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2026 Election: Candidate Statements
Thank you to all of our excellent candidates for standing in the 2026 Description Section 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:
Ballots will be managed by SAA staff through Survey Monkey; keep an eye on your inbox for when the ballot opens!
Vice Chair/Chair-Elect Candidate
The following candidate is running for the Vice Chair/Chair-Elect position:
Ana D. Rodriguez
Job Title and Institution: Digitization Coordinator and Registrar, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Rare Book & Manuscript Library
Bio:
Ana D. Rodríguez is the Digitization Coordinator and Registrar of the Rare Book & Manuscript Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has been working in the field of galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM) for the past 27 years, with expertise in the areas of special collections, digital collections and descriptive metadata. Ana holds a BA in theory of art from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez, an MLIS from the Florida State University, an MA in art history from the University of Florida and recently completed a graduate Certificate of Advance Study (CAS) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign iSchool.
Statement of Interest:
My desire to contribute, serve and guide a thriving community of archival workers, especially early-career professionals, is driving me to pursue the nomination of the SAA Description Section Vice-Chair position. The craft of describing archival materials for digital collections has been, and continuous to be, a fundamental aspect of my career in special collections and museums. I care tremendously about fostering a culture of content creators with a sense of duty for discovery and accessibility. This tenet empowers me to seek working alongside members of the Steering Committee to promote training opportunities, emphasize the importance of standards and advance efficient description methodologies and strategies.
Providing mentorship and creating a welcoming atmosphere to discuss trending and crucial description practices - such as reparative and inclusive metadata - are among my top priorities for the section. Above all, I believe in SAA’s mission of service and education, and joining the Description Section Steering Committee as the most meaningful way to contribute to the field.
Secretary
The following candidate is running for the Secretary position:
Margaret Long
Job Title and Institution: Reference Archivist, Naval History and Heritage Command
Bio:
Margaret Long holds a BA and MA in History from Salisbury University and an MS in Information Management and Preservation from the University of Glasgow. During grad school, she worked in Salisbury University's archives processing both University and Special Collections. She spent three years working for an archival consulting company where she interacted with a variety of archives including corporate, nonprofit, and government archives. Currently, she works for the Naval History and Heritage Command based at the Washington Navy Yard. During her time there, she has worked both as a Processing and a Reference Archivist.
Statement of Interest:
As an archivist who has worked both in Processing and Reference, I find description vital for being able to accurately depict what a collection holds and make it more accessible to use. Standards and discussions on description help archivists across a variety of institutions portray what they have to offer, something that is a key aspect to our field. In this vein, I am interested in aiding the Description Section Steering Committee as the Secretary to help continue the active discussion surrounding description.
Steering Committee Member-at-Large Candidates
The following candidates are running for the section steering committee:
Katie Moseby
Job Title and Institution: Assistant Archivist, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Center for Arkansas History and Culture
Bio:
Katie holds a BA in Communication from the University of Southern California, an MA in Human Rights from Kingston University London, and an MLIS from the University of South Florida. She started her professional career in libraries as a Resident Librarian in Metadata Services at Virginia Tech in late 2022. Life took her back to her home state of Arkansas where she found her first position in archives as the Assistant Archivist at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s Center for Arkansas History and Culture. Drawing on her background in human rights and metadata, Katie is eager to contribute to the growth of reparative description and inclusive metadata practices within the profession.
Statement of Interest:
I am excited to nominate myself for the Member-at-Large position with the Description Section. I am nearing my one-year anniversary in my first archivist position at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s Center for Arkansas History and Culture (CAHC). CAHC is a teaching archive that collects, preserves, and makes available Arkansas history. Having entered archives from a metadata services background, I am particularly passionate about the intersection of discoverability and reparative metadata. As someone with many intersectional identities often overlooked in archives—Black, female, Southern, and rooted in rural America—I know how important it is for people to see themselves reflected accurately in the historical record. I am eager to contribute to the section’s work on inclusive description, focusing on how we can remediate legacy finding aids to better reflect the diverse histories of the communities we serve. As an early-career professional, I hope to bring a fresh perspective on how we can use descriptive standards to foster transparency and trust in archival institutions. I would be honored to serve this section and help promote more equitable descriptive practices across the profession.
Faith Charlton
Job Title and Institution: Lead Processing Archivist, Special Collections Firestone, Princeton University Library
Bio:
Faith Charlton is the Lead Processing Archivist for Special Collections Firestone at Princeton University Library where she serves as the functional supervisor for the team of processing archivists located at Firestone Library. She seeks to provide user-centered discovery of and access to archival records, especially those documenting marginalized communities. She has been an active member of several local and national professional organizations for over ten years including Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries, among others. Within SAA, she has been a member of the Mentoring Subcommittee, the Standards Committee, and most recently, a founding member of the UX Section, for which she now serves as Immediate Past Chair. Faith is a certified archivist and holds a BA from The College of New Jersey, an MA from Villanova University, and an MLIS from Drexel University.
Statement of Interest:
As part of her role as Lead Processing Archivist for Special Collections Firestone at Princeton University Library, Faith has prioritized work related to archival description, particularly inclusive and reparative description. This has included leading and participating in the development and enhancement of local descriptive practices and workflows. She currently chairs Princeton's Inclusive Description Working Group and has been involved in many of the group's efforts over the past several years, which have included authoring a harmful language statement; auditing Princeton's finding aids to locate harmful language; authoring inclusive description guidelines and considerations for staff; the implementation of online content warnings and related, a focus group study on content mediation in Princeton's finding aids site; and several reparative description projects which most recently have focused on Princeton's Indigenous collections. At a professional level, Faith recently co-founded the Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation Inclusive Description Affinity Group to develop a community of practice for staff at member institutions. She also co-authored the Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia Anti-Racist Description Resources and worked with the SAA Description Section to have the publication endorsed as an SAA external standard. Faith has appreciated the community of practice the Description Section has fostered over the years, particularly its blog, documentation portal, and robust programming. She would be grateful for the opportunity to contribute her experience and ideas especially those regarding inclusive description to the Section's initiatives and to continue learning from her colleagues by serving on the Section's Steering Committee as a Member-at-Large.
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