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Issues and Advocacy Section 2021 Ballot
Vice Chair/Chair-Elect (vote for one)
Andrea Belair
Biographical Information and Candidate Statement:
At present, I am the Librarian for Archives and Special Collections at Union College, where I have been for three years. Prior to my current position, I was the Archivist at the Office of the President at Yale University for six years. My prior experience in the archival profession as well as outside of it has led me to develop a keen awareness of issues that impact archivists and its community, and I am especially interested in meeting the needs of marginalized communities that have been largely excluded or ignored by academia, as well as public organizations that may or may not be largely at the mercy of budgets.
My interests are broad, since there are so many pressing issues that face us today: climate change, human rights, diversity and inclusion, transparency, and labor. To me, these issues are not necessarily varying and broad, and rather they originate with capitalism and consumerism that have caused practices that are not sustainable or fair, practices which have allowed private interests to control information. I would like to work to bring these issues to light, and to think of ways to serve the larger community rather than serve only a privileged few.
Steering Committee Member (vote for one)
Burkely Hermann
Biographical Information and Candidate Statement:
For his day job, Burkely indexes declassified documents for the National Security Archive. He previously worked at the National Archives and Maryland State Archives. He earned his MLIS from the University of Maryland, with a concentration in Archives and Digital Curation, in 2019, and a B.A. from St. Mary's College of Maryland, in 2016, majoring in political science and minoring in history. In his free time, he watches animated series, reads webcomics, researches his family roots, and writes about librarians and archivists in pop culture. He also writes fictional stories, often with archivists and librarians as characters, and occasionally swims and hikes. He is a member of the Accessibility and Disability Section and SNAP Section, the American Library Association, and Abolitionist Library Association.
I would like to be a member of the I&A Steering Committee because I'm acutely attuned to issues affecting those in the archival field. Furthermore, I'm uniquely placed in having a foot in the interconnected, but different, worlds of archives and libraries, which would be beneficial as a member of the Steering Committee. I am specifically concerned with issues such as devaluing of archival labor, precarity in the profession, lack of racial diversity in the archival field, cultural representation of archives, challenges of archiving social media content, and archives recognizing institutional racism integrated into their collections and practices. I hope to learn from others on the Steering Committee who are focused on other issues and have worked more years in the archives field. I believe that my unique perspective and time in archival and library settings will contribute to the mission of the I&A, help archivists advocate for ourselves, and push forward discussions about issues which face the profession as a whole.