Candidates for the 2023 Election

Thank you to all of our excellent candidates for standing in the 2023 Archives Management Section election. Please take some time to review their candidate statements and get to know them so you can make an informed choice.

You will be voting for:

• One Vice Chair/Chair-Elect, for a two-year term;
• One Secretary, for a one-year term; and
• 2 Steering Committee members, for three-year terms. 

Ballots will be managed by SAA staff through Survey Monkey; keep an eye on your inbox for when the ballot opens!

Vice Chair/Chair-Elect Candidates

The following candidates are running for the Vice Chair/Chair-Elect position:

Christina Zamon
Head of Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University

Bio: Christina Zamon is currently the Head of Special Collections and Archives at Georgia State University in Atlanta, GA.  Prior to that, she was the Head of Archives and Special Collections for Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts for nine years, six of those as a solo archivist. Throughout her career, she worked as the archivist for the National Press Club, rare book acquisitionist at the Folger Shakespeare Library, and cataloger at the Frick Art Reference Library. With over 20 years of experience, she has been an active member in several archival organizations and is currently involved in the Academy of Certified Archivists, Society of American Archivists, and is serving as the 2023 President of the Society of Georgia Archivists. She is the author of The Lone Arranger: Succeeding in a Small Repository published in 2012 by the Society of American Archivists with a new edition forthcoming. She is the founder of the Boston Area Archives and Records Consortium (BAARC), now the Boston Archivists’ Meetup, for archivists working in small institutions. She received her MA in History and MLIS from the University of Maryland where she also worked as a graduate assistant in the Preservation Department.

Candidate Statement: I have been working as a manager in one sense or another for 20 years. First managing myself and the archives as a solo archivist and later adding employees and eventually leading a large department. Over the last 20 years I have gained a lot of experience and knowledge about managing everything from archival collections and facilities to managing employees and patrons. My many years of experience makes me an ideal candidate for vice-chair/chair elect for SAA’s Archival Management Section. I hope to lead this section by exploring the various types of “management” that many of us experience by holding regular virtual discussions on a wide array of management topics and looking for ways to collaborate with other SAA sections to cover management topics related to those other sections.

Secretary Candidates

The following candidates are running for the Secretary position:

Lynn Eaton
Director, Special Collections Research Center, George Mason University

Bio: Lynn Eaton has served as the Director of the University Libraries Special Collections Research Center since January 2017. Ms. Eaton earned a BA in English from James Madison University, an MS in College Student Personnel Services from Miami University (OH), and an MLS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She previously worked in the special collections libraries at UNC, Duke University, and James Madison University. She is deeply committed to helping students in all programs connect with history through the letters, diaries, publications, photographs, and oral histories. The stories these items tell bring a time period, area of study, and individuals to life. Her areas of interest and research include primary source instruction, community archiving, outreach, and leadership.

Candidate statement: I am interested in running for secretary of the Archives Management Section. I've participated in this section for almost a decade and would like to see it continue to build membership and expand educational and informational opportunities for SAA members who are interested in becoming, recently become, or have been a manager in an archival institution. There is much to learn at each stage, and I want to contribute to the section being a recognized resource on an archivist's career arc.

Steering Committee Member Candidates

The following candidates are running for the section steering committee:

Caitlin Birch
Director of Digital Scholarship and Distinctive Collections, James Madison University

Bio: Caitlin Birch is an Assistant Professor and Director of Digital Scholarship and Distinctive Collections at James Madison University Libraries. In this role, she provides collaborative leadership and strategic direction for the 10 faculty and staff of the Libraries’ Digital Projects and Special Collections teams, which together form the Digital Scholarship and Distinctive Collections (DSDC) department. The DSDC partners across JMU and in the surrounding communities to create, collect, steward, and imaginatively share unique collections in a variety of media types, while leveraging the latest technologies and best practices in digital scholarship to support the exploration and understanding of cultural heritage.

Prior to joining JMU in 2022, Caitlin was the Assistant Archivist for Digital Collections at Dartmouth College, where she established a program for stewarding born-digital archives and manuscripts and led an experiential learning-based oral history program. She holds an MA in History and an MSLIS in Archives Management from Simmons University and is a member of the 2020 cohort of the Archives Leadership Institute. Caitlin currently serves as Interim President of New England Archivists (NEA), the primary professional organization for archivists in the New England region. Her past service to NEA includes six years on the Executive Board, co-chairing two long-term task forces, and co-founding both the Roundtable for Early Professionals and Students (REPS) and the NEA Mentoring Program. In SAA, she served two years on the Mentoring Subcommittee and looks forward to future service.

Candidate Statement: Two beliefs have guided my archives career path: first, that collaborative, people-centered leadership is critical to the sustainability of both individual repositories and the field as a whole; and second, that we can make positive change through professional service. Election to the Archives Management Section Steering Committee would combine both principals. Through service to this section, I hope to contribute to resources and programming that support all of us in strengthening our management skills and centering care in our leadership. I’m especially interested in exploring with other AMS leaders and members the potential for collaborative research on issues and trends affecting managers and management. I see the findings of the recent A*CENSUS II: Archives Administrators Survey as a great springboard for such research. Can those of us who do the challenging work of archives management become better leaders — and better supported leaders — by directing our efforts toward thoughtful study and evidence-backed solutions? If elected, I’m committed to engaged service on behalf of this vital community.

Adriana Cuervo
Head of Archival Collections and Services, Rutgers University -- Newark

Adriana is the Head of Archival Collections and Services at the John Cotton Dana Library at Rutgers University – Newark. She oversees day-to-day operations of the Institute of Jazz Studies—the largest and most comprehensive jazz research facility in the world. Ms. Cuervo has enjoyed a longstanding career in music and performing arts special collections; she previously worked at the Sousa Archives and Center for American Music at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Adriana has a bachelor’s degree in Music History from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá, Colombia (2002), a Master’s in Library and Information Science from the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana – Champaign (2005), and a Master of Arts Degree in American Studies at Rutgers University – Newark (2022). She enjoys working in the preservation, access, and promotion of cultural heritage, as it gives her a sense of purpose and hope for the future of the arts in a rapidly changing world.

Candidate Statement: The Archives Managament Section has been an invaluable resource in my professional development. As a candidate for steering committee membership I am interested in bringing conversations about decolonization of management practices in the archival sphere. We are all aware of DEI initiatives and best practices, but how do these translate into our day-to-day work? I don't have the answers but I am very interested in having these conversations. I hope to be a resource for the section membership and by extension, influence our collective workplaces to become safe and welcoming spaces for the preservation of our cultural heritage.

Katie Nash
University Archivist and Head of Archives, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Bio: Katie Nash is the University Archivist and Head of UW Archives at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has served in this position since 2018. In this role, she is responsible for ensuring the stories and people of UW-Madison are documented, made available, and preserved. Katie holds a Masters in Library and Information Studies from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and a Bachelor of Science in Anthropology from Appalachian State University. She became a Certified Archivist in 2011 and is active with various SAA Sections and the Midwest Archives Conference. Since joining the archives profession in 2005, Katie has held similar positions at Elon University (Elon, NC) and Williams College (Williamstown, MA).

At UW-Madison she is responsible for the overall management of the University Archives which includes supervising professional and student staff; spearheading the creation of policies, procedures, workflows; overseeing research and public service activities; participating in digital projects; leading space and environmental management of physical location; overseeing arrangement and description activities; stewarding donor relations and overall collection development; facilitating the Oral History and Records Management Programs; and driving outreach initiatives among a plethora of other responsibilities. Katie’s professional interests include arrangement and description, care and preservation of collections, accessibility (to collections and physical/online spaces), copyright and other issues related to rights and use, donor relations, teaching with primary sources, and overall management of an archival repository.

Candidate Statement: The Archives Management Section is dedicated to bringing together professionals from various institutions and backgrounds to help identify and address management issues within the archival profession. I would like to be an active member of the Steering Committee and contribute my knowledge and experiences to conversations and outreach, as well as continue to learn from others in the profession. Management practices and approaches play a crucial role in workplace climate, growth opportunities, life-long learning, and building a team environment. By joining the Archives Management Section, I hope to bring important management discussions and issues to the broader SAA community and work towards fostering positive experiences for managers, colleagues, and other partners. We can all learn by example and from others, as well as model healthy management behavior in order to encourage healthy relationships, mentorship, and workplace culture.

Rebecca Wells
Student Life Archivist, Special Collections and University Archives, Iowa State University

Bio: Rebecca Wells is the Student Life Archivist in Special Collections and University Archives at Iowa State University. In her role, Rebecca leads efforts to document and preserve a more robust and inclusive record of student life at Iowa State, including materials created by Iowa State students/alumni, student organizations, and student activism. Before this role, Rebecca held positions at the Harry Ransom Center, Briscoe Center for American History, Special Collections and Archives at Palmer College of Chiropractic, and the Swenson Swedish Immigration Research Center. Rebecca holds a BA in English, Creative Writing, and Scandinavian Studies with a Music minor from Augustana College and an MSIS with Endorsements of Specialization in Archival Administration and Preservation Administration from the University of Texas at Austin. She also holds a Certificate from the University of North Texas in Advanced Management in Libraries and Information Agencies. After years of benefiting from membership in SAA, she would like to begin giving back by serving as a Steering Committee Member in the Archives Management Section.

Candidate Statement: Many archivists find themselves in management positions because they do good archival work, not necessarily because they have the knowledge, skills, or even desire to become managers. MLIS programs inconsistently and incompletely prepare us for management roles. As a recent graduate and aspiring manager in archives, I structured my formal education with a focus on management and administration, but I still see various ways in which my peers and I were not entirely prepared for this step in our careers.

I am interested in becoming a Steering Committee Member to help facilitate conversations and training about career planning and related professional development, self-discovery, available resources and tools, mentorship for new managers and new mentors, partnerships with other sections on navigating changes in the archival field as a manager, and external perspectives on management preparedness.  As someone who is also very interested in emotional labor in archives, imposter phenomena, and the impacts of our changing field on us as archivists, I want to build on the previous work of the Archives Management Section to build our collective confidence to manage change, and our careers, supervisees, supervisors, collections, projects, programs, and repositories. While also fostering a supportive community of archivists who aren’t afraid to be vulnerable to help each other grow.