2023 Election: Candidate Statements

Thank you to all of our excellent candidates for standing in the 2023 Congressional Papers Section (CPS) 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 Chair (two-year term),
• One Vice Chair/Chair-Elect (three-year term), and
• Two Steering Committee members (two-year terms).

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

Chair Candidate

The following candidate is running for the Chair position:

 
Kate Gregory
Director, Mississippi Political Collections/Assistant Professor
Mississippi State University Libraries

My name is Kate Gregory, and I am honored to ask for your vote for Section Chair of SAA’s Congressional Papers Section. I have served CPS since 2020 as a Steering Committee member. I was elected to a second term on the Steering Committee in 2022. I have served on the task force for the Managing Congressional Collections supplement and helped plan CPS Day programming. I am a 2018 MLIS graduate of the University of Alabama’s School of Library and Information Studies. I have nine years of experience with the congressional collections at Mississippi State University Libraries, including the papers of Senators John C. Stennis and Marsha Blackburn and Congressmen Sonny Montgomery, Mike Espy, Chip Pickering, and David Bowen. I am also an active member of the Association of Centers for the Study of Congress.

As your Section Chair, I would be committed to growing our professional connections to one another by continuing to build our newly established Coffee Breaks, providing dynamic programming for CPS Day, and working to grow membership in the section. Along with ACSC, I will continue to help move the technical supplement project forward. I also would like to see us build more community through collaborative digital humanities projects, such as encouraging participation in the American Congress Digital Archives Portal.

Vice Chair/Chair-Elect Candidate

The following candidate is running for the Vice Chair/Chair-Elect position:

John Caldwell
Political and Public Policy Papers Archivist
University of Delaware Library, Museums and Press

I’ve been involved in the Congressional papers world since 2012 with my first paraprofessional position as an archives intern in the office of then-Senator Kent Conrad (D-ND). I’ve been a member of the section since 2012, and have served in a number of capacities in the past, including serving as a member of the Constituent Services Systems (CSS)/Correspondence Management Systems (CMS) Task Force from 2016-2017, a member of the Steering Committee from 2017-2019, and a member of the CPS Electronic Records Committee from 2017-2021. After a bit of a break from CPS while serving as Vice President of the Association of Centers for the Study of Congress, I’m excited for the opportunity to renew my involvement with SAA generally and this section in particular. 

After earning my MLS from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2013, I worked several contract archival positions before returning to Congressional papers as an intern in the Senate Historical Office (2014-2015), the National Digital Stewardship Resident embedded in the United States Senate studying digital preservation practices (2015-2016), and finally as Archivist for then-Senator and Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada (2016). I’ve been at my current position at the University of Delaware since 2017, stewarding our Delaware politics, policy and government collections. While at UD, I’ve worked on a number of collections of state and federal officials, while also working on a number of digital projects for the Library, including an active web archiving program every election cycle.

As Vice Chair and future Section Chair, I look forward to building on the good work of our newly established networking opportunities like the Coffee Breaks and continue supporting ongoing projects of our section and its members, including the technical supplement project and the American Congress Digital Archives Portal. I am also interested in thinking of new ways to facilitate the broader use of our collections, be that in instruction, online exhibitions, or larger advocacy efforts. As congressional archivists, we are custodians of not just political history, but American history, and I think it’s easy for archives users to overlook that reality of our collections. While my archival ethic is to preserve and provide access with minimal personal interpretation, we need to give users the tools to do the interpretative work within our collections to be capable researchers and active citizens.

Steering Committee Member Candidates

The following candidates are running for the section steering committee:

Katie Jakovich
Archivist
History Associates Incorporated

For over two years now, I have been part of a team processing a Senate collection at History Associates Incorporated (HAI). In that capacity I processed the press files, audiovisual materials, and am currently processing staff files. Working on this collection has been and continues to be a rewarding and educational experience; it involves collaboration with the repository on decision-making, grappling with the challenges that come with a large collection, and navigating the politics that surround congressional collections.

Additionally, I worked with five congressional offices on Capitol Hill as the members either retired or transferred from the House to the Senate. My work included consulting on deeds of gift, packing and inventorying documents and memorabilia, creating detailed accession records for the repository to reference upon receipt, and providing digital archiving and records management services. The experience of being embedded within active offices gives me rare insight on these collections, as I have witnessed in real-time how a congressional staff operates.

My work with these records has increased my existing interest in congressional papers and my desire to contribute to the field through participation in the SAA Congressional Papers Section. As a member of the Steering Committee, I feel I can bring a unique perspective on congressional papers and my experience with outreach and engagement within the archival community. I believe it is especially critical that those of us facing the challenges of processing and caring for congressional collections communicate and connect amongst ourselves, but we must also engage with the larger archival community and the public about why these collections matter.

I earned my MSIS, with a focus on Archiving and Preservation, from the University of Texas at Austin and my BA in History from Rhodes College. I worked in libraries and archives for the entirety of my time both at Rhodes and UT Austin, gaining experience with processing, appraisal, and outreach. My time at HAI furthered my exposure to many aspects archival work and the dilemmas that come with being a consultant.

Dawn Sueoka
Congressional Papers Archivist
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Library

Aloha mai kākou! I am the archivist for the Hawaiʻi Congressional Papers Collection at the UH Mānoa Library, where I manage the papers of Senator Daniel K. Inouye, Senator Hiram L. Fong, Senator Spark M. Matsunaga, Senator Daniel K. Akaka, Congressman Neil Abercrombie, Congresswoman Pat Saiki and other Hawaiʻi members of Congress. I have worked with these collections for three and a half years, and have served as an ex-officio member of the CPS Steering Committee, as your newsletter co-editor (with Kathryn Hujda), for the last two years.

Before becoming a congressional papers archivist, I worked for 10 years as a museum archivist, with a particular interest in education and outreach. I co-authored, with Melissa Gonzales and Susan Hernandez, a chapter on archival values in the 2022 SAA publication Museum Archives: Practice, Issues, Advocacy. I currently serve as chair of the board of the Hawaiʻi Council for the Humanities.

I have learned so much from this section–from the listserv to the coffee breaks to the electronic records and advocacy resources to our annual CPS day. If elected to the steering committee, I hope to continue the great work of our section leadership. I hope to help increase our membership, and am excited to continue discussions around outreach, advocacy, and civic engagement. I am very appreciative of our congressional papers community, and I would be grateful for the opportunity to continue serving on the steering committee. Mahalo for your consideration!