Jasmine Jones, Candidate for Council

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Jasmine Jones

Head of Collections Management

she/her/hers

 

Good organizational health is what ensures the sustainability and growth of an organization, and to that end we must prioritize diversity with the aim of also prioritizing and building equity and inclusion.

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BIOGRAPHICAL STATEMENT

Jasmine Jones is the head of Collections Management for the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Library Special Collections. In this role, she aims to build relationships and infrastructure that allows UCLA Library Special Collections to engage in collective, responsible stewardship and decision-making with its donors, users, and communities. Her most recent professional work and upcoming presentations have been heavily influenced by her current professional role, and have focused on the relationship between collection development and collections stewardship and strategies to develop a more holistic and interdependent framework between these two critical functions. Related to this, she has served on the OCLC Collection Building and Operational Impacts Working Group for the last couple of years to help develop a suite of tools that help repositories make realistic decisions for acquiring and stewarding collections over time, and she has a forthcoming entry on Collection Management in The Handbook of Archival Practice (Rowman & Littlefield, forthcoming mid-2021). She is also a co-editor of a special issue of the Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies on radical empathy in archival practice (forthcoming 2021). Jasmine has been an active member of SAA since 2009 and has served in appointed positions (SAA 2020 Program Committee and as an Intellectual Property Working Group intern); SAA section leadership positions (Collection Management Tools Section, Issues and Advocacy Section, Human Rights Archives Section, and Archives and Archivists of Color Section); and was elected to the 2018–2019 Nominating Committee. Jasmine is currently an ARL Leadership and Career Development Program Fellow and was a member of the 2016 cohort of the Archives Leadership Institute. Jasmine has an MLIS with a concentration in archives and an MA in history from Simmons College.

DIVERSITY STATEMENT

Taken together, particularly within an anti-oppressive, equity-centered approach, DEI initiatives and strategies have an opportunity to be transformational. I say together because diversity does not mean equity nor does it mean inclusion. Without equity, in particular, diversity can be superficial and not sustainable; solely focusing on diversity can perpetuate systemic inequities and a rotating door of members who may not want to be part of this profession and community. It is important to me that we center those that are marginalized and approach this work with radical empathy, in order to uproot that which is harmful to the health and growth of our professional community.

With full transparency, this past year has made me even more aware of my own implicit and explicit biases and how parts of who I am have been sources of power and privilege, as well as marginalization. However, it has been the past four years that have made me dig deep into vulnerability and feel confident to speak on inequities and power hoarding in our institutions impacting morale, retention, and growth within the profession writ large; where accountability, power sharing, and justice live in our organization’s DEI frameworks. It is particularly in spaces where we lean into discomfort in learning and critical discourse, where I’ve been able to reflect on DEI in my own work and how I’ve connected to frameworks that inform how I build and sustain professional practices and relationships.

If elected to the Council, I would advocate that we assess the role that DEI actually plays in the policies, decisions, and strategies made on behalf of SAA’s membership and, in turn, the communities they represent, provide service to, and with whom they build long-standing relationships. One way in which this could be done is through engaging with the membership specifically on the impacts of systemic oppression or exclusion that might be carried out in implicit and explicit ways within the profession and organization, then examine and advocate for specific and deeply-set strategies for change. If SAA is committed to “center[ing] its values on diversity and equity, and [...] building a culture of inclusion” (from the SAA Statement on DEI), then I believe we should take a conscientious and systematic approach to assessing ways in which we can do better—and sustainably so—from operations and policies to specific initiatives and projects. We should ask that this work not only be done in the space of the Council, but across the organization.

QUESTION POSED BY NOMINATING COMMITTEE

SAA has the following core organizational values: 

• Being committed to advancing the public standing of archivists;
• Ensuring the diversity of its membership and leaders, the profession, and the archival record;
• Fostering an open and inclusive culture of creativity, collaboration, and experimentation across the association;
• Providing excellent member service; and
• Ensuring transparency, accountability, integrity, professionalism, and social responsibility in conducting its activities.

Select two of the core organizational values and describe how you will work with SAA groups and members to move them forward.

CANDIDATE'S RESPONSE 

It is a responsibility of the Council to help ensure the well-being and health of the organization, not only in relation to SAA’s financial stability, but also its governance, procedures, and management of its affairs. A significant stakeholder and indicator of SAA’s organizational health is its membership. In SAA’s Strategic Plan for 2020–2022, it says, “The Goals [in the plan] articulate the outcomes that SAA would like to achieve and answer the question, ‘What will constitute future success?’” However, I would ask to what extent does the membership itself feel committed to the well-being of SAA and helping it fulfill its strategic directions? How do SAA groups and members see themselves directly impacting or being impacted by the organization’s strategic plan?

Ensuring the diversity of its membership and leaders, the profession, and the archival record.

It has been gratifying to see SAA’s documented commitment and move to make progress on the diversity of its membership and leaders, the profession, and the archival record. The inclusion of the diversity statement for elected positions, for example, is one addition that is incredibly welcome and important. Within the context of this core organizational value, I think that it is critical that we take this value a step further. Again, good organizational health is what ensures the sustainability and growth of an organization and to that end we must prioritize diversity with the aim of also prioritizing and building equity and inclusion. It is not enough that we have a diversity in these different avenues; it is awesome, but it doesn’t always get at the root of what might be harmful, in policy and practice, to retaining, valuing, and advocating for our diverse membership and their responsibilities to a more diverse archival record.

Ensuring transparency, accountability, integrity, professionalism, and social responsibility in conducting its activities.

As I mentioned in my diversity statement, I would advocate for an organizational systems analysis with the aim of advancing and embedding equity and inclusion within the very framework of SAA. The goal of this would be to enhance transparency and accountability to our membership about the ways in which we provide services and resources to their professional lives, as well as identify areas in which SAA leadership can be more open and communicative about how decisions and policies are made and how it is embedding integrity and social responsibility into those processes.

If elected to the Council, I would be proud to be a conduit for SAA groups and the membership to ensure a collective effort in continued growth and sustained improvement of the organization.

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