CPS Steering Committee Election (2020)

Open Positions:

Steering Committee (3)

Candidate for Vice Chair

Ohio Congressional Archives, The Ohio State University

In January, I filled a vacancy on the Congressional Papers Section Steering Committee and my term ends in August. I would like to nominate myself to the Vice Chair/Chair Elect position.

As the Public Policy Archivist, I manage the Ohio Congressional Archives (OCA) and am responsible for promoting and expanding the holdings of the OCA through outreach, instruction, and reference services. My position is supported by the John Glenn College of Public Affairs and in addition to providing primary source research and instruction support to the College, I also am currently serving the College, its students, and faculty as the Interim Librarian for Public Affairs.

I have been in this position for a little under a year and while I am new to working with congressional papers, I have seven years’ experience in digital collection management and processing. I hope to use this experience in my own work but also as a member of the Congressional Papers Section Steering Committee. I am also very interested in primary source instruction and if elected, I hope to work with CSP members to develop new approaches to instruction using congressional collections, and specifically instruction in a virtual environment.

I earned a masters degree in information science from the University of Texas at Austin and my bachelors in political science and history from the University of South Dakota.

Candidates for Steering Committee

Congressional and Political Research Center, Mississippi State University Libraries

My name is Kate Gregory, and I am nominating myself for a position on the CPS steering committee. 

I have a B.A. in English from the University of Mississippi, a M.A. in English from Mississippi State University, and a M.L.I.S. from the University of Alabama. 

I am currently an assistant professor and the political papers archivist of the Congressional and Political Research Center at Mississippi State University Libraries. I have held this position since 2019. For five years prior to that, I was a senior staff member at the CPRC, bringing my total experience in congressional archives to six years. The CPRC was established in 1999 with a mission of collecting and providing research access to political collections from the local to the federal level. Our cornerstone collections are the papers of U.S. Senator John C. Stennis and U.S. Representative G.V. “Sonny” Montgomery. 

As a new faculty member, I am more than eager to join a network of professionals in the field of congressional archives. I am able to give my time, hard work, and ideas to the steering committee while learning from others with more experience. My background in English has made me a strong writer and communicator. In the next three years, I hope to see the CPS make even further headway in digitization and accessibility efforts and contribute to overall best practices ideas for archives with respect the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Thank you for your consideration!

Ted Stevens Foundation, Anchorage, Alaska

I have been a member of the archival team at the Ted Stevens Foundation since 2017 and accepted the additional role of Outreach Coordinator in late 2018. In my current role, I assess, process, and curate the large paper and audio-visual collections of the late Senator Ted Stevens; as well as run the Foundation’s various social media accounts and coordinate events and special occasion communications to our followers and newsletter subscribers. This position is the first time I have worked with congressional papers, and I have greatly enjoyed the work and learning experiences I’ve gained with this extremely large and varied collection as Senator Stevens managed to amass quite a collection over his forty years in office.

Since August 2019, I have been the co-editor of CPS' quarterly newsletter. This position has allowed me to interact with the CPS membership more, and to learn more about our section of the archival world. I would appreciate being a member of the Steering Committee to learn more about and expand the current CPS efforts, and how to further our mission of preserving congressional papers. If elected, I would provide a viewpoint from a state that is often overlooked in nationwide organizations, as well as having a large indigenous population whose role in politics is often ignored but often shows up in congressional collections. I would like to see CPS further engage with the archival world outside of the congressional section and encourage cross-section interactions and education efforts. I would also like to see the CPS website stay up-to-date and keep our section members as informed as possible on our activities and advocacy efforts in the future. I also think CPS could benefit by having a virtual meetup in the wintertime or some other event outside of the annual CPS Day, to encourage connections and knowledge sharing within our group.

Seton Hall University

Sheridan Leigh Sayles is the Technical Services Archivist working for the Special Collections and University Archives at Seton Hall University Libraries. She received an MA in American Studies from Rutgers University-Newark and an MLS with a focus in Archiving from the University of Maryland. She has previously worked as Assistant Archivist at Trinity Church Wall Street and as Archivist for the Senator Frank R. Lautenberg Papers at Rutgers University. She is active in both the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference and the Society of American Archivists, where she works to advocate for early career archivists and also share her experiences with a number of collections. She has worked for more than four years with political collections and continues to expand her work with these materials. In addition to serving on the Electronic Records Committee of CPS, Sheridan works to process, maintain, and grow the eight sets of political papers at Seton Hall.