognizing that the delivery of culturally-sensitive information is as, if not more, important when the overall health and well-being of the community is concerned.

Finally, during my high school years, I witnessed how the Tuscon Unified School District’s Mexican American Studies program impacted a community centered around learning and culturally relevant instruction—specifically instruction which helps students be leaders who understand and appreciate Mexican American history, both past and present—while empowering me to find my humanity and academic integrity.

Since graduating with an MLS, I have made every effort to ensure my original motivations for wanting to work in this field remain intact. Given my extensive leadership background, I believe I possess the necessary skills to build administrative and cultural partnerships across varying landscapes, establish SAA’s abilities to foment, nurture, and see relationships grow within SAA and beyond, all the while making SAA’s archival mission accessible to the public, students, and researchers of the greater academic world.

Tlazocamati – Gracias – Thank you.

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