2026 Election: Meet the Candidates!

You will be voting for: 
• The Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect (2026-2029)
• Two Steering Committee Members (2026-2029)
• Updates to the ERS Section Standing Rules

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

Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect Candidate (one open seat)

Amal Ahmed
Archives & Records Management Specialist 2, New York State Archives 

Amal Ahmed is an audiovisual archivist and writer. She has recently started a position at the New York State Archives, as an Archives and Records Management Specialist. At NYSA, Amal works with a team of archivists' part of the Digital Records Services unit. She is a graduate of the Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Amal’s research explores the migratory realities of displaced film collections, particularly in the SWANA region, addressing the need for decolonial praxis as part of the archival workflow. As an archival fellow for Archives and Digital Media Lab (ADML), Amal worked as a technical assistant for the course Fundamentals of Archival Management & Emergency Mitigation in Palestine, Lebanon & the Global South. The course is based on a critical anticolonial and decolonial framework grounded in The Adelaide-Tandanya Declaration, an international legal framework for the collective rights of Indigenous Peoples globally. Amal is also currently enrolled at Queens College (CUNY) in the Library Media Specialist program, and president of Queens Colleges Society of American Archivists Student Chapter (QCSAA). At Queens College, Amal is the program coordinator for student internships for the Faculty Organizing for Community Archives Support (FOCAS) program and is studying the role of NYC-based community archives as radical and critical pedagogical spaces for emerging archives and LIS students to learn cultural competence and counter-archiving.

Steering Committee Member Candidate (Two open seats)

Jennifer Bussey
Digital Asset Management System (DAMS) Coordinator, University of Texas at Austin

After receiving my MLIS from the University of North Texas, I started working as the Digital Asset Management System Coordinator at the University of Texas at Austin. My work consists of updating the existing DAMS website for stakeholders to better manage their collections and taxonomies by balancing stakeholder input with the software developer's goals. I am currently working on a project to update the public facing portion of the website to better optimize the features for students and researchers. While providing access to these digital collections, I also serve as the Co-Chair of the Library Staff Council where I facilitate productive change in the institution through speaking on behalf of the library's staff members in personnel interviews and meetings with the Senior Vice Provost.

Joining this committee would allow me to use my experiences building a system to manage electronic records to help achieve similar successes across the profession. My communication skills will be an asset to this committee as I am adept at finding common ground amongst dissenting voices. I am a forever student, so I am also interested in growing my knowledge about electronic records through my time servicing within and interacting with the Electronic Records Committee.

Linda Smith

Student/Archivist, Diocese of the Armenian Church of America (Eastern)

I received my Master’s in Library Science in December 2022 and only had my first archives experience in my last semester in that program, where I had the chance to create a subject guide for the archives of the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library and Museum. I was hooked, and immediately began an Archives Management certificate program at Simmons University before moving into my current graduate program in Moving Image Archiving and Preservation at New York University. In my spare time, my spouse and I love exploring places near and far, and cooking and eating vegan food.

Over the course of four years, I have learned a lot about the importance of creating and preserving all types of records, especially digital ones. Through my work with DPOE-N and Arab.AMP, I have worked exclusively with digital records and preservation, and have learned that while desirable, it comes with its own set of challenges. This is an area of study I’m passionate about, as someone who works with some electronic records on a daily basis and as someone who wants to teach other archivists, groups, and laypeople how to best manage their electronic records via blogging, workshops, talks, and the like.

Sebastian Themelis

University Archivist, Western Kentucky University

I am an early-career archivist at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky. As University Archivist and Records Manager, I work across records management, digitization, born-digital stewardship, and access. I am currently the acting administrator of TopScholar, WKU’s digital repository and publishing platform, which supports open access to scholarly and creative work produced by the university community. Previously, at Stanford University, I contributed to the Virtual Tribunals project by crosswalking metadata from the International Criminal Court into Stanford’s local metadata framework. I completed my MLIS at the University of Washington in 2025, and my professional interests include practical, sustainable approaches to electronic records, digital preservation, and metadata management.

I am interested in serving as a Steering Committee Member because I care deeply about the future of electronic records work and the need for practical, sustainable approaches that institutions of all sizes can implement. This is especially meaningful to me in my current role, where I am solely responsible for the long-term preservation and access of WKU’s historical record, as well as for providing practical guidance to colleagues on the born-digital records they create and rely on in their daily work. I would welcome the opportunity to support a section that helps archivists navigate these challenges collectively, and I would be excited to contribute to resource sharing, collaborative discussion, and the development of useful guidance for professionals working with electronic records in a rapidly changing environment.

Update to ERS Section Standing Rules

An updated version of the ERS Section Standing Rules will be on the section ballot this year. In summary, the changes to the Standing Rules include:

• Establishes the Communications Liaison steering commitee role as an elected member of the Steering Committee that includes liaising with BloggERS
• Brings ERS Standing Rules into line with those of other sections by adding "name," "mission," and "members" sections
• Renumbers and reorganizes the document accomodate the new sections. In particular, moving sections about Steering Committee eligibility requirements and officer term limits to the "Officers" section