Fellows

The distinction of Fellow is the highest honor bestowed on individuals by SAA and is awarded for outstanding contributions to the archives profession. Daria D’Arienzo, David Haury, Diane Kaplan, Leon Miller, Christopher J. Prom, Scott Schwarz, and Becky Haglund Tousey were named Fellows. The honor was established by SAA in 1957 and is conferred annually. There are currently 169 Fellows.

Meet the 2010 class of Fellows:

Daria D’Arienzo is an archival consultant whose work focuses on local communities and small groups that have traditionally been underserved. As one nominator noted, “D’Arienzo has long been an ambassador for our profession, a mentor for young professionals, a leader in our community, and a valued colleague.”

D’Arienzo has committed her career to bringing archives to public attention and to showing their importance in society. She began her archival career at Yale University on a grant project to develop the university’s own archives and then moved to the University of Connecticut archives for a similar grant project. She left UConn for Amherst College, where she served more than 20 years as college archivist and, later, head of Archives and Special Collections.

She has a distinguished record of service to SAA, the New England Archivists, the Northeast Document Conservation Center, the Academy of Certified Archivists, and other organizations. As co-chair of the SAA Awards Committee, she reorganized the numerous subcommittees, brought order to prior inconsistencies, and skillfully negotiated the inevitable compromises needed to balance competing interests. As a mentor to younger archivists, she has also dedicated much of her professional energy to developing and supporting grass-roots archives for local communities.

“Daria started me on my career as a historian, teaching, encouraging, and materially aiding me at every point in my path—she even introduced me to the subject of my first book," said Debby Applegate, author of The Most Famous Man in America, the Pulitzer-Prize-winning biography of Henry Ward Beecher. 

D’Arienzo holds a bachelor’s degree from Boston University and a master of arts in liberal studies from Wesleyan University. In addition to her interests in archival outreach, preservation, and community archives, D’Arienzo early committed her abundant energies to effective management. She earned a second master’s degree in business administration from the University of Massachusetts and then applied this knowledge to archival programs.

For several years she helped organize and spoke at SAA sessions dealing with management issues, ranging from project management to staffing, using volunteers, empowering women managers, and accommodating people with physical impairments. Her concern for the “unsung heroes” of the profession led to the creation of SAA’s Spotlight Award, which honors individuals who contribute to the profession through “tireless committee or advocacy work, volunteerism, and/or quietly but effectively promoting the profession”—but whose work “would not typically received public recognition”—an apt description of D’Arienzo herself.

David Haury, Pennsylvania state archivist, is marked by a career of significant contributions to his work and the archives profession. During 10 years at Bethel College in Kansas, he moved from his first position as assistant archivist to directorships of the college’s research library and the archives of the General Conference of the Mennonite Church. He followed with 15 years at the Kansas State Historical Society, first as assistant, then associate director.

In 2004, Haury became the director of the Bureau of Archives and History and State Archivist for the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, one of the nation’s largest state archives. Professionally, Haury has proven leadership not only in SAA but also CoSA and the Midwest Archives Conference (MAC). He is one of the few to serve on both the SAA and CoSA governing councils.

His contributions as a scholar and editor include books and articles on the history of Mennonite faith and community, articles for state historical publications, and The Midwestern Archivist. His extensive experience as an editor includes several books, a large number of Mennonite periodicals, Archival Issues and MAC Newsletter. Haury was involved in the SAA publications program for a decade, during a time in which the Archival Fundamentals Series was launched and the monographs catalog was expanded to include new areas of interest and titles from other publishers. One nominator noted that the result of “a larger and increasingly professionalized publishing program . . . meant so much for SAA’s success, both financially and intellectually.”

Another nominator wrote, “David . . . shares a trait with successful secret agents: his very effectiveness makes him almost invisible to the casual observer. But the accomplishments are manifest when you start looking, and they have made real benefits to the archival profession.”

Haury holds a bachelor’s degree from Bethel College, a master’s and PhD from Harvard University, and a master’s of library science from the University of Illinois.

Diane Kaplan is head of public services in the Manuscripts and Archives Department at Yale University. She has been an archivist for almost 40 years, with much time spent in Manuscripts and Archives in the Yale University Library where she has acquired extensive expertise in preservation microfilming, arrangement and description, and public services.

Throughout her lengthy career she has had an impact on the practice of the archives profession in so many different areas through her work at Yale, and through publications and conference presentations in which she shared the findings of her research. She is a master collaborator who has worked willingly with others to advance the professional discourse on topics from collection policies for faculty papers and minimal processing standards, to archival metrics and archives revenues, to issues of access versus privacy. 

Kaplan developed the first online tutorial for using archives and manuscripts in the United States, and has played a leading part in diversifying the profession. Her contributions to the profession also include serving for 10 years on SAA’s Membership Committee and being a founding member of the New England Archivists.

One supporter noted:  “In addition to her pioneering work on many aspects of archives, Diane has served as a mentor to generations of archivists at Yale; to members of the New England Archivists . . . and to the archival community as a whole through her service on the SAA Membership Committee.”

Kaplan earned a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Master of Arts degree in history from the University of Michigan.

Leon Miller is head of the Louisiana Research Collection at Tulane University. Miller’s first major professional activity was chairing the membership committee of the Society of Southwest Archivists (SSA), where he tripled membership in two years. He went on to serve as SSA’s vice-president and president, and received its Distinguished Service Award in 1994.

Miller has shared his interest in archival membership, outreach, and mentoring with other organizations. During his term as Regent for Outreach for the Academy of Certified Archivists (ACA), the number of people taking certification exam increased by 200% in two years. He went on to become ACA president and received ACA’s Distinguished Service Award in 2004. In addition, he has chaired or served on more than a dozen SAA committees, including serving on SAA Council and chairing the SAA Membership Committee, where he created the SAA Mentoring Program in 1994. After more than 15 years, the SAA Mentoring Program is still helping to welcome newer archivists into the profession.

Miller’s resume includes a lengthy list of exhibits and publications on historical and archival subjects. For nearly 20 years he has served as editor of various archival publications, including the Southwestern Archivist, ACA News, and Reach Out!, the newsletter of SAA’s Reference, Access, and Outreach Section. Miller earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history from the University of Arkansas.

Christopher J. Prom is assistant university archivist and associate professor of library administration at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. One of his nominator’s said: “Prom represents the best of the archives profession—he is a pragmatist practitioner who consistently looks above the trees of daily work to envision and shape the larger forest that gives our efforts meaning and purpose. He is a scholar who grounds his research on efforts to make archives work more efficient, more forward-looking, and more practical. He is an effective collaborator, both within the profession and in helping to bridge the gap between archivists and librarians.” 

Prom is also an innovator. He is the co-director of the ARCHON project, which developed award-winning software for archivists and manuscript curators. The software automatically publishes archival descriptive information and digital archival objects in a user-friendly website. During the 2009–2010, he was Fulbright Distinguished Scholar at the University of Dundee (Scotland), where he conducted the “Practical E-Records” project, seeking to develop cost-effective approaches to identifying, preserving, and providing access to born-digital records.

Prom has demonstrated extraordinary commitment to the archives profession through service on a variety of committees in SAA and the Midwest Archives Conference, ranging from technical standards to editorial boards. He has further committed himself to regularly publishing his work so that others may benefit. As another nominator stated: “There is probably no better way to describe Chris than simply . . . an extremely smart, class act. . . . It is because he wears his excellence so lightly that his being named a Fellow will bring as much distinction to the award as it will bring to him.” 

Prom earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Marquette University and a PhD from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Scott Schwartz is archivist for music and fine arts and adjunct professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. As one of his nominator’s noted: “Scott represents the best of an archivist, always finding ways to increase awareness of what an archives is and what it can offer to the public and to generate enthusiasm for archives as a profession.”

His transformation of the Sousa Archives into a vibrant Center for American Music has been recognized by the more than 15 awards and grants he has received to advance his activist archives vision. This vision led Schwarz, in 2004, to engineer one the decade’s most important archival outreach programs: convincing the United States Senate to declare November, “American Music Month.”

His contributions to the field are many: as a principal developer of ARCHON, award-winning software for archivists and manuscript curators that automatically publishes archival descriptive information and digital archival objects in a user-friendly website; as technological coordinator for a variety of programs at the Smithsonian Institution, including the Ivory Soap Advertising Digital Image Library and the Scurlock Photograph Collection Image Library; and through publishing of articles in the professional literature and presentations at archives workshops.

“It’s hard to overstate the transformative impact ARCHON and the Archivist’s Toolkit are having on facilitating the control and description of archival holdings,” said one nominator.

Since serving on the Program Committee in 1993, Schwartz continues to be an active member of SAA. He has chaired the membership Committee and the Nominating Committee. He was instrumental in establishing and securing funding for SAA’s Donald Peterson Student Scholarship Award.

Prior to joining the University of Illinois in 2003, Schwartz worked for 10 years as archivist at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History and as technical archives specialist at East Tennessee State University. He holds a bachelor’s in music education from the State University of New York at Fredonia and a master’s in music education and history from Michigan State University.

Becky Haglund Tousey is archives senior manager at Kraft Foods Inc., where she runs a global corporate archives program with repositories and staff in several countries. She has gained the respect and support of Kraft Foods management, as well as of her archival colleagues, for her outstanding professional standards and execution. Tousey has shared her knowledge and best practices around the world, by presenting at conferences in North America, Scotland, France, Italy, Austria, Germany, and Japan. As one of her nominators noted, “Becky’s management of Kraft’s archives has served as a beacon of excellence and adaptation.”

Tousey is well known for advancing the goals and activities of regional, national, and international archival associations through her exemplary service in numerous positions, including terms on SAA’s governing Council and the Midwest Archives Conference’s Council, as co-chair of SAA’s Program Committee and Host Committee, and as secretary of the International Council on Archives Section on Business and Labour Archives.

Less well known are her frequent unsung volunteer activities, such as the 15 years she spent leading teams of ballot counters for SAA elections. Her nominators spoke frequently of her intelligence, commitment to the profession, kindness, hard work, and modesty. One individual who served with her on both the SAA and MAC Councils said, “Hers was the reliable voice of reason, objectivity, and logic that so often prevailed at times when hand wringing, discord, or indecisiveness would otherwise deter progress.”