Design Records Section Leadership

The Architectural Records Roundtable was established in June 1990, and its members convene at the annual Society of American Archivists' conference meeting. The name of the group was changed to the Design Records Section in 2017, in accordance with the new regulations for naming of SAA component groups and to reflect the wider scope of the section.

DRS Meeting History - identifies dates and locations of past meetings, and provides links to each year's Annual Report and Meeting Minutes.

DRS archives are housed as a series within the records of the Society of American Archivists records located in the Archives Department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the Division of Archives and Special Collections.  The online finding aid is located at: http://www.uwm.edu/Libraries/arch/findaids/uwmmss172/roundtables.html
 

Current DRS Leadership

Katie Twomey
DRS Co-Chair (2023 - 2025)

Katie Twomey is the Archivist at the Portman Archives, recently she has completed her masters in Historic Preservation and has worked at the Portman Archives for the past 5 years in Atlanta, GA. Katie works primarily on the digitization and record creation for the analog and digital architectural drawings of architect and developer John C. Portman, Jr. In the past, she served as the Outreach Manager and Outreach Co-Chair of the Society of Georgia Archivists. Prior to her current position, she served as the Environmental Review Historian for Georgia's State Historic Preservation Office. Katie is looking forward to learning and growing in this field and hopes to contribute to a positive experience for all who take part in the Design Records Section. 

Jade Snelling
DRS Co-Chair (2023 - 2025)

Jade Snelling is the Collections Archivist for the International Archive of Women in Architecture at Virginia Tech. Jade works with architectural records and design-related records that document the contributions of women to the built environment. Jade completed the SAA DAS certification in 2018 and is also a certified archivist with the Academy of Certified Archivists. Prior to her current role, summer of 2020, Jade worked on a mass digitization projects of architectural records. Before starting at Virginia Tech in spring of 2017, Jade worked as a graduate research assistant at the Alexander Architectural Archives while earning a M.S. from the University of Texas at Austin. Jade is looking forward to serving this professional community - both to share knowledge and learn from others in this section and beyond. 

Andi Altenbach

DRS Steering Committee Member (2021 - 2024)

Andi Altenbach is the Archivist & Librarian at Studio Gang, a design firm with offices in Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Paris. She has worked to build up the archival and records management programs, to steward the Studio’s diverse collections of architectural models, sketches, digital files, and other design records. Since 2017, she has been an active member of the Design Records Section, the Digital Design Records Task Force, and, locally, the Chicago Area Archivists. This has included coordinating programming, presenting at the Section Meeting, and collaborating with DRS members on writing on design records topics.

As a lone arranger mainaging design collections, she has benefited greatly from the collective knowledge, insight, and generosity of the Design Records Section community, and she is looking forward to the opportunity to give back by serving as a Steering Committee Member. Andi is interested in developing strategies for utilizing our collective energy as a SAA section to cultivate relationships with record creators in addressing the complex needs and challenges of design collections. 

Kristin Bjork
DRS Steering Committee Member (2022 - 2025)

Kristin Bjork is the Senior Reference Archivist at Harvard University's Property Information Resource Center (PIRC). Kristin has over 15 years experience in the archival field working with many types of materials, including objects, photography, design records, visual materials, and library/archival collections. Prior to joining the PRIC, Kristin worked at Harvard's Peabody Museum in both archivial and collections management roles. Kristin holds a master's degree in Library and Information Science from Simmons University along with a graduate certificate in Museum Studies from Harvard Extension School. Kristin is excited about the opportunity to become more active in the Design Records Section as a Steering Committee Member. 

Tellina Liu
Member-at-Large (2023 - 2025)

Tellina is the Archivist and Liaison Librarian for the Moshe Safdie Archive, McGill University and also works with the John Bland Canadian Architecture Collection. She is responsible for collection management, reference, and outreach for the collection, and works closely with Safdie Architects to promote access to and use of the collection. She holds degrees in architecture and historic preservation and worked as a preservation architect for several years prior to becoming an archivist.

Betsy Frederick-Rothwell

Web Liaison (2023-2025)

Betsy is the Curator & Head Archivist at the Environmental Design Archives (EDA), a research unit of the College of Environmental Design at the University of California, Berkeley. Betsy received her graduate degree in architecture from the University of California, Berkeley and fell in love with historic buildings while working as a processing archivist at the EDA after graduation. She worked as a preservation specialist for the U.S. General Services Administration and went on to obtain her MS in Historic Preservation and Ph.D. in Architecture (architectural history/historic preservation) at the University of Texas at Austin. Before returning to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2022, Betsy served as a lecturer in architectural history and a preservation project reviewer for the Texas Historical Commission.