November 2015 Special Election: Secretary

As approved by the August by-law referendum, the Web Archiving Roundtable will be electing a Secretary to serve the remainder of the 2015-2016 term. Please see candidate statements below:

Samantha Abrams

Right now, I split my time several ways. I'm a second-year iSchool student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and I work two jobs: one for the Oral History Department here on campus, processing born-digital audio files, and one at Culver's, as the organization's first archivist. At Culver's, I've been knee-deep in all kinds of audiovisual materials: 35mm film, U-Matic tapes, DAT tapes, VHS tapes, and on. Before joining Culver's, I was a Project Assistant at the Wisconsin Historical Society, where I served, for two years, as the assistant to the Wisconsin State Historical Records Advisory Board. On behalf of the Board I: planned and handled logistics for quarterly meetings, wrote meeting agendas, took detailed meeting minutes, and wrote many state-wide communications on behalf of the state archivist. 

This past summer, I was a Web archiving intern at the Library of Congress, where I was fortunate enough to explore many aspects of the practice: the legality of Web archiving and how the Library curated their collections, in particular. It's an experience I still carry with me: I enjoy the discussions that surround archiving the Web, and I hope to begin a program at Culver's in the near future. I'd love to be part of the Roundtable in this volunteer capacity: I think it's important to give back to the profession that has already given so much to me, and I have ample experience when it comes to handling the logistics of an organization and its meetings. 

Alexis A. Antracoli

I am currently the Assistant University Archivist for Technical Services at Princeton University’s Mudd Manuscript Library, where I lead technical services operations, including the implementation of our web archiving program.  Previously I worked as Records Management Archivist at Drexel University and Project Archivist at the Bentley Historical Library.  I graduated from the University of Michigan’s School of Information in 2011 with a specialization in Archives and Records Management.

I am interested in serving as Secretary of the Web Archiving Roundtable as a way to use my organizational and leadership skills to contribute to the growth of this area of the archival profession.  In addition to the duties of Secretary, I am particularly interested in contributing to the development of resources for practitioners of web archiving, supporting ongoing educational programming, and creating spaces for practitioners to exchange ideas and solve problems together.  I have been involved with web archiving since the beginning of my professional career, and have worked at institutions with varied approaches to web archiving and differing resources for implementing and managing a program.  I have also presented and published on web archiving, and am active in the Mid-Atlantic Archive-It User Group.  These experiences have provided me with a strong background on the variety of ways that web archiving is implemented and managed across our profession, as well as with the range of opportunities and challenges that archivist face in capturing and preserving the Web.  I would welcome the opportunity to continue to contribute to the web archiving community as Secretary of the Web Archiving Roundtable.

Rachel Trent

I currently serve as Digital Services Manager at George Washington University, and have previously been Digital Collections Manager at the State Library of North Carolina and Digital Archivist at the State Archives of North Carolina. I have been collaboratively managing web archiving programs since 2012, including the North Carolina Government Web Archiving and Social Media Archiving Program. I currently lead the web archiving program at George Washington University, and I have presented on web archiving, social media archiving, and the intersection of both with public records law. 

Although I have served on several professional and institutional committees before, this would be my first involvement with an SAA sections or roundtables. I am particularly interested in web archiving policy and in the future place of social media archiving in web archiving. 

Jessica Venlet

As an early career professional, I’m interested in becoming more involved in SAA. The Web Archiving Roundtable secretary position is an excellent opportunity not only to contribute to SAA, but also to become more engaged in the web archiving community. I have experience organizing and managing meetings and notes for working groups. I often gravitate to this type of role and feel that well organized and documented meetings encourage creativity and productivity! I currently work as the Library Fellow for Digital Archives at MIT Libraries. I earned a Master of Science in Information degree from the University of Michigan. As part of the MIT Libraries Institute Archives team, I work on a wide range of projects for acquisition, processing, and preservation of digital content. Web archiving has emerged as a central part of my fellowship experience as I have taken a lead role in researching and exploring web archiving strategies for the Archives. I would love to extend my participation in the Web Archiving Roundtable by serving on the Steering Committee.