Elections 2020

Candidate Biographies and Statements

VICE-CHAIR/CHAIR-ELECT CANDIDATES

Karen Trivette

Biography:

Associate Professor Karen Trivette is the Head of Special Collections and College Archives in the Gladys Marcus Library at the Fashion Institute of Technology-State University of New York (FIT); she is the first incumbent to hold this position and has held the post since 2008. At FIT, she supervises four staff members, oversees the care and provision of over 6000 linear feet of special collections and archives materials, and administers a robust internship program. She earned her Bachelor of Arts from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in Art History and graduated With Distinction. She earned a Master of Library Science from the University at Albany-State University of New York with a concentration in Archives and Records Management. After graduation, she became a member of and reinstituted the University at Albany’s chapter of Beta Phi Mu, the international honor society for Library and Information Science Master-level graduates. She has worked primarily in art archives and art libraries except for a three-year post at the New York State Archives for which she advised practitioners/constituents throughout New York State on matters of archives and records management. She has presented at many local, national, and international archives conferences and has written and/or edited many publications on topics ranging from fashion forecasting history to archives facility renovation. She also has planned or worked with colleagues to plan many exhibitions focusing on or augmented by special collections and archives materials.

Candidate Statement:

As SAA’s largest membership section, the College and University Archives Section is entitled to ask for equally large ideas from its leadership. I write to you today to ask for your vote to be the section’s next Vice Chair/Chair-Elect and to demonstrate how together we can conceive of not only large ideas but also how we can create dynamic opportunities for today’s and tomorrow’s members.

Tomorrow’s members will not be like today’s. They will be ever more diverse, they will insist that the section be more inclusive, and they will be rightfully obsessed with matters of equality. They will force their impatience with the status quo to work for the section rather than against it. We must be ready for these exciting changes and challenges to come.

At the heart and soul of the section’s creative and truly progressive future is its leadership, which must cast the widest net possible for a truly collective participation and, by extension, inspired ideation.

Since this is a demanding leadership position, I would like to stress my current and past leadership roles, especially within SAA. I have served on the Editorial Board of SAA’s journal, American Archivist, since 2016. I am the Guest Editor of its upcoming issue dedicated to design records. Also, over the last year, I have served the C&UA section as a member of its Steering Committee. Along with C&UA colleagues, I have co-hosted weekly “Coffee Chats” as an online forum for participants to discuss a wide array of matters in common and those especially associated with managing various demands during the COVID-19 pandemic. We have welcomed as many as 38 colleagues to the forum and after many weeks of gathering, the chats are still going strong and helping many during this difficult time.

From 2016 to 2019, I served the Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York, Inc. in successive leadership roles: Vice President, President, and Past President. Since 2019, I have been ART’s representative to SAA’s Regional Archival Associations Consortium.

I am the Vice Chair and Board member of the Access to Memory (AtoM) Foundation as well as the Chair of the AtoM Foundation’s Roadmap Committee, which is charged with developing the third incarnation of AtoM, an archives management software program.

I also have been very active in leadership roles in my home institution. In 2008, I founded and since then have chaired the FIT Library’s Disaster Preparedness Team. I have chaired the FIT Faculty Senate’s Library Committee, and guest-chaired the Senate’s Committee on Academic Standards.

Lastly, I am very excited to apply the solid leadership lessons I learned from being a member of the 2018 Archives Leadership Institute cohort to the operations of the C&UA Section.

I would be thrilled to blend my leadership experience with my creative and welcoming spirit in the service to SAA’s College and University Archives Section. I would be honored to join Michelle Sweetser, your Chair-Elect, in moving the section forward and in fresh and bold ways. Thank you for your vote.

EARLY CAREER PROFESSIONAL SEAT CANDIDATES

Helena Egbert

Biography:

Helena Egbert joined the Richard L. D. and Marjorie J. Morse Department of Special Collections at Kansas State University Libraries as their processing archivist in April 2020. From 2016 to 2020, she worked at Oregon State University’s Special Collections and Archives Research Center. Egbert started there as an undergraduate and continued through the completion of her graduate studies to process collections and provide reference services, concluding with a grant-funded project as a processing and public services archivist. She holds an undergraduate degree from OSU and an MLS from Emporia State University. In her new position, Egbert will lead efforts to describe department holdings and oversee collection management.

Candidate Statement:

Hello! I am Helena Egbert, and I am running for the Early Career Professional Position seat of SAA’s College and University Archives (C&UA) Section. From the beginning of my experience in archives I have been lucky enough to work in public universities. I began as an intern working on processing projects at Oregon State University Special Collections and Archives Research Center (SCARC). Over my time at SCARC I was given progressively more responsibility, cumulating in being hired on a grant to process the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine Records (LPISM). As a processor one of my jobs is to create order out of chaos. During creating this order, I often get the chance to see much of the material up close, which I love. It still feels a little bit like cheating that this is my job! Another essential element of my job is describing material, an essential part of making everything findable. Despite not being as visible position to the public, I think this position is essential to providing access to material, one of my passions. One of my driving inspirations for working in a public university setting is the commitment to providing access to all different kinds of people: students, faculty, local community members, and international researchers. In April I became Kansas State University’s Processing Archivist, a dream position. I believe I would bring a valuable perspective and energy to the C&UA section. I would be interested in helping in the administration, operation, and technical work of initiatives that C&UA undertakes in the next year. In turn I think C&UA section could guide me in finding opportunities to become involved with valuable and interesting research in my field.

Elizabeth James

Biography:

Elizabeth James is the Archivist and Digital Preservation Librarian at Marshall University where her responsibilities consist of conducting and supervising processing, collection management, reference services, teaching, outreach, and digital preservation planning--or, as she usually calls it, all of the "ands" in archival work. She earned her M.S. in Library and Information Science with a concentration in Archives Management from Simmons University in 2018 and her B.A. in both History and History of Art from Yale University in 2015. Professionally, she has been a member of the Society of American Archivists (SAA) since 2018 and currently serves as a Junior Blog Editor for the Student and New Archives Professionals Section. Outside of SAA, she is a member of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (MARAC) and serves on the Finance Committee of MARAC.

Candidate Statement:

As an archivist in a state with few archivists and no extant communities for local archivists to exchange ideas, I am acutely aware of the importance of shared spaces where learning and growth is fostered between group members. These types of communities are doubly important for early career individuals. With many archivists facing a distinct lack of local professional communities, I want to help foster a collaborative environment that ensures that institutions and individuals of a variety of backgrounds, resource levels, and degrees of experience feel fully represented and heard. Though the range of work within college and university archives is vast, the ability to work within so many discrete areas fosters unique opportunities for collaboration between the institutions that the College & University Archives Section serves. I want to further the goal of collaboration and community support by contributing to the broader professional community by serving as an Early Career Professional on the College & University Archives Section Steering Committee.

STEERING COMMITTEE CANDIDATES

Zach Brodt

Biography:

Zach Brodt is the University Archivist & Records Manager at the University of Pittsburgh Library System’s Archives & Special Collections. Prior to becoming University Archivist in 2015, Zach spent five years as Pitt’s University Records Manager and one year as their labor collections project archivist. He is also a Pitt alumnus, having earned a MLIS and a BA in History and Classics from the University of Pittsburgh. As University Archivist, Zach created a Student Organization Records Toolkit to help student groups preserve their history and offer the archives as a resource of expertise in addition to traditional roles of storage and access. He also joined Project STAND to share information about student activism at Pitt. Zach is a member of SAA and MARAC and has presented at several conferences. In addition, he is a member of the Pennsylvania Historical Association and has served on numerous university committees. Beginning last fall, Zach was appointed as the archivist for Alpha Phi Omega National Co-ed Service Fraternity and has served on their National History and Archives Committee since 2015.

Candidate Statement:

I look forward to the opportunity to serve as a member of the College & University Archives Section steering committee. Throughout my career, I have welcomed any chance to learn from the collective wisdom and experiences of my colleagues and the C&UA Section has been a valuable resource for me since becoming a university archivist. With this in mind, I hope to work toward promoting activities in which section members can learn from each other’s successes and failures. I am also interested in encouraging networking within the section to foster collaboration in existing initiatives as well as new projects and grant-seeking ventures. These outlets of sharing information have become more important than ever during the ongoing pandemic in which university archives find themselves scrambling to support online learning and distant researchers while also facing budget cuts and hiring freezes. It would be an honor to serve our community of archivists and I greatly appreciate your consideration.

Angel Diaz

Biography:

Angel Diaz is the University Archivist at Penn State University. In this role, she identifies, acquires, and maintains records of enduring value that chronicle the development and experiences of the Penn State community. Before coming to Penn State, Angel was a processing archivist at UCLA Library Special Collections. Her research and scholarly interests include representation within the profession and historical repositories, and labor issues in the archival profession. Angel has been an active member of SAA since the start of her career nine years ago, including serving as co-chair of the Archivists and Archives of Color Section from 2016-2018. She is a co-founder of the Los Angeles Archivists Collective and a current fellow in the Association of Research Libraries’ Leadership and Career Development Program. Angel received her MLIS from UCLA and MA in Education from the University of San Francisco.

Candidate Statement:

I enthusiastically put my hat in the ring as candidate for a Steering Committee Member role in the College & University Archives Section. This section has been a valuable resource for me as an archivist processing faculty collections and as fairly new University Archivist engaging in collection development and outreach. I have appreciated the discussions on the listserv, reading the campus case studies, and the contributions to the Academic Archivist. Along with documenting university history, I am heavily involved in promoting student engagement with archival materials and learning about the range of activities C&UA members are involved in has greatly supported my own work. As the world adopted to a dramatic change in our personal and professional environments, so have C&UA. We have seen collecting initiatives change form, our ideas and perspectives about the stories we preserve and share have evolved, and we have expressed concerns about how we can carry out our work as the pandemic continues. As a member of the Steering Committee, I hope to facilitate further discussion and sharing of resources, as well as to support advocacy for our community as we continue to weather our new reality. I am heartened by C&UA members’ display of collaboration and initiative and I look forward to supporting within the role of Steering Committee member. Thank you for your consideration.

Virginia Hunt

Biography:

Virginia (Ginny) Hunt is the Associate University Archivist for Collection Development and Records Management Services at the Harvard University Archive (HUA).  At the HUA, Ginny oversees both the strategic development and implementation of University records policies and curation of the historical collections that make up Harvard’s primary repository of university and personal archives including Harvard faculty papers, university records with long-term historical significance, and other Harvard-related material from the 17th through the 21st centuries.  Prior to this appointment, Ginny was the Assistant Archivist at the Center for the History of Medicine at the Countway Library of Medicine and Curator of the Warren Anatomical Museum.  She has also worked as an archivist and preservation specialist at the Congregational Library in Boston, the Houghton Library and Schlesinger Library at Harvard, and was a consultant for the Massachusetts Historic Records Advisory Board.  Ginny has been involved with SAA in various capacities since 1995, including serving on the Steering Committee and as Chair of the Acquisitions and Appraisal Section (2013-2015), Standards Committee, and is currently serving on the J. Franklin Jameson Archival Advocacy Award Committee.  In the last 20 years Ginny has written about and presented on ethics and diversity in archival collection development programs, records management and archival appraisal for analog and digital materials, outreach and promotion for college and university archives, and best practices for collection documentation.  She is currently on the faculty of the Society of American Archivists Continuing Education Program where she teaches Fundamentals of Acquisition and Appraisal.  Ginny holds a BA in Communications from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, an MSLIS from Simmons College and an ALM in Museum Studies from the Harvard University.

Candidate Statement:

I am excited and honored to be submitting my nomination for Steering Committee for the College and University Archives Section of SAA.  As a member of the C&U Section for nearly 25 years, I am well aware of the complicated yet enriching work that college and university archivists and records managers engage in to balance the administrative, legal, cultural, privacy, and historical needs of their home institutions. We provide scholarly resources for researchers studying the disciplines taught, research carried out, and individuals who have inhabited or interacted with our institutions over time.  Having worked in educational and/or C&U archives most of my career, I am passionate about promoting and shining a light on the diverse, rich, and seminal scholarly and historical resources in our institutions’ records.

For the uninitiated, college and university archives are often seen merely through the lens of a home for yearbooks, sports teams photographs, or institutional administrative files.  However, as we know, our collections are so much more, rich and robust with information on local, national, and international history.  College and university archives hold the unique ability to “document the now” as it is happening.  Because our core work is to collect and preserve the records of our educational institutions, at any given time the materials we collect are a reflection of the scientific, political, literary, and intellectual discoveries and innovations that could potentially have a profound impact on the way future citizens may eventually live, work, and understand the world.  Educational institutions are also social microcosms of the larger world we inhabit:  artistic, cultural, and political demonstrations unfolding on campuses become incubators for larger movements leading to changes in national and international policy, laws, societal norms, and social justice. Our ability to connect the information in our own institutions’ documentation and records with unfolding current or near future events allows us to raise awareness that the work we do to collect and preserve our institutions’ collections and records provides unique insight into the foundations of influence on national and global actions that were conceived of at our colleges and universities.

College and university archives are now entering new frontiers: serving as data repositories, homes of massive web archives, platforms for innovative digital projects, and incubators for social justice collections documenting and embracing diversity and inclusiveness reflected in movements and initiatives in which our home institutions are engaging.  C&U archives are also expanding to support community archiving projects to serve as centers for preserving the history and culture of previously undocumented individuals and communities where their institutions are situated, and, as such, providing an important, if not always flattering understanding of the history of the institution and its surrounding community.  All of these reasons exemplify why supporting the work of C&U archivists and their collections are exciting to me.  As a member of the Steering Committee, I would hope to serve our Section membership in exploring these types projects, promoting collaboration within our membership and other Sections with similar diversity or social change initiatives to leverage resources to do this work, and focus on our common goals to better meet the challenges of being an archivist in the 21st  century will entail.

David McCartney

Biography:

David McCartney, C.A., is the University Archivist at the University of Iowa, a position he has held since 2001. His responsibilities include collection development, description, access, instruction, and preservation, and he serves on a university committee that reviews and continually revises the institution’s records management program. He received a M.A. in history and M.L.S. in library and information science, both from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a B.A. in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Before returning to his home state of Iowa, David was employed by History Associates in Rockville, Maryland, as an archivist for Montgomery County, Maryland. Prior to that he was a contract employee in the Records Division of the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C. He is immediate past president of the Midwest Archives Conference and has presented at SAA and AAUP conferences on documenting student activism.

Candidate Statement:

The College and University Archives Section is our hive-mind for professional guidance and insight. It would be a privilege and honor to serve as a member of your Steering Committee.

The Academic Archivist blog, the Section’s annual meeting and associated topic-driven program, and our daily email dispatches are all tools we rely upon for such guidance and insight from our colleagues. Whether we work alone in a small repository or with others in a large organization, or whether we are new to the profession or experienced: All of us benefit from these interactions.

I would look forward to working with the Committee’s leadership and with our Section members to help implement programming that serves our collective needs via these tools. In the COVID-19 pandemic era, I would be particularly open to suggestions which would enhance remote participation and foster conversation specific to challenges presented by the current public health crisis.

Although we serve institutions of higher education with a wide range of missions and purposes, we share common threads of service that include institutional memory, collection development, access, outreach, preservation, and legal concerns. I would be honored to contribute to the Section as a member of the Steering Committee and to help continue its vital work.

Thank you for your consideration.

Elizabeth Scott

Biography:

Elizabeth Scott is the Archivist & Special Collections Librarian and Assistant Professor at East Stroudsburg University (ESU) in Pennsylvania where she is responsible for the University Archives and Special Collections, the University Art & Sculpture Collection and the Al Cohn Memorial Jazz Collection. Additionally, part of her job responsibilities also includes librarianship where she provides reference, teaches library instruction sessions, and is a liaison to various academic departments on campus. She holds a B.A. from Dickinson College in history and English, an MLS from University at Albany, SUNY, and is a certified archivist through the Academy of Certified Archivists. She is pursuing a second master’s degree in Professional and Digital Media Writing in the English department at ESU.  

She has been a member of SAA for over twenty years and was a recent peer-reviewer for the Teaching with Primary Sources Case Study publication led by the Reference, Access, and Outreach Section of SAA. She has held leadership positions on the Academy of Certified Archivists’ Board and was the Regent for Outreach from 2014-2018. Additionally, she is also involved with the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (MARAC) and currently serves as a Member-at-Large. From 2016-2019, she was the Co-Chair of the Communications Committee, served as the Program Committee Co-Chair for the Spring 2019 conference and is serving as a Co-Chair on two task forces.

Candidate Statement:

I am Elizabeth Scott and I am running for a member's seat on the Steering Committee of SAA's College & University Archives (C&UA) Section. I am an Archivist & Special Collections Librarian and Assistant Professor at East Stroudsburg University (ESU) in Pennsylvania. Prior to coming to ESU, I was the Archivist & Records Management Librarian at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. Additionally, I have worked as a project archivist in various other academic archives.

One of my research interests is academic archivists and tenure. Last year, my colleagues and I presented at the 2019 SAA conference with a panel presentation entitled “Leading with Tenure and Promotion: Navigating the Dynamics of Power, Research, and Service in the Archives Profession.” I am very interested in continuing research on the tenure-track process for academic archivists in the field.

According to the 2017 WArS-SAA Salary Survey, approximately 39% of archivists and records managers are employed in academic institutions which means there are a lot of us out there! If elected as a Steering member, I see this opportunity as a way to give back to the C&UA section which I have looked to for advice and information and as a way to help advance the agenda of all academic archivists. I would be very interested in helping with the landscape survey of college and university archivists in order to better understand the make-up of our group. Being such a large percentage of archivists, it is important to learn what we are facing in academia with supported data. Having been involved with other organization’s leadership, I would be a dedicated and active member of the Steering Committee. I look forward to the election and thank you for your consideration!

Lisa Stafford

Biography:

Lisa Stafford is the Special Collections Librarian at Prairie View A&M University; John B. Coleman Library, where her responsibilities include preserving, planning, organizing, managing activities and programs in the Special Collections, as well as supporting and promoting their use. She earned a M.L.I.S. with an Endorsement of Specialization in Legal Informatics and a B.A. in English from The University of Texas at Austin. Prior to starting her position at Prairie View A&M University, Lisa worked at Fort Worth Public Library, Verizon Corporation and Spherion.  In addition to her archival work, Lisa served as a Director of Research and an Information Specialist.

Candidate Statement:

I welcome the opportunity to serve and make a difference as a member of the Steering Committee of the SAA College and University Archives Section.  Over the past year, I have welcomed the Section’s inspiration and guidance, especially during the COVID-19 global health crisis, on how to advocate, preserve and apply best practices as we move forward into the future.  It will be imperative in the new economy to be united and to employ activism for our profession and our collections and identify on our campuses those archives that continue to support the mission and vision of our institutions.  I believe strongly that the College and University Archives Section brings together a community of practitioners with a singular goal:  to promote the exchange of ideas and provide opportunities and encourage professional growth among its member. I am committed to give back to this Section by serving on the Steering Committee.  I would actively advocate for and listen to our member’s interests and needs and help develop innovative programming and resources in support of College and University Archives Section’s mission as a member of the Steering Committee.  I would be humbled and honored to be selected as a Steering Committee member and promote collaboration among all members.  I would very much appreciate your vote!  Thank you for your consideration!

Sandra Varry

Biography:

Sandra Varry is the Heritage & University Archivist at Florida State University where she collects, manages, and provides access to FSU’s archive and manages its Heritage Museum. She holds an MFA in Photography from UNC at Chapel Hill, and an MLIS from the University of South Florida,  and is an Associate University Librarian at FSU. She became a Certified Archivist in 2013, a Digital Archives Specialist in 2014, and attended the Archives Leadership Institute in 2015.  Sandra is currently the Immediate Past Chair of the Visual Materials Section of SAA, and a past President of the Society of Florida Archivists (SFA). She has also served as a founding member and later chair of the College & University Archives Section of SFA. She taught traditional and digital photography for before becoming a full time archivist, specializing in historic photograph collections.

Candidate Statement:

I look forward to the opportunity to serve on the Steering Committee of the College & University Archives Section. My current interests lie in the complexities of campus histories and building inclusive archives, salary advocacy, and the preservation and accessibility of visual materials. I am especially interested in the section’s plan to conduct a survey on college and university archivists to better understand the landscape of our profession. These topics are as important as ever given current world events, and our ability to leverage our knowledge and skills as archivists will inform our professional work into the future. I feel strongly that we have to be diligent in exploring ways to increase engagement in the profession by creating inclusive opportunities for all of our members. In a time when the travel and funding are in question, and the demands on our time are increasing we must better address the needs of our colleagues. As a long time member of the section I have found it an invaluable resource in navigating the challenges of institutional archives. My career in academia has spanned just over twenty years, with the last ten in university archives. In parallel I have participated in state and national professional associations because I believe it is essential both to contribute to the profession and continue to learn from the diverse perspectives and experiences of those in our field. I would love to continue to be of service as a member of the C&UA Steering Committee.