Dinah Handel, Candidate for Nominating Committee

Dinah Handel

Digitization Services Manager, Stanford University

“If selected to serve on the Nominating Committee, I would work collectively with my fellow committee members to reach outside of traditional pools of applicants in order to bring underrepresented and critical perspectives to the positions within the Society of American Archivists' governance.”

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE  

• Digitization Services Manager, Stanford University, 2018–present.
• Mass Digitization Coordinator, New York Public Library, 2016–2018.
• National Digital Stewardship Resident, CUNY TV, 2015–2016.
• Archival Fellow, Processing Archivist, Barnard College Archives and Special Collections, 2014–2015. 

EDUCATION

• MLIS, Pratt Institute, 2015.
• BA, Women’s History, Hampshire College, 2011. 

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES 

• Society of American Archivists: Member (2014–present).
• Association of Moving Image Archivists: AMIA Conference Online Task Force, Co-Chair, 2016 Annual Conference.
• Institute of Museum and Library Services: Proposal Reviewer.
• XFR Collective: New York, NY, Core member (2016–2018).

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

• “Advice on Finding Paid Work as an LIS Student,” Career Transitions for Librarians: Proven Strategies for Moving to Another Type of Library, 2016.
• “Data Migration, Digital Asset Management and Microservices at CUNY Television,” The Signal, 2016.

SELECTED PRESENTATIONS

• “GitHub for Librarians and Archivists,” Workshop at the Metropolitan New York Library Council, New York, NY, 2017.
• “Negotiating Digitization Partnerships: Applications of Radical Empathy in the Context of a Media Preservation Collective,” Part of “Radical Empathy in Archival Practice,” Presentation and group facilitator, Portland, OR, Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting, 2017.
• “LTO Storage Technology in A/V Archives, Two Case Studies: CUNY TV and Crowing Rooster Arts,” Presentation, Washington, DC, International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives, 2016.
• “Free Your Workflows (and the rest will follow): community driven AV solutions through open source workflow development,” Presentation, Philadelphia, PA, Code4Lib, 2016.

An essential component of the Nominating Committee’s work is identification of rising and seasoned leaders within SAA and the archival profession who embody the varied facets of professional diversity. Describe how you interpret this core responsibility and how you will identify candidates who represent a variety of backgrounds and perspectives and who demonstrate commitment to SAA’s strategic goals.

CANDIDATE'S RESPONSE

In the context of the information professions, and more specifically the archival field, the concept of diversity is often simplistically used to specify the number of individuals of a particular race, gender, class, and other identity categories, or lack thereof, that are present within committees, conference attendance, and leadership roles. While this is certainly part of the equation to transform our profession, I interpret a commitment to diversity to also mean a sense of responsibility to engage with power and articulate the specific conditions that would result in a more equitable profession. To that end, the task at hand for the Nominating Committee is to seek out and support candidates who have experience engaging in or supporting the labor of diversifying the field and who have worked to transform archival collections and institutional collecting policies as well as individuals who bring a variety of experiences from the profession to the table.

If selected to serve on the Nominating Committee, I would work collectively with my fellow committee members to reach outside of traditional pools of applicants to bring underrepresented and critical perspectives to the positions within the Society of American Archivists governance. Specifically, I would consider individuals who have experience engaging in labor activism to create unions at their workplaces or end unpaid internships in our field, or archivists working at under-resourced institutions who might provide the best insight into policies and practices for the profession that truly benefit all. Furthermore, I would be interested in soliciting candidates who have academic and teaching backgrounds, as well as recent graduates, so that people closest to current students can share their unique perspectives. In general, I want to approach the work of the Nominating Committee with a nuanced perspective that considers the numerous factors at play in attempting to create a more diverse and equitable profession, and acknowledges the structural barriers that too often limit the participation of marginalized individuals in our profession. 

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