2022 Election Candidates

It is that time of the year again, SAA election season! Thank you to all of our excellent candidates for standing in the 2022 Oral History 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 Vice Chair/Chair-Elect; for a three year term
Two Steering Committee members; for two year terms

Ballots will be managed by SAA staff; keep an eye on your inbox for when the ballot opens in mid-July!

Vice Chair/Chair-Elect Candidates

The following candidate is running for the Oral History Section Vice Chair/Chair-Elect position:

Krystal Tribbett
Dr. Krystal Tribbett is the Curator for Orange County Regional History at UC Irvine. She is especially focused on supporting the creation, preservation, and accessibility of histories underrepresented, misrepresented, or absent from dominant narratives of the region.  Krystal has a B.A. from Vassar College and a Ph.D. in the History of Science - Science Studies from the University of California, San Diego, where she focused on the history of emissions trading policy development and environmental justice. At the core of her research was an interest in understanding public participation in knowledge and policy-making, especially by marginalized populations. Krystal’s training in Science Studies included advanced study in both humanities and social science methodologies. She has served on a variety of research project teams including a National Science Foundation supported project on collaborative research, a World Bank Incentive Project, and a James S. McDonnell Foundation 21st Century Science Initiative project. She has also served as a consultant on a UC San Diego digital literacy curriculum development project and several oral history projects. Krystal is a member of the UCI Libraries research team examining the impact of incorporating inclusive histories in primary source workshops on learning outcomes as part of the American Research Library, Research Library Impact Framework Pilot Project. Prior to becoming a curator, she was the 50th Anniversary Project Historian for the UCI Historical Documentation Project. At UCI, Krystal serves on the steering committee for a number of groups focused on improving the university’s commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion including the UCI End Racism Initiative and the UCI Truth and Racial Healing and Transformation Center. She is a member of Orange County Archives in Action, a community volunteer organization that hosts the OC Archives Bazaar. In 2020, she was named an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow for Diversity, Inclusion & Cultural Heritage (Rare Book School – Mellon Cultural Heritage Fellowship).

Steering Committee Member Candidates

The following candidates are running for the Oral History Section Steering Committee:

Terry Kopana
Kopana – rhymes with banana – Terry holds a BA in Fine Art [Photography], MLIS, and presently earning her master’s degree in Historic Preservation all from the University of Kentucky. She is the Oral History Archivist for the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History and Curator of Newspapers for the Kentucky Digital Newspaper Program at the University of Kentucky Libraries. From 2007-2013, she managed the NEH-funded National Digital Newspaper Program for Kentucky as part of the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America and created meta|morphosis: film-to-digital lecture series for global newspaper and microfilm digitization training. Since 2013, she has managed the Nunn Center’s catalogue and content management system SPOKEdb while maintaining the Center’s digital preservation, indexing oversight, project management, accession, reference, recording studio production, A/V reformatting, and liaison duties. She's also a musician, artist, photographer, preservationist, and overseer of two spunky parents.

I am interested in joining the SAA Oral History Section’s steering committee to learn from and share experiences with other active oral history archivists and continue to grow the section's expertise and good works. I have been the oral history archivist at the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky for over eight years, and I have been an oral history practitioner and preservationist for more than 21 years. As an oral history archivist and an oral history practitioner, I have a deep interest in what oral history offers the historical record and how to best preserve and make it accessible to anyone. Informed consent, digital humanities, text mining, descriptive metadata, access methodologies, digital preservation, as well as guiding projects to fruitful outcomes are all among my daily efforts. I also actively work to help others realize their oral history potential while honing my own skills as an interviewer and project developer. I am committed to preserving stories from the underserved, whomever and wherever they may be, and I am constantly concerned with the state of born-digital preservation for audio and moving image formats. My hope is that my wide experience will add a voice to the steering committee that is both useful and enjoyable. I greatly appreciate your consideration of my nomination.

Kristin Morris
I have 10 years of experience conducting and managing oral history programs, processing oral histories, and providing public access to oral history collections. In my current role, I am conducting an oral history project at Cisco, a technology corporation with a long history providing the backbone of the Internet. I am also managing a legacy oral history collection (100+ interviews). Prior to this role, I worked as an independent oral historian and public historian, consulting with local history institutions on their own oral history projects and conducting oral history interviews.

I started my journey as an oral historian in graduate school at the University of Massachusetts – Amherst. I conducted a field project for a local historic house museum, interviewing people who had worked for the last family that lived in the house. Since then, I have conducted several oral history and story-gathering projects, cataloged and cared for oral history collections in local history museums, and made oral histories available to the public in a variety of formats (physical exhibition, online exhibition, online catalog search, etc.). 

I hold a BA in History from the University of Virginia and an MA in History from the University of Massachusetts – Amherst. In addition to SAA, I am a member of the National Council for Public History. I am interested in working on the SAA Oral History Steering Committee to expand my knowledge of the role of oral histories in archives, and to help provide archivists the tools to manage, preserve, create, and share the wealth of information held in oral histories. 

Jennifer Ottinger

Hello! I am emailing you to nominate myself for the Oral History Section Steering Committee. My name is Jennifer Ottinger and I am a May 2022 graduate from the University of Southern Mississippi (USM), earning my MLIS and Special Collections and Archive Certificate. I am a member of the Society of American Archivists, Society of Southwest Archivists, Texas Library Association, and the American Library Association. I am a member of the Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Assembly of ALA, which I became a part of even as a student. I have volunteered at an elementary school, and have completed practicums in both the public library setting as well as in the Special Collections department at the University of Mississippi transcribing Civil War documents. I came up with a project at USM for a one-time Special Collections exhibit, that the staff liked so much they created a position for me to create posts for their social media outlets. My idea was to take recipes from their community cookbook collection, make the recipe at home for my family, and then post on social media my reflections and my family’s reaction. Not only was it fun, but it was also a great way to show how pieces of the past are still relevant today. 

I was fortunate enough to be hired at Texas Woman’s University (TWU) even before I graduated. They have the second-largest cookbook collection in the U.S., so I hope to start a similar project with them shortly. TWU also has an amazing women’s collection and is constantly seeking ways to grow the collection of women’s history and provide a research environment that showcases the importance of women from all walks of life and from all backgrounds. Our department has an extensive WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilot) collection and is fortunate to have a large collection of their oral histories. I would love to expand the reach of documenting the female voice. I have always enjoyed oral histories as a way of keeping the stories of the past for my own family, and to help grow the collection at TWU is important to me. I recently started brainstorming ideas to include other unheard female voices in our community, such as female chefs and others in the cooking community to align with our extensive cookbook collection. To be able to widen my creative support, inspiration, and networking outlet by being a part of the Oral History Section Steering committee sounds like just what I need. Although my expertise in the field is new, my passion, enthusiasm, and fresh ideas could all truly benefit the group. I would love to be a part of a committee helping to strengthen the foundation of oral history projects within SAA in order to promote programs and projects outside the association as well.

For more information about our election or with any questions, please contact The OHS section chair, Lindsay Hiltunen at lehalkol@mtu.edu