2018 Privacy and Confidentiality Section Election

Hello, Section Members! It's time to cast your vote for next year's Section leaders! Due to the nomination of one of our steering commitee members as the Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect, we have three open offices this year - Vice-Chair/Chair-Elect, and two seats on the Steering Committee. Please take a look at your worthy candidates below.

Vice Chair / Chair-Elect

This individual serves one year as Chair-Elect for the Section, and the following year as the Chair. The Chair-Elect serves on the Steering Committee, serves as acting Chair in the Chair’s absence, and assists with Section business, including planning for the annual meeting.  In their eventual role as Chair, the incumbent directs and reports the activities of the Section, organizes and conducts the annual meeting of the Section, chairs the Steering Committee, acts as liaison for the Section to other bodies, appoints Section committees as needed, and is responsible for administrative matters, including, but not limited to, annual reports to the SAA.

Candidates

Lydia Tang

Dr. Lydia Tang, CA, has been an Archivist-Librarian at Michigan State University Special Collections since 2015. She currently serves on the steering committees for the Privacy and Confidentiality and Collection Management Tools sections, and is a member of the ACRL/SAA Joint Statement on Access to Research Materials in Archives and Special Collections Libraries (RBMS representative) and SAA Task Force to Revise Best Practices on Accessibility. She also serves on the ArchivesSpace User Advisory Council and is the chair of the Development Prioritization subteam and Staff Interface Enhancement Working Group. Prior to MSU, she was a Project Archivist in the Music Division of the Library of Congress. She earned her MLIS and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Candidate Statement - Describe one project you would like to see the P&C Section undertake next year and how it would benefit the organization. 

I would like to see the Privacy & Confidentiality section focus this upcoming year on engaging its membership more actively. Although ambitious, the steps I’d like to see towards implementing this goal are:

1. Hosting twitter chats on focused themes, including partnering with other SAA sections to discuss overlapping issues.

2. Privacy & Confidentiality issues are often very complex and there can be an element of embarrassment whenever we are unsure of how best to address a tricky scenario. I’d like to create a venue for people to anonymously submit questions and gather feedback. This could be accomplished by people submitting their questions to the Steering Committee and we post them anonymously on our listserv for other members to weigh in and/or submit their questions to our Wordpress microsite and the Steering Committee can engage experts who can provide their feedback on these scenarios in the form of blog posts.

 3. Expand our microsite to include member-contributed content of announcements, archivist/repository profiles, case studies, etc. By engaging the membership and increasing the searchable content related to our section, it will foster a greater exchange of ideas, thus strengthening how we as a profession handle Privacy & Confidentiality concerns.

Steering Committee Member

The Member-at-Large serves a two-year term as member of the Steering Committee, which directs and coordinates activities of the Section.  Committee members collaboratively establish projects throughout the year, shape the Section’s long-term plans, and plan Section meetings.

Candidates

Haley Aaron
Haley Aaron has worked as a Collections Archivist at the Alabama Department of Archives and History since 2014. She received her MLIS from the University of Alabama, her MA in History from Georgia State University, and her BA in Journalism and History from Samford University. Haley serves as treasurer of the Society of Alabama Archivists and has been a Certified Archivist since 2016. Her research interests include attorney-client privilege, processing legal records, and privacy concerns presented by oral history interviews. 

Candidate Statement - Describe one project you would like to see the P&C Section undertake next year and how it would benefit the organization. 

Working at the Alabama Department of Archives and History (ADAH) provides me with a unique perspective on privacy and confidentiality. Since ADAH collects both government records and private manuscript collections, we provide access to a wide variety of materials, including electronic records, medical records, legal records, and public records. As a processing archivist, I strive to respect the privacy and confidentiality of individual donors while providing the broadest level of access possible to researchers. The resources provided by the Privacy and Confidentiality Steering Committee have been invaluable as I have worked to streamline our review of sensitive materials and address privacy concerns such as attorney-client privilege. 

By establishing best practices, providing practical advice, and promoting awareness, the Privacy and Confidentiality Section provides vital assistance to SAA members who have questions about how to respectfully and efficiently address privacy and confidentiality concerns in their collections. For archivists who have limited institutional guidelines for addressing privacy and confidentiality concerns, the opportunity to discuss best practices is essential. If chosen to serve as a member of the Steering Committee, I would like to help develop practical resources and promote dialogue about how to address emerging privacy issues.

Rachel Gattermeyer

Rachel Gattermeyer is the Digital Archivist at the University of Wyoming's American Heritage Center. Previously, she worked as a lone arranger at a small archives in Cincinnati, OH and earlier held a graduate assistant position at the Architecture and Art Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she completed her MLIS. In her current position, she works with donors to limit their privacy risks when donating digital records and is reviewing policies to address the types of personal digital information that may be accessible to patrons.

Candidate Statement - Describe one project you would like to see the P&C Section undertake next year and how it would benefit the organization. 

At the American Heritage Center, I encounter a range of sensitive information on digital records. From faculty tenure reviews to social security numbers to hidden files, there are many records that are not identified as private or confidential until after they are accessioned. As a member of the Steering Committee, I plan to expand the tools on the Section's microsite to include resources that address privacy and confidentiality concerns of donated digital records. I would collaborate across Sections and institutions to help establish and standardize best practices for processing and preserving digital media in a way that limits the exposure of private information to researchers. In addition, I would provide resources that prepare archivists to discuss sensitive digital information issues with donors. Thank you very much for your consideration.

Laura Sullivan

Laura Sullivan is the Digital Initiatives Archivist at the Iowa State University Library in Ames, Iowa where she is in charge of selection and outreach work for the digital collections. Laura began working at Iowa State in 2008 as the Assistant Archivist, and later as the Operations and Collections Archivist. Previously, Laura worked at the Ford Motor Company Archives in Dearborn, Michigan. She holds an MA in Library and Information Science, with a specialization in archives and records administration, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has worked in various committee and leadership roles within the Society of American Archivists, Midwest Archives Conference, and the Consortium of Iowa Archivists.

Candidate Statement - Describe one project you would like to see the P&C Section undertake next year and how it would benefit the organization. 

When working with archival collections, I have always tried to consider privacy and confidentiality, whether I was processing a collection, developing an online exhibit, or providing reference assistance. Privacy and confidentiality, and the underlying ethics involved, are interwoven into much of what many archivists do. Now with my work developing digital collections, considerations related to privacy and confidentiality, and its fine balance with access, are even more at the forefront of my work. With the development of the microsite, the Section has created a great resource for its membership. Because privacy and confidentiality touches on so many functions of archival work, I would like to get input from section members on what their primary needs are so that the work of the Section might be directed to meet those needs. The microsite might be further developed, and finding out about membership needs would help inform this work - or might cause the Section’s work to turn in new directions.

Katrina Windon

Katrina Windon is the Accessioning and Processing Archivist for the University of Arkansas Special Collections, where she is responsible for managing the Processing Unit. Previously she worked as a Photograph Archivist at the University of Nevada. She holds an MSIS from the University of Texas at Austin, and is a Certified Archivist. A member of SAA since 2010, she previously served as Secretary of the Description Section from 2014-2016 and on the Local Arrangements Committee of the Society of Southwest Archivists from 2016-2017.

Candidate Statement - Describe one project you would like to see the P&C Section undertake next year and how it would benefit the organization. 

As the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) goes into effect, it will continue to impact all archival institutions who deal with European citizens, both as donors and researchers. It’s especially intriguing to me here at the University of Arkansas, where our Fulbright Program and international education collections draw donations and researchers from across the globe. I’d like to see the Steering Committee coordinate a P&C Section project to assess the legislation and cultural heritage organizations’ responses so far in order to create a summary document of implications for American archivists. Opportunities for sharing this work with membership could include incorporating resources into the Section’s microsite, or potentially hosting a webinar or other educational session. These issues are important not just as a matter of compliance, but also an impetus to consider our information security procedures and the data we collect on our patrons. As institutions throughout the library world, including IFLA, the (UK) National Archives, and OCLC, share their guidance and strategies, a similar resource targeted toward SAA’s membership would be a useful addition.