2023 Candidates for Encoded Archival Standards Section

Thank you to all of our excellent candidates for standing in the 2023 Encoded Archival Standards (EAS) 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:

• One co-chair, for a two-year term, serving in year one as junior co-chair and in year two as senior co-chair; and
• Two Steering Committee members, for a two-year term.

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

Co-Chair Candidate

Janaya Kizzie

Processing Archivist, Brown University

Biography and candidate statement

My career in archives began as an assistant at Princeton University in 2005 where the Mudd Manuscript Library was just beginning to implement EAD via styles in Microsoft Word. I am a graduate of the University of Rhode Island MLIS program, where my studies centered around archives, diverse communities, and information literacy. As a result of my career working in large private organizational archives (The American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Citizens Bank) and public library archives (Concord Free Public Library and Providence Public Library), I can provide a perspective on institutions that are less likely to be represented in the EAD-user community. I'm also an enthusiastic data manager and I am actively using Oxygen, Google Sheets, Excel and Airtable for my everyday work. In addition, I've created EAD with Archivesspace and with Notepad++. Further, I am familiar with the ins and outs between versions of EAD as my institution has not yet begun using EAD3, and we are trying to keep EAD3 in mind while still encoding in EAD2002. I am also active in uploading, validating and outputting (via XSLT) EAD for the Rhode Island Archives and Manuscripts Catalog Online, an aggregator of EAD finding aids from 30 separate institutions in the state.

As a member of the EAS Section leadership, I would be particularly interested in diversity, equity and inclusion regarding the future of EAD. As a member of the board of the Homosaurus, a linked-data vocabulary for LGBTQ+ terms, I think often about the way data structures do and do not serve minoritized groups. I think there are ways to reflect on the colonial perspectives of history inherent in EAD (and XML for that matter) and to move toward equity by making wise, nuanced changes to the standards. For example, the way the addition of @lang to EAD3 allows for a well-formed use of multiple languages in finding aids makes historical records more discoverable in non-English-speaking communities. I am excited about the ways encoding can change the accessibility--and the very shape--of history.

Steering Committee Member Candidates

Jacqueline Devereaux Asaro 

Archives Manager, Vanderbilt University 

Biography and candidate statement

My name is Jacqueline (she,her,hers), and I am an early career archivist who is deeply interested in how we describe and digitally showcase our collections. The EAS section is especially important to question how we describe our archival holdings. One of the more recent debates I have grappled with is balancing local vocabularies with controlled vocabularies - how do we connect the profession as a whole and still maintain our highly individualized archival repositories? Additionally, how do we crosswalk existing metadata in the age of linked data? 

In my experiences across institutions in California, Texas, and most recently in Tennessee, I have been able to work with finding aids that range from Word docs, CuadraStar, and ArchivesSpace. I worked with preparing finding aids for digest into TARO too. Before becoming an archivist, I worked in museum collections and curation. With the museum foundation, I see a different perspective in how museum collections are described and documented for the public and within the institution. Understanding the range of where our members stand with using EAS is helpful to consider current and future conversations in the section. My current work focuses on university archives - our institution is beginning to use ArchiveSpace to document our holdings. I would be honored to serve in this section to grow my skill set and share my unique background. I can’t wait to build on existing resources on validation, xml editors and the like!

Laurie Lee Moses

Records Management Analyst, Transit Capital Partners | CTA

Biography and candidate statement

At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, I learned about a broad variety of data and information and how it is encoded and managed for use, including knotty problems in digital preservation, archival description, semantics, controlled vocabularies, and a variety of metadata standards. I earned an MS in LIS with a concentration in Data Curation and a Certificate in Special Collections. As Archivist and Digital Librarian for the Center for Black Music Research for almost 10 years, and most recently as Portal Archivist for the Black Metropolis Research Consortium, I managed several migration projects moving from legacy, unsupported systems to new platforms and repositories. In the process, I worked to enhance the user experience through research. I have also served on the Chicago Collections Consortium User Assessment Task Force and the NAFAN (National Archives Finding Aid Network) Aggregator Partners and Technical Advisory Working Groups. I was a member of the "Beyond the Repository" grant-funded task force that created a toolkit for distributed digital preservation efforts. (https://osf.io/gejqs/)

Having experienced a broad variety of technical capacities, both institutional and user, I would bring an understanding of the landscape of access, usability, and technology to the work of the EAS. I'm interested in the intersection of philosophical, practical, technical, and sociological aspects of using standards in archival and records management work, particularly EAD/XML and the impact of decisions in this realm on communities and access. I'm curious about how front end and back end concerns and architectures interact and the possibilities and challenges we face. I would enjoy working to provide greater knowledge, ease of access, and usability for us all.