James Roth

James Roth is the deputy director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. His duties consist of managing the day-to-day operations of the building, including assessing and coordinating technical programs and procedures and human resources management, and overseeing budgets and facility management issues including security, maintenance, and construction projects. Other duties include overseeing the Digital Initiative and other various issues related to the Archives and Museum divisions.

Prior, James was head of the Library's Archival Processing Unit. Part of his duties consisted of overseeing the arrangement and description of collections, including the reduction of the backlog of unprocessed collections; the editing and conversion of oral history transcripts; and managing the scanning and creation of metadata for digital collections. He received a bachelor's degree in history from Johnson State College in 1995, completed a master's degree in American history from the University of New Hampshire in 1999, and an MSLS, specializing in archives, from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2001.

He has published articles, given presentations, and taught classes and workshops. He is a past recipient of the Theodore Calvin Pease Award (2001) and has published articles in American Archivist, Prologue, and The Hemingway Review. James has covered the fundamentals of a wide range of archival activities including appraisal, acquisitions, arrangement, description, reference, and access. As an adjunct faculty member at Simmons College (2007), he taught LIS 438-Introduction to Archival Methods and Services. He has taught basic archives workshops for New England Archivists (2006) and the New Hampshire Archives Group (2005).

James has served SAA in a variety of capacities as member, and then chair (2005), of the Colonial Dames of America and Donna Cutts Scholarship Committee (2003–2005); key contact for Eastern Massachusetts (2003-2005) and District 1 Representative for the Membership Committee (2005–2007); vice chair/chair of the Membership Committee (2007–2009); vice chair/chair of the Description Section (2007–2008); member of the Education Committee (2010–2012); and has served on the Dues Increase Communications Plan Task Force (2007–2008).