2024 Election: Candidate Statements

Member-At-Large

Denise Gallo
Provincial Archivist of the Religious of Jesus and Mary

Denise Gallo has served as Provincial Archivist for the Religious of Jesus and Mary in Warwick,R.I. since 2018. Prior to that, she held the same position for the Daughters of Charity, Provinceof St. Louise, Emmitsburg, MD. Dee’s transition to religious archives came after 10 years asHead of Acquisitions and Processing at the Music Division of the Library of Congress. Dee has been a member of ARCS, having served as Section Chair in 2013-2014. She was awarded the Sr. M. Claude Lane Award in 2016. In addition to SAA, she holds membership in the New England Archivists.

She also is active as a Mentor for the Archivists for Collections of Women Religious and has served as that group’s president in 2018. She has recently completed research for ACWR’s NHPRC Collaborative Archives grant project on their List of Catholic-operated Native Boarding Schools in the United States. She also serves as an advisor for the Franciscan Central Archive.

Phillip Stone

Archivist, Wofford College and South Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church.

Biography:  Phillip Stone has served as archivist of Wofford College and the South Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church since 1999, and has been an SAA and ARCS member since 1999.  Wofford, like several other Methodist-related institutions, hosts the records of our regional Methodist conference.  Methodist history and genealogy questions actually make up more of Phillip’s reference questions than college questions.  He has been a member of his conference’s archives and history commission, and for 9 years, served on the Conference newspaper board of trustees.  He has a BA in history and government from Wofford College, an MA in history from the University of Georgia, and a PhD in history with a concentration in archives from the University of South Carolina.  

Statement:  I know that many of us who work in religious archives are also solo archivists, often working either with volunteers or student workers, but without being surrounded by professional colleagues who do what we do.  Some of us work with a volunteer church organization, as I do with my conference commission on archives and history and conference historical society, and perhaps we could help each other navigate making the best use of such a body.  I’ve found that having a network of support, like a statewide group or an SAA group, can be really helpful in having people to share ideas, ask questions, or seek advice.  Since the pandemic, many of us have found other ways to stay connected, and those online conversations can be especially useful.  If I were to join the steering committee, I hope I could help find more ways to keep us all connected and feel supported in our work by our colleagues.  

Jennifer Dantchev

Long Island University, recent MSLIS graduate

Bio:

I am a recent graduate of Long Island University. I completed my MSLIS with a specialization in Rare Books and Special Collections and I also completed a Certificate of Advanced Study in Archives and Records Management. I am a resident of Cambridge, MA and I am currently searching for an archival position to begin my career in the field!

Statement of Interest:

I am beginning my career, and I hope to eventually work with religious collections – preferably Catholic or Christian Orthodox related. Serving as a Member-at-Large on the ARCS Steering Committee would allow me to connect with professionals in this field and work with them.

I may not be able to gain employment in a religious-based archives starting out in the profession, sometimes your career begins in other ways, but participating in ARCS would allow me to gain knowledge and work with others to learn and experience religious collections in the archival world. I am excited to learn about archival religious collections of all kinds and the people who run them!

Francesca Rousselle

University of St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto

Biography: Francesca completed her BA and MA in Classics at Queen’s University. She then earned an MI from the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto, focusing on Archives & Records Management and Library Information Science. Upon graduation, she worked as an assistant archivist for the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Toronto, where she appraised, digitized, and described many of the archives’ photographs, cassettes, and reel-to-reel tapes and began the process of migrating the archival descriptions to the Access To Memory (AtoM) platform. She currently works at the University of St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto, where she is responsible for processing the recently acquired archives of the Sisters of Service and the Scarboro Foreign Mission Society.

Statement of Interest: As many communities downsize or come to completion – what happens to their records? How can we ensure access in the long-term? What are the benefits and challenges of regional religious archival projects such as the Fondation des archives religieuses in Montreal or the Catholic Religious Archives at Boston College? What is the role of religious archives in our ever-shifting society? Through her work, Francesca is interested in examining the transitional space in which many religious archives find themselves; she delivered a poster session on this topic in May 2024 at Toronto’s Academic Libraries’ conference, titled: “Accessing Religious Records: Transitioning from Internal Archives to Research Collections.”

Francesca has extensive committee involvement as both a graduate researcher and an information professional, as well as experience working with collections of several major Canadian religious organizations. She hopes to bring her skills and enthusiasm to the Member-At-Large position of the ARCS Steering Committee and foster cooperation and development between Canadian and American archivists of religious collections.

Vice Chair/Chair-Elect

Gailyn Lehuanani Bopp, MLISc

University Archivist, Brigham Young University-Hawaii 

Gailyn Lehuanani Bopp is a kanaka maoli woman from Oʻahu in the Hawaiian archipelago, and works at Brigham Young University-Hawaiʻi as University Archivist and as Assistant Professor of Theatre.  As University Archivist, Gailyn stewards the collections of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as pertaining to the Brigham Young University-Hawaiʻi campus, the history of the Church in the Pacific, and the community of Lāʻie and the Oʻahu Ko’olauloa region.  Gailyn graduated with her MLIS degree from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa with emphasis in Archives, and has formally served in leadership and on various boards and committees of the Association of Hawaiʻi Archivists and the Hawaiʻi Library Association.

STATEMENT OF INTENT: 

Aloha mai kākou!

My name is Gailyn Lehuanani Bopp, and I am honored to run for the position of Vice Chair of the SAA Archivists of Religious Collections Section Steering Committee. Since earning my MLIS in 2016, I have worked as Associate Archivist and then University Archivist at Brigham Young University-Hawaii. My work at BYU-Hawaii, one of the most diverse university campuses in the United States, has given me the opportunity to serve students, faculty, and the community from over 73 different nations. In my role as an archivist, I strive to promote culturally competent practices in archival workspaces, acquisitions, descriptions, and outreach events. Alongside managing church history and entity records, I also steward cultural heritage collections of the Pacific. I have a particular interest in the intersections, connections, and overlays of various indigenous groups across the globe, and in addressing the sieve-like gaps that exist in archival acquisitions processes. 

As a candidate for Vice Chair, I am committed to bringing inclusive, indigenous, and faith-based perspectives to discussions on the preservation, access, and care of religious collections. I bring the ability to network respectfully and the capacity to understand and collaborate effectively. My experience includes working as both a leader and a member of various organizations and cohorts, and serving as chair of annual association meetings and events. I look forward to the opportunity to contribute to the SAA Archivists of Religious Collections Section Steering Committee and to advocate for diverse and inclusive practices in our field.

Mahalo for your consideration.