Announcing Candidates for the MARS Election!

There are two MARS board positions up for election in 2019: Vice-Chair/Chair Elect and Communications Liaison. Here you can read about the candidates before casting your vote. Thank you to our candidates and to the MARS membership for your continuing participation!

Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect

Candidate: Eliot Wilczek 

Biography Statement 

Eliot Wilczek is the Corporate Records and Archives Manager at The MITRE Corporation. MITRE is a not-for-profit company that operates multiple federally funded research and development centers. It provides innovative, practical solutions in defense, homeland security, healthcare, and other spheres. The Corporate Records and Archives at MITRE recently helped the corporation celebrate its 60th anniversary, highlighting its support of the Semi-Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) Air Defense System in the 1950s and 1960s. Previously Eliot has worked as an archivist and records manager at Tufts University, Brandeis University, and Bowdoin College. He has published about military recordkeeping, writing his dissertation about US advisor recordkeeping during the Vietnam War, “The Wicked Problem of Documenting Counterinsurgencies,” and co-authoring the American Archivist article “Documenting the American Military Experience in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.” Eliot has a PhD and MS in library and information science and a MA in history, all from Simmons College. 

Candidate Statement

As Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect, I would like to build on the previous work of MARS to strengthen this community. This would include adding to the directory of military archival collections and restructuring it to enhance usability. I am also interested in exploring ways to forge stronger descriptive links between our military collections across our institutions and organizations. Documenting the military experience and telling the story of its impact on our society is a challenge that cannot be met by a lone repository, but only through a cooperative framework of archivists and archival repositories. I think MARS is well-positioned to help weave that collaborative fabric. Most importantly, I want to continue to listen to archivists working with military records and constituencies describe their professional challenges and work together to figure out how MARS can help meet those needs as a community.

Communications Liaison

Candidate: Chris McDougal 

Biographical Statement

Chris McDougal is Chief Archivist and Librarian at the National Museum of the Pacific War. He has been with the museum since 2015, when he was hired as Assistant Archivist / Librarian. Mr. McDougal holds a master’s degree in Library Science, undergraduate degree in history and is a Certified Archivist. He has been a member of SAA since 2014 and a member of the MART / MARS since 2015. Chris is presenting a paper titled “Changes and Challenges in the Archives at the National Museum of the Pacific War, 1963 – 2019” at the National Center for Preservation Technology and Training conference on June 6, 2019. He is also the author of an article titled “Who Was In The Room Where It Happened?” that appeared in the March / April 2019 issue of Archival Outlook magazine.

Statement of Interest

As my career progressed, so did my interest in becoming more involved in SAA activities and learning from fellow archivists. I honestly believe that being an archivist is one of the noblest professions and that working at military-related collections is among the most gratifying opportunities within it. If given a chance to serve as an officer of Military Archives Section I would actively keep its lines of communication open and enthusiastically help promote it.