2023 P&C Section Election: Candidate Statements

Ballots will be managed by SAA staff through Survey Monkey; keep an eye on your inbox for when the ballot opens!  

Vice Chair/Chair-Elect Candidates 

The following candidates are running for the Vice Chair/Chair-Elect position: 

Elizabeth Russell 

Providence Archives, Seattle 

Biographical Statement 

I am currently Senior Archivist for Providence Archives, the archival repository for the Sisters of Providence and Providence Health & Services in Seattle. I have experience in a variety of repository types (a large university's special collections division; a community college archive; and small non-profit cultural heritage organizations). 

Candidate statement addressing the question "What projects or initiatives would you be interested in pursuing as part of the Privacy and Confidentiality Section leadership?"  

If elected as vice chair/chair elect, I would like to continue with current section initiatives to present relevant information to section members and other interested audiences on topics like FERPA and HIPAA. Privacy and confidentiality issues are complex; it is vital for SAA members to have a place to ask questions, engage with others on best practices, and hear expert advice from archivists and those in relevant professions like law, records management, health information management, and information security.  

As an archivist at a private archive, I am personally interested in policy setting for consistency of practice, something which I feel is of great importance across the field in archives of all types. Current section initiatives include research on the impact of access restrictions on researchers, monthly news updates to keep section members abreast of relevant research and events, and webinars on topics of interest to our membership. In pursuing this leadership opportunity, I would like to continue these activities as well as look for opportunities for collaboration with other sections and ways to promote engagement with our membership. 

Steering Committee Member Candidates 

The following candidates are running for the section steering committee: 

Anu Kasarabada  

University of Kentucky Libraries 

Biographical Statement  

I am the archivist and oral historian for the John G. Heyburn II Initiative [heyburncollections.org], a joint project between the University of Kentucky Libraries and the Rosenberg College of Law to document the role of the Federal Judiciary in American history, with a particular emphasis on Kentuckians’ roles in the Judicial Branch. In this position, I collect the papers of and conduct oral histories with federal judges, court staff, and others who shape the federal courts. I became an archivist in 2007, and since then, I have worked with a variety of materials; in the last few years, however, I have mostly specialized in public records and personal collections related to public officials.   

Candidate Statement addressing the question “What projects or initiatives would you be interested in pursuing as part of the Privacy and Confidentiality Section leadership?” 

I have appreciated the section’s efforts to broaden the conversation beyond academic institutions. I want to build on those efforts by engaging more with government archivists and records managers regarding their experiences and the tools and processes they employ to manage confidentiality and restrictions to access.  

I also want to contribute to the section’s resource-sharing initiatives. Over the last several years, I have benefitted particularly from the bibliography and the 2020 Q&A with Heather Briston. I want to help the bibliography’s continued growth by soliciting submissions from other archival groups, both inside and outside SAA. I also want to explore whether a regular “advice column” on the blog would be helpful. Similar to the Briston Q&A, archivists could submit questions anonymously to the blog, and designated people could write or coordinate responses from others on a monthly basis. Could this be a useful forum, both to support archivists and to channel discussions among members? I’d welcome the chance to work with colleagues to answer those questions, as well as to find other ways to serve the needs of SAA members in particular and the profession in general.  

Leslie Schuyler 

Lakeside School 

Biographical Statement 

I'm in my 15th year as the archivist for a private school in Seattle, Washington serving grades 5 through 12. My users are largely internal to the organization, though the school has graduated high profile alumni whose records are of broader interest. 

Candidate statement addressing the question "What projects or initiatives would you be interested in pursuing as part of the Privacy and Confidentiality Section leadership?"  

My sense is that private archives are underrepresented in archival education and literature, and therefore misunderstood by the larger archival community. I feel that the field as a whole would benefit from a better understanding of our work, one that highlights our value as institutional assets. 

I'd like to build a community of archivists who work in private settings by organizing more frequent educational offerings on a variety of different topics (navigating social media in the private setting; the difference between privacy and secrecy; private archives and their "publics"; private archives and employee advocacy; etc.), for a variety of different audiences including the wide range of archivists working in both private and public settings. 

Ashlyn Velte 

University of Colorado Boulder 

Biographical Statement 

Ashlyn Velte is the Senior Processing Archivist at the University of Colorado Boulder Libraries where she has worked since 2019. Her professional research focuses on privacy and confidentiality issues to accessing archives, including a 2018 American Archivist article on ethical challenges and practices for social media archives. She was previously an archivist at the University of Idaho and graduated with her MSLS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2016. 

Candidate statement addressing the question "What projects or initiatives would you be interested in pursuing as part of the Privacy and Confidentiality Section leadership?"  

I have been on the P&C steering committee for the last two years and have found it a rewarding experience to connect with others around the country on this topic and to provide professional development opportunities to SAA members. As practices regarding privacy and confidentiality become more challenging to navigate it is increasingly important for the section to provide learning opportunities to members and communicate section interests with SAA. 

On this committee I have helped organize professional development opportunities for members including two coffee talks on FERPA and federal records in public archives. I hope to continue to organize these kinds of events that focus on navigating legal and ethical access in archives. I would like to reach out to section members to learn from them about what kind of programming and leadership that they hope the P&C steering committee can provide. My professional research on legal and ethical access to collections has helped me identify challenging privacy issues for programming on this steering committee. It is most important to me that we continue to facilitate discussions on these issues so we can learn from each other and generate thoughtful and considered approaches to access for archival materials.