2019 Elections

Thank you for participating in the 2019 election for the International Archival Affairs Section (IAAS). We are holding elections for two open positions:

•   Junior co-chair – Two-year term (one year as junior co-chair, and one year as senior co-chair)

•   Member-at-large – Three-year term

Please read the candidates' statements and biographical sketches below, and then vote for one candidate for each position when ballots open in the week of June 24, 2019. Eligible members will be sent unique links to the ballots via Survey Monkey. Ballots will remain open for three weeks. 

Thank you again for voting in this year’s election!

IAAS Steering Committee (Katharina Hering, Tewodros Abebe, Margarita Vargas-Betancourt, Susanne Belovari and Mark Peterson)

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 Candidate for Junior Co-Chair: Margarita Vargas-Betancourt

Statement of interest.
At the University of Florida, one of my main assignments is the preservation of a very important and fragile cultural heritage: the Caribbean’s. I have travelled in Latin America and the Caribbean on behalf of the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC). In these trips, I have witnessed the challenges that Caribbean and Latin American repositories face, but also their innovation and resilience. As Co-Chair of the Latin American and Cultural Heritage Archives Section (LACCHA), I coordinated the webinar series Desmantelando Fronteras/Breaking Down Borders. As Co-Chair of the International Archival Affairs Section (IAAS), I would like to continue expanding linkages to colleagues from other regions in the world.

Biography.
Margarita Vargas-Betancourt has been the Latin American and Caribbean Special Collections Librarian at the George A. Smathers Libraries of the University of Florida since 2011. After obtaining a B.A. in Hispanic Literature and Language from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), she received a fellowship from Mexico’s National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT) to pursue graduate school at Tulane University. There she obtained a Ph.D. in Latin American Studies. At the University of Florida, Margarita is in charge of processing Latin American manuscripts and of serving as liaison and reference to faculty and students.  She uses her background on colonialism, ethnohistory, and diversity to identify and highlight the hidden voices in archival collections and to serve and empower Latino students at the University of Florida. At SAA, she has served as Co-Chair of LACCHA (2014-2016), Co-Chair of the Brenda S. Banks Travel Award Subcommittee of the Awards Committee (2018-2019), member of LACCHA’s Steering Committee (2013-2014, 2016-2019), and member of the  International Archival Affairs Section Steering Committee (2016-2019). In 2016, she was part of the team that got the SAA Diversity Award for the Latin American and Cultural Heritage Archives Section webinar series Desmantelando Fronteras/Breaking Down Borders.

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Candidate for Member-at-Large: Brad Bauer

Statement of interest: 
During the past couple of decades, I have seen the IAAS evolve from informal meetings with international colleagues over drinks in the hotel bar at SAA, to the more formal structure of meetings today, and the section’s role as a launching pad for various initiatives, such as the Itinerant Archivists service trip of a few years back.  The IAAS (and its predecessor, the IAART), have been many different things to different people.  But what does today’s section membership expect, and what tasks or projects would be most fruitful to engage in?  If elected as a member-at-large, I would be interested in pursuing this question and seeking to identify meaningful ways that our membership can engage with the archival profession on an international level.  Having worked as an archivist in several positions and institutions that intersected with international archival issues and collections—first in the United States and now in the Middle East—I am interested in learning about developments internationally that may impact our own professional practices in the U.S., and would like to see American archivists engage more broadly with the profession beyond our borders.  With a clear sense of direction and a commitment to programming that is relevant to our members, the IAAS has the potential to raise the profile of international archival issues within SAA, and I would be glad to serve on the steering committee to help advance this goal. 

Biography:
Since August 2017, I have lived and worked in the United Arab Emirates, serving as Librarian for Archives and Special Collections and University Archivist at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD).  Prior to that, I served for six years as chief archivist at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, and for the previous eight years, I was the Western European Curator and associate archivist for collection development at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution Library and Archives.  I have a BA in history from California State University, Fullerton, an MLIS degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, and an MA in Liberal Arts from Stanford University.  In addition to having served on the IAART/IAAS previously (Senior Co-chair, 2013-2014, member of Ad-Hoc Steering Committee, 2012-2013), I have also served in SAA on the steering committee of the Acquisition and Appraisal section for five years, including a term as section chair (2007-2012) and have served on the boards of the Midwest Archives Conference (2001-2003) and the Society of California Archivists (2010-2013), in the latter of which I served a term as president (2011-2012).  I am also a current member of the International Council on Archives, attending and participating in the ICA’s Section on University and Research Archives (ICA-SUV).