Carli Lowe, Board of Director

Carli V. Lowe is the University Archivist at the San José State University (SJSU) Library, having received her MLIS at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her work is focused on ensuring that archives are relevant to present needs and prepared for future challenges. Her research draws on Transformative Education theory and Information Encountering studies to develop a theory of Transformative Information Encountering. She has published articles in American Archivist and the Journal of Documentation, as well as co-authoring a book chapter for the Association of College and Research Libraries, and an entry in the Handbook of Archival Practice. She is a co-creator of the SJSU Black Spartans Project.

Born and raised in San Francisco, Carli earned a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy with a minor in Performing Arts and Social Justice from University of San Francisco. She went on to receive a teaching credential through San Francisco State University and worked as an elementary educator for eleven years. Experiences in the classroom taught Carli about the power of information to impact individuals and communities, leading directly to an interest in information science, and an internship at the Freedom Archives that cemented her commitment to putting historic documents at the service of marginalized communities.Carli has served on the Society of American Archivists Committee on Education, first as a student intern and eventually as chair. She was also a founding member of the Archival Workers Emergency Fund Organizing Committee (now the Archival Workers Collective). She has served on the Society of American Archivists Foundation Board since 2022.