2025 Election: Candidate Statements

Thank you to all of our excellent candidates for standing in the 2025 Privacy & Confidentiality 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/Past (or Co-chair), for a three-year term (Year 1 is Vice Chair, Year 2 is Chair, Year 3 is Past Chair); and
• 2 Steering Committee members (two-year terms)

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

All candidates were asked to provide a short bio and to answer the following question: What projects or initiatives would you be interested in pursuing as part of the Privacy and Confidentiality Section leadership?

Vice Chair/Chair-Elect Candidates

The following candidate is running for the Vice Chair/Chair-Elect (or Co-chair) position:

Ashlyn Velte
Senior Processing Archivist and Assistant Professor, University of Colorado Boulder Libraries

Ashlyn Velte is the Senior Processing Archivist and Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder Libraries where she has worked since 2019. She has been on the SAA P&C steering committee since 2021. She was previously an Archivist at the University of Idaho and has an MSLS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

I am interested in making P&C section useful to people tackling privacy and confidentiality while balancing access. Since serving on the steering committee for the last four years, I bring with me experience in how the committee functions and operates. I have learned what kind of events and event topics work for members, as well as legacy projects and challenges facing the section. I am interested in doing more work to provide resources for archivists discovering specific privacy issues in their collection. I am committed to supporting SAA members at public libraries, private archives, business archives, government archives and school archives in addition to academic archivists. As a co-author of a recent SAA Trends in Archives book on Access at Public Institutions, I bring with me an expertise in balancing access and privacy.

Steering Committee Member Candidates

The following candidates are running for the section steering committee:

Jessica Breiman
Digital Archives Librarian, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah

I am the Digital Archives Librarian in Special Collections at J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah. In this role, I select collections to be digitized and made available in our digital library. My interest in Privacy and Confidentiality stems from the legal and ethical challenges I encounter when determining whether to provide online access to archival materials.

If elected to the Steering Committee, I am interested in expanding the amount of resources available in the documentation portal. Establishing policies and guidance around access to collections is an essential part of protecting privacy and confidentiality. However, many institutions don’t have formal policies that govern access to sensitive materials, and may have limited resources (eg. staff time, access to legal counsel, etc.) that support the process of policy development. Expanding the documentation resources will provide easy access to policy models for any organization. I’m also interested in expanding the type of materials available in the documentation portal to include standardized workflows for identifying and documenting collections with privacy and confidentiality issues.

I’m personally invested in exploring open source and subscription-based automated tools that can be utilized to redact documents and mitigate risk in providing online access to collections with sensitive information. As a Steering Committee member, I would like to organize an educational panel event with representatives from libraries and archives, as well as other relevant professionals, such as attorneys, who use these tools. Connecting with archivists, librarians, and others who encounter similar challenges in their work has been extraordinarily helpful to my professional development. If elected, I would continue to build the Privacy and Confidentiality Section as a supportive community and resource for others.

Anu Kasarabada
Archivist and Oral Historian, University of Kentucky Libraries

I am an archivist and oral historian who collects 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.

In 2023, I was elected to the Privacy & Confidentiality Section steering committee with the intention of broadening the conversation beyond academic institutions. Over the course of my 2023-2025 term, I helped organize a panel on privacy and confidentiality issues faced by state and federal government archivists, and I contributed to events and initiatives undertaken by committee colleagues. If re-elected, I want to continue collaborating with colleagues to hold events and develop resources that speak to both the unique and common issues faced by archivists across the profession. I’d welcome the opportunity to find new ways to serve the needs of SAA members in particular and the profession in general.