Thank you to all the excellent candidates for standing in the 2025-2026 Audio and Moving Image Section election. Please take some time to review candidate bios and statements.

Open positions:

• Vice Chair/Chair-Elect
• Member-At-Large, Steering Committee

*The Steering Committee requires a minimum of two members.

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

Candidate statements and Bios

Vice Chair/Chair-Elect Candidates

Vice Chair/Chair-Elect (2-year commitment, as Vice-Chair and then Chair)

Biz Gallo 

Statewide Digitization Initiatives Coordinator, Library of Michigan 

Current Steering Committee Member

Biz Gallo is the Statewide Digitization Initiatives Coordinator at the Library of Michigan. After receiving her undergraduate degree in film studies, she worked in the film industry, from post production to on-set coordination, before turning her passion for creating film into preserving those parts of the cultural record encapsulated in audiovisual media. She received her Master of Science in Information from the University of Michigan School of Information and has since been helping cultural heritage institutions preserve their audiovisual collections through archival reformatting. She regularly presents on audiovisual preservation and digitization project management, and she has been published in the Journal of Digital Media Management, Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies, and Archival Issues.

Steering Committee Member Candidates

Member-At-Large, Steering Committee (1-year commitment), more than two members can hold seats.

Felicia Boretzky 

Media Collection Specialist, Audiovisual Media Preservation Initiative, Smithsonian Libraries and Archives

Outgoing Vice-Chair/Chair elect

Felicia Boretzky received her MLIS from the University of Pittsburgh with a specialization in Archives, Preservation and Records Management. With over a decade of media preservation experience, Felicia has worked for non-profit organizations like the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Music & Recorded Sound and at the private vendor The MediaPreserve. Her work has focused on the physical care and condition of these mixed-media collections, understanding the importance of storage and handling for lifelong preservation. She’s passionate that by extending the longevity of these materials we can provide a greater opportunity for access and discoverability of unseen and/or unheard history through digitization. In her past she was a part of the Pennsylvania Cultural Response Team and has served for the last two years as a part of the leadership of this Section for SAA. She is currently becoming more involved with the Community Archiving Workshop (CAW) as well.  

Bree'ya Brown 

Digital Archivist, University of North Texas  

Current Steering Committee Member

Bree'ya Brown is the Digital Archivist for the University of North Texas Special Collections. In her role, she leads digitization projects and manages born-digital collections for community partners with ties to the state of Texas. Bree'ya initiated internal services for in-house audiovisual digitization and collaborated with other colleagues in the department to create and develop a workstation dedicated to digitizing small-scale cultural heritage collections containing audiovisual materials. With over five years of experience and a strong passion for digital preservation, Bree'ya combines audiovisual preservation techniques with digital archival practices to enhance access to cultural heritage collections. In addition to her primary role, she serves as an instructor for an Archives and Manuscripts course for UNT College of Information Science. She holds a Master of Science in Information Science from the University of Texas at Austin and a Master of Arts in History from California State University, Long Beach. 

Michael Gates 

Audiovisual Digitization Lab Manager, Harold B. Lee Library of Brigham Young University

Michael Gates is the Audiovisual Digitization Lab Manager at the BYU Library in Provo, Utah.  He is responsible for coordinating the digitization of motion picture film, and analog video and audio media.  Prior to BYU, Michael spent 2 years in micrographics digitization, and 8 years in audio visual digitization, and AV born digital validation and normalization.  He holds a master's degree in Sound Recording technology from the University of Massachusetts.  

Being a member at large for the AMI section fits well with my desire to be of help wherever I can.  My role in AV digitization throughout the years has been a position of service; to provide quality digital representations of the media we hold for preservation and for patron access far into the future.  As a member of this section, it would be my privilege to serve the larger community, share my knowledge and help others make connections that will help elevate the work of preserving our audiovisual heritage.

Becky Tinker

Archives Assistant, Yale Music Library

I’m writing to express my interest in a Member-At-Large position with the Society of American Archivists AMI Steering Committee. Prior to pursuing a career as an archivist, I earned my bachelor’s degree in Visual and Media Arts Production and worked in the film and television industry, specifically animation, for over eight years. While pursuing my MLIS degree with a concentration in Archival Management, I interned with the HBO Film &Television archives, and after graduating worked for the PBS television series Poetry in America as an Archival Data Associate for two years as an Archival Data Associate. In this capacity I worked in archival description and digitization of episodes as well as media copyright research. Since October of 2024, I have been working as an Archives Assistant at the Irving Gilmore Music Library at Yale University, primarily fulfilling digitization requests of audio materials and with the library’s vast Historical Sound Recording collection, which has materials ranging from wax cylinders to rare vinyl records, as well as the Oral Historical of American Music collection.

I’m hoping that by serving as a committee member with the AMI section, I can help lend my time and experience towards the expansion of programming and education while meeting fellow archivists who are similarly passionate about this area of work. I have extensive fundraising, event planning, writing, and leadership experience, and would love to increase awareness and interest in audio and image archiving. Furthermore, as someone who is new to working in music archives specifically, I’d love to expand my own knowledge and network with fellow audio archivist professionals engaged in this work to aid my own institution. I’m particularly passionate about silent film and animation archiving, obsolete media, and archival description related to these areas. In my past leadership roles, I’ve helped establish online lecture series, written grant proposals, and presented at conferences, and would love to do the same with the AMI section.

Matthew Wilcox

Audiovisual Archivist, Michigan State University Libraries

Matthew Wilcox is the Audiovisual Archivist at Michigan State University Libraries.  He serves as a member of the Media Preservation Unit (part of the Conservation & Preservation Unit), and is responsible for the in-house preservation, digitization, and improved accessibility of audio and moving image collections in units at the MSU Libraries, including University Archives, Murray & Hong Special Collections, the Vincent Voice Library, and the Turfgrass Information Center.  Matthew also manages the setup and maintenance of audiovisual playback and scanning equipment in the MSU Libraries' Media Preservation Lab and he provides condition assessments and repairs of time-based audiovisual materials in the lab.

In 2025, Matthew's main focus will be assisting with the preservation and digitization of educational television films and kinescopes from the early years of WKAR-TV, the second-oldest continually operating public television station in the country (the station first aired on January 15, 1954).  He gave a presentation on this topic entitled "Walls of the Classroom Disappear: Early Educational Television 16mm Films" at the Association of Moving Image Archivists' (AMIA) 2024 conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  Matthew received his master's in library and information science in 2014 at Wayne State University, with a concentration on Archives and Digital Content Management.