Aliza Leventhal

Aliza Leventhal (she/her/hers) is currently the Assistant Section Head of Technical Services for the Prints & Photographs Division of the Library of Congress, but is not representing the Library as an instructor of the SAA Course "Managing Physical & Digital Architecture, Design, and Construction Records”. She was previously the corporate librarian and archivist for Sasaki, an interdisciplinary design firm. Her work with design records has ranged from supporting institutional memory and knowledge sharing practices within design firm environments to proactively engaging designers and technical professionals to better understand the features, workflows, and challenges that digital design files pose for their long-term access.

She is the co-founder and current co-chair of the Society of American Archivist's Digital Design Records Taskforce (established in 2012). She has written extensively on archival concerns and approaches for collections containing born-digital design files, including the report for the 2017 Summit held at the Library of Congress “Designing the Future Landscape: Digital Architecture, Design & Engineering Assets”, and the “Architecture and Design Collections” chapter of The Digital Archives Handbook: A Guide to Creation, Management, and Preservation. Additionally, she has presented on the topic of born-digital design files at the International Confederation of Architecture Museums, the XIII Bauhaus Kolloquium, the Society of American Archivists, and the Imaging Science & Technology Archiving Conference.

Aliza is dedicated to expanding visual and technical literacy for design and architectural archivists, as she works to lower the barriers for archivists to engage with digital design records and raise awareness within the design industry of the significance of the records produced.