2021 STHC Steering Committee Nominations

Thank you to all of our excellent candidates for standing in the 2021 STHC 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 Junior Co-chair, for a two-year term; and
• 4 Steering Committee members (three-year terms). 
• 1 Early Career member (one-year term). 

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

Junior Co-Chair Candidate

Brandon T. Pieczko is the Digital and Special Collections Librarian at the Indiana University School of Medicine's Ruth Lilly Medical Library. Previously, he worked as the Processing and Digital Archivist at the University of Georgia’s Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies, as Digital Archivist for Manuscript Collections at Ball State University, and as Processing Archivist at the State Archives of the South Dakota State Historical Society.

Brandon holds a Master of Science in Library and Information Science and a Master of Arts degree in East Asian Languages and Cultures from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Religion and Classical Studies from the University of Evansville. He also earned a Digital Archives Specialist (DAS) certification from the Society of American Archivists. He is an active member of the Society of American Archivists and Midwest Archives Conference, and is Editorial Board Chair for the journal Archival Issues. He is also an adjunct lecturer in the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. His research and teaching interests include digital forensics and preservation, computational archival science, data analysis, machine learning, and digital humanities.

While he is new to the world of science, technology, and health care archives and to the STHC Section, he has previously served on the Congressional Papers Section Steering Committee, and in other leadership positions at the state, regional, and national level. As Junior Co-Chair of the steering committee, he would work with other members of the committee to advocate for section members' interests, promote diversity within the membership and leadership, to improve the visibility of STHC repositories and collections within SAA and the broader archival profession, and strive to provide meaningful professional learning and networking opportunities both in person at the annual meeting and virtually throughout the year.

Steering Committee Member Candidates

Member at Large 1

Nicole Topich

Special Collections Librarian

Weill Cornell Medical College

Nicole Topich MLIS is currently the Special Collections Librarian and only staff member at Weill Cornell Medical College's Oskar Diethelm Library, which documents the history of psychiatry. She previously worked at a variety of archives and libraries over the past thirteen years, including SUNY Upstate Medical University as the archivist and special collections librarian, Harvard University for four years as the archivist for the Performance of Politics project, the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, the Friends Historical Library, the Clinton Presidential Library, the Library of Congress, and the University of Pennsylvania. She received a Master in Library and Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh and a BA in History from Swarthmore College. Her professional service positions include the J. Franklin Jameson Archival Advocacy Award Subcommittee and the Native American Archives Section Steering Committee for the Society of American Archivists and the Mentoring Subcommittee and the Scholarship Committee for the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference.

From her previous four years of service on the SAA Native American Archives Section Steering Committee and the J. Franklin Jameson Archival Advocacy Award Subcommittee, she has gained experience in assisting with webinars, publications, social media efforts, and other forms of outreach and conversations for SAA groups. With the recent focus on virtual interactions because of the pandemic, there is a great opportunity for the STHC Section to increase its web presence, online resources, and importance as a discussion forum, which she wants to help support and organize.

Member at Large 2

Edith Escobedo

Project Archivist

University of California San Francisco

Edith Escobedo attended San Jose State University and graduated with a BA in History. While at SJSU, she volunteered at History San Jose where she became interested in archives. Previously, she interned with the Santa Clara County Archives and helped with the Santa Clara County Fair photo project. Edith interned at the University of California, San Francisco Archives and Special Collections while in graduate school. As an intern she worked assisting with processing collections in the NHPRC grant, Evolution of San Francisco’s Response to a Public Health Crisis: Providing Access to New AIDS History Collections, an expansion of the AIDS History Project at UCSF. Edith obtained her Masters in Library and Information Science from Wayne State University. Following graduation, she became a Project Archivist at the University of California, San Francisco Archives and Special Collections.  From 2019-2021, she has processed several collections from the Tobacco Control Archives, Anesthesia collection, AIDS History Project collections, Biotechnology Archives, and University Archives. She has processed collections such as the Laurie Garrett Papers, Arthur E. Guedel Anesthesia Collection, and J. Michael Bishop Papers. Edith is currently working on the NNLM grant, San Francisco Bay Area’s Response to the AIDS Epidemic: Digitizing and Providing Universal Access to Historical AIDS Records. Approximately 45,000 pages from 15 archival collections related to the early days of the AIDS epidemic in the San Francisco Bay Area will be digitized and widely accessible to the public.

She is interested in a leadership position within the Steering Committee of the Science, Technology, and Health Care (STHC) section of the Society of American Archivists (SAA). From 2019-2020, she served in the Librarians Association of the University of California Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee as the UC San Francisco representative. Her involvement included reviewing a UC wide diversity, equity, and inclusion survey and work with the other UC representatives on identifying future projects. As a member of the Steering Committee, she will use her experience to promote and foster diversity within the STHC and SAA. She believes this would be a great opportunity to learn and collaborate with colleagues from other institutions to gain new skills while assisting with special and research projects. Also, this opportunity will enable her to develop new networks with colleagues in the profession. This position will be a great learning experience and she hopes to use these new skills attained in her work and for the benefit of the profession.

Member at Large 3

Julia Pope

Senior Archivist

Conrad R. Lam Archives

A Division of the Sladen Libraries of Henry Ford Health System

For five years, Julia Pope has been the Senior Archivist at the Conrad R. Lam Archives of the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, Michigan.  Previously she worked as a reference and instruction librarian at Oakland University and as a processing archivist at Eastern Michigan University.  Julia holds a Master of Library and Information Science degree from Wayne State University, with a specialization in archives.  She also earned a Master of Arts degree in medieval history from Concordia University, Montreal, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from McGill University, Montreal.  Prior to entering the archival field, she worked as a paleographer for the Records of Early English Drama project at the University of Toronto.  She has completed several courses in book conservation and repair, including a certificate from the Canadian Book Binders and Book Artists' Guild in 2019.  Her interests include medical archives, accessibility and digital preservation, and book conservation. 

Member at Large 4

Early Career Member Candidate

Anna Lucas

Archivist

Pennsylvania State University

She has served as the Archivist for the Applied Research Laboratory at Penn State University–University Park campus since 2019, and this is her first professional position. As an archivist for a University Affiliated Research Center sponsored by the Navy, she oversees a unique collection that serves as evidence of the organization’s specialized research in acoustics, engineering, and technology. She holds a Bachelor’s of Arts in both Classical Studies and Anthropology, and a Master’s in Library Science from Indiana University-Bloomington. As a student, she worked in a number of library facilities – academic, law, university archives, and elementary. She is pursuing DAS Certification through the Society of American Archivist, participating in SAA’s Mentoring Program, and is also a member of NAGARA. Her professional interests are archival outreach and engagement towards STEM communities, managing government records, and information security.  

As a lone archivist, she intends to collaborate with fellow archivists on the ongoing projects and problems shared in the science, technology, and health care communities. This role will bring new ideas and insights to her organization, and she will apply the mentorship and leadership skills from the Early Career Member position towards supporting other early career archivists and continuing advocacy for the archival community’s broader mission of diversity, equity, and inclusion.