2026 Election: Candidate Statements

Thank you to all of our extraordinary candidates for standing in the 2026 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, for a three-year term; and

Two 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! 

Vice Chair/Chair-Elect Candidate

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

Jessica Breiman

Digital Archives Librarian, University of Utah

Candidate bio:

Jessica Breiman is the Digital Archives Librarian in Special Collections at J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah. In this role, Breiman selects collections to be digitized and her interest in privacy and confidentiality stems from the legal and ethical challenges she encounters when determining whether to provide online access to archival materials. As Breiman has developed more expertise in this arena, her role has expanded to include assessing onsite access to collections that may have privacy and confidentiality concerns. 

Candidate statement: 

If elected as Vice Chair, I would be interested in continuing the Coffee Chat series, and collaborate with other sections to develop events that cross section boundaries. This would include topics such as open source or commercial software redaction technology that can assist archivists in providing ethical access to collections; the integration of privacy and confidentiality assessment in archival processing; and establishing community partnerships to determine access protocols for sensitive collections. Additionally, I am interested in developing more resources to add to the section’s bibliography, such as a reference list of statements on privacy and confidentiality utilized by archives and Special Collections on finding aids and websites. 

I have served as a Steering Committee Member for the past year; if elected as Vice Chair, I would continue to develop this community as a resource for the profession and expand our connections to different sections and related professional organizations. 

Steering Committee Member Candidates

The following candidates are running for the section steering committee:

Shir Bach

Congressional Papers Archivist, University of Vermont

Candidate bio:

Shir Bach is a congressional papers archivist at the University of Vermont, where he works with a team to process the papers of Senator Patrick Leahy. He has a research interest in the history of psychiatric institutionalization and recently published an article in Archival Science relating to privacy and access in the community archives context. 

Candidate statement:

My interest in privacy/confidentiality issues in archives comes from my day-to-day job as a processing congressional papers archivist and my ongoing research interest in psychiatric history. In both these domains, I grapple with overlapping and diverging ethical and legal responsibilities towards the information we steward. At a broad level, I’m interested in bringing these perspectives to the P&C Steering Committee. 

If elected to the P&C Steering Committee, I’d be excited to work within the existing coffee chats structure to bring interesting and timely discussions to section members. I’m especially excited about continuing discussions on the issue of mental health records and acting as a bridge between the section and the Dialogues on Mental Health Records project hosted by the Hogg Foundation.

In addition to continuing the P&C’s running conversation series, I’m interested in renewing attention to the P&C bibliography (hosted on the blog at https://privacyandconfidentiality.wordpress.com/bibliography/) and adding resources that have been published since the last major additions in 2022. I see this as an opportunity not only to update our resources but to re-engage members by tapping the expertise of our membership on specific topic areas like tribal records, oral histories, and social movements. 

Jay Trask

Head of Archives and Special Collections, University of Northern Colorado

Candidate bio:

Jay Trask has been working in archives for over twenty years in the state of Colorado. Throughout his career, Trask has worked in state, non-profit, federal, and academic archives giving him a broad understanding of challenges facing a variety of institutions. 

Candidate statement: 

I am particularly interested in helping smaller institutions understand how to approach privacy and confidentiality issues. During my career, I've worked at institutions with little legal support and faced difficult decisions balancing access and privacy. For example, I needed to make decisions about access to early 20th century personnel files from a defunct mining company. These files contained rich research value but included deeply personal information about individuals (some who might even have been living at the time of access.) During that time, I wished for both a community and toolkit that could have helped support my decision-making process. Serving on the Privacy and Confidentiality Section board, I could help others who need that guidance.