Waldo Gifford Leland Award: Eira Tansey

Eira Tansey, founder and manager of Memory Rising, is the 2024 recipient of the Waldo Gifford Leland Award given by the Society of American Archivists (SAA) for her work A Green New Deal for Archives, published by the Council on Library and Information Resources in 2023. The award is given for writing of superior excellence and usefulness in the fields of archival history, theory, and practice.

For over a decade, Tansey has been a leading voice among American archivists on the topic of climate change, raising awareness of its impact on archives and archivists through her research and advocacy. A Green New Deal for Archives is the culmination of these intellectual contributions. The book provides a framework for encouraging policymakers and funders to support archival institutions as core elements of public infrastructure. This carefully researched treatise sets forth an ambitious, expansive, and actionable vision for addressing chronic understaffing and climate change in the archives field.

A Green New Deal for Archives, as one nominator stated, is “an exceptional contribution to the professional literature that interweaves recent urgent professional discourse about equity, justice, labor, funding, and climate change.” It is a timely, compelling, and intellectually rigorous work that applies to archives and archival workers of all kinds, envisioning a path forward during tumultuous times. Tansey’s public policy manifesto is a “generous gift to our field” that shows promise which will resonate for years to come as “one of our most important pieces of professional literature.”

Established in 1959, the Waldo Gifford Leland Award is named for one of North America’s archival pioneers and SAA’s second president. Past recipients include James Lowry for Disputed Archival Heritage (Routledge, 2022); Jason Lustig for A Time to Gather: Archives and the Control of Jewish Culture (Oxford University Press, 2021); and Cheryl Oestreicher for Reference and Access for Archives and Manuscripts (Society of American Archivists, 2020).