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Thank you to all of our excellent candidates for standing in the 2021 MARS 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:
Ballots will be managed by SAA staff through Survey Monkey; keep an eye on your inbox for when the ballot opens!
The following candidates are running for the Vice Chair/Chair-Elect position:
Cara M. McCormick
Manager, Archives Services, RAND Corporation
Cara McCormick manages the Archives of the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit nonpartisan research organization in Santa Monica, CA. She oversees physical and digital collections and provides archival reference services to RAND staff and external scholarly researchers. A trained audiovisual preservation specialist with more than 20 years of archives experience, Cara previously managed the corporate archives of The Clorox Company, provided video preservation services to Bay Area Video Coalition, preserved historic broadcast recordings as Senior Archivist at New York Public Radio station WNYC, and processed print and photograph collections at New-York Historical Society and the Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. Cara is a member of the Archives Leadership Institute cohort of 2018, and is active in the Research Center Information Managers Records and Archives Committee (RRAC) along with RAND's peer organizations from other Federally Funded Research and Development Centers. In partnership with RRAC and the Air Force Declassification Office, she has supported efforts to streamline processes around declassification review of historical materials.
I have greatly benefitted from connecting with fellow Military Archives Section members at past annual meetings and through our virtual coffee chats over the last year, and appreciate the opportunity to collaborate on our “Outreach in the time of COVID-19” session for the upcoming SAA Annual meeting. As Vice-Chair of MARS, I intend to build on this group’s efforts to engage as a community and expand membership for the section through virtual meetings and events on topics of special interest to military archivists. I hope to survey our membership to identify unique shared challenges of managing military-related collections, and leverage the breadth of knowledge and expertise in this group to develop a list of resources for our section microsite. I also plan to utilize the listserv as a place to celebrate significant archival projects being undertaken at MARS institutions, particularly ones that incorporate interesting new technologies or that demonstrate a commitment to diversity and inclusion. I would be grateful for the opportunity to serve as Vice-Chair and appreciate your consideration.
The following candidates are running for the Communication Liaison position:
Nicole Katz
Archivist & Librarian I
Paul Horgan Library | New Mexico Military Institute
Having grown up, a child of two Marines, on military bases across the country, I have a healthy respect for the job and sacrifices that our service members offer up for us. Moving around so much though can be tough on a kid. Luckily, I loved books. The library was the first place I visited when we moved to a new base or town. There is nothing quite like a shiny new library card and meeting all my new, kind librarian friends. I knew rather early on that being a librarian was the job for me. Fast forward to 2018, I completed my MLIS at San Jose State University with concentrations in both K-12 Media Specialist/Teacher Librarianship, and Archives and Preservation Management.
In 2019, I accepted my current position, my first Archives position, here in Roswell, New Mexico. I never thought that I would ever find a job that combined both my degree’s concentrations, as well as my childhood experiences in the military. Along with my normal duties of running the Institute’s archives and the Ward Special Collections, I also serve as the technology liaison for my department. In this position, I manage the IT work order submissions, create technology how-to guides, update and manage various department webpages on WordPress, and create social media posts to promote the archives and library.
Matthew M. Peek
Military Collection Archivist, State Archives of North Carolina (Raleigh, NC)
I am interested in getting more involved in service within the SAA and MARS committee work, having now worked as an archivist for over 10 years and having a steady position in the field. I have served as one of the primary social media and media content providers and public representatives for the State Archives of North Carolina and NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources over the past four years, with wide experience in managing many social media accounts and content for my institutions. I have served as one of the main public faces for the State Archives in the media and public during my tenure, and have developed significant communication skills that I believe would greatly benefit this position. I have experience managing and creating content for blog sites on Drupal, Wordpress, and Medium. In the past, I served as a student news editor with the Midwest Archives Conference Newsletter, and as an editor for my corporation Airstream, Inc., company newsletter (with a circulation of thousands worldwide).
Having served as the Military Collection Archivist at the State Archives of North Carolina for over six years, I have found the importance of sharing information for the military archives community, and coordinating information sharing among different partners within the field as part of my regular work. I would like the opportunity to expand this service in an official capacity with the larger network of military archivists through MARS, and would be extremely dedicated and responsive to the communication needs of the section. I relish the change to expand the communications and outreach effort of the MARS Steering Committee through this work.