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Leah Constantine is the Archives Senior Manager at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, where she explores and preserves the vast history of culture and performance in New York City and nationwide. Traditionally a museums specialist, Leah has enjoyed gathering research and skills from past experiences at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The New Museum, and Pratt Institute Library Visual and Multimedia Resources. Leah received a Master of Science in Museums and Digital Culture from the Pratt Institute School of Information and a Bachelor of Art in Interdisciplinary Art and Design Studies from the University of North Texas. As every archivist identifies as an avid learner, she is looking forward to eventually returning to school and studying the culture of digital science and preservation even further. She is back in the classroom this fall, teaching Museums and Digital Culture: Theory and Practice at the Pratt Institute.
I have always been so excited to see the advancements in engagement and knowledge that SAA Web Archiving Section has brought to the community. While a student at Pratt Institute, I recognized the public value in learning skills to preserve knowledge online through web archiving tools and system information.
In 2019, I began researching the proposed implementation of web archiving with my team of collection information specialists at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. By 2020, I was implementing the museum’s first web archiving policy and system. That role was necessary for the legacy of The Met’s vast online intellectual property and for educating my institutional peers and colleagues in how collection information, archiving, and the web can all impact understanding the history of our institutions and the audiences they reach. I took the value of sharing that educational experience to my current role at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, where I also implemented web archiving policy and systems to preserve our growing performance history and contribute to the shared knowledge of the institution’s culture online.
These experiences were only successful with the community of archivists and educators who have carried the knowledge with them through their experiences and shared it with our community. As an educator, I cherish the opportunities for building a collective learning experience that challenges our traditions and inspires innovation. I hope to return the favor and bring my experience of learning from the community to the role of Education Coordinator, bringing forward meaningful discussions of ethics, special interests, and skill advancement.
I am currently the Digital Records Archivist at the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon. Before joining Mount Vernon, I worked at a variety of academic and cultural organizations, including the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum and Colby-Sawyer College. I have an MSLIS with a concentration in Archives Management from Simmons University. I am the author of several articles on metadata, digital collections, and web archiving and have been an active participant in committee work for both SAA and regional archival organizations.
As the inaugural digital records archivist at Mount Vernon, I am focused on establishing a records management and digital preservation program for the organization including developing best practices for web archiving. Being a member of the Web Archiving steering committee is a natural fit for the work I am already doing and I would be able to bring my practical experience to the discussion while also learning from others as the committee pushes the conversation forward. I have experience serving as a secretary on committees, including serving as documentation lead for the TS-DACS committee as well as secretary for historical societies.
I work as a Congressional Papers Archivist at the University of Vermont Silver Special Collections Library and have over a decade of experience with government records, holding previous roles at the Vermont State Archives and Records Administration. I also have communications experience through the co-management of workplace social media accounts and through several volunteer roles, including Chair of the former Communications Committee of the National Association of Government Archives and Records Administrators, News & Notes Editor and Co-Chair of the New England Archivists Newsletter Committee, and Marketing and Outreach Associate for the Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies. While I am a newbie to web archives, I am excited to learn more from experienced peers and look forward to becoming more involved with the web archiving community. Through this role, I hope to bring more attention to the importance of web archives and to make it more accessible to those who may feel intimidated by the field.
