2026 Preservation Section Election: Candidate Bios & Statements

We are excited to announce our slate of candidates for the 2026 Preservation Section election. Please review their candidate statements and get to know them. Thank you to our candidates for volunteering to serve!

 You will be voting for:

• One Vice Chair/Chair-Elect (Three-year term: 1 year as Vice-Chair, 1 year as Chair, and 1 year as Immediate Past Chair)
• Two Members-At-Large (Two-year term)

Ballots will be managed by SAA staff, with ballot information to come. 

Vice Chair/Chair-Elect Candidate

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

Jesse Keel Jesse Keel is based in NEDCC’s Andover, MA office and provides preservation consultations, training programs, assessments, and disaster advice to a variety of cultural heritage organizations nationwide.  Jesse currently serves as education chair and member-at-large on the Society of American Archivists Preservation Section Steering Committee and as the Web Administrator for New England Archivists.  Jesse is a certified digital archives specialist and has earned an MA in English from the University of Vermont and an MLIS with a concentration in Archives Management from Simmons University.

After three years serving as Education Chair of the Preservation Section, I would be honored to serve as Vice Chair/Chair Elect and then Chair. I have enjoyed planning coffee chats and hosting informal preservation conversations online and in-person at the annual meeting. It has been inspiring to share stories and insights with my colleagues from all over the country. My work at NEDCC equips me with a unique view of the preservation problems that organizations are facing. I would like to continue to harness my passion for education and community building to support as many preservation professionals as possible through guiding the work of the Preservation Section. 

Member-at-Large Candidates

The following candidates are running for the section steering committee Member-At-Large: 

Sawyer Magnus Hello, my name is Sawyer Magnus, and I am pleased to be running as a candidate for a Member-at-Large position on the Preservation Section Steering Committee. I have an MSLIS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2018 and I became a Certified Archivist in 2021. I am currently the University Archivist in the Velma K. Waters Library at East Texas A&M University. In this role, I manage the archives department’s staff and daily functions. I am responsible for acquiring university and community collections, managing archival processing and preservation, assisting researchers with questions, developing promotional events for the department, and supervising other staff, interns, and students. In addition, I regularly teach an introduction to archives full-semester class for graduate and undergraduate students in the History Department at the university.

I am interested in this position due to my strong interest in preservation and advocating for the importance of the field to archival work through discussion of best practices. I have experienced much of that work firsthand as a graduate student in the Preservation Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, through repairing books and paper, environmental monitoring, and creating custom enclosures for artifacts. I have also been a member of the SAA Preservation Publication Award Subcommittee from 2022-2025 and served as the chair of that committee for one year. As a member of the steering committee, I hope to continue developing my own knowledge of preservation practices and working to promote them to the wider professional community. Thank you for your consideration!

Linda Smith I believe my background is well-suited to the aims and interests of this group. I'm currently finishing my degree in Moving Image Archiving and Preservation at NYU, where I'm now writing a thesis on disaster planning in audiovisual archives. That being said, I've long been drawn to the work SAA does in disaster planning resources and grants, and would love the chance to work closely with the National Disaster Recovery Fund for Archives. 

I also have several years of experience with presentations and talks both formal and informal, in which people can learn and build their networks and professional relationships with like-minded individuals through coffee chats and short, targeted presentations about projects. I would enjoy coming up with ideas for these types of sharing opportunities, finding contributors, and leading these types of events regularly.