elections – NDSA Blog

NDSA Announces 2024 Slate of Candidates for Coordinating Committee

NDSA is happy to announce the 2024 slate of Coordinating Committee (CC) candidates. Elections will soon be held for three (3) CC members. The CC is dedicated to ensuring a strategic direction for NDSA, to the advancement of NDSA activities to achieve community goals, and to further communication among digital preservation professionals and NDSA member organizations. The CC is responsible for reviewing and approving NDSA membership applications and publications; updating eligibility standards for membership in the alliance, and other strategic documents; engaging with stakeholders in the community; and working to enroll new members committed to our core mission. The successful candidates will each serve a three-year term. Ballots will be sent to membership organization contacts shortly.

Kari May

Kari is a full-time digital preservationist for the University of Pittsburgh Library System. She became one of the university’s NDSA representatives and a member of the Excellence (Innovation) Awards Working Group (EAWG) in 2019. In 2023, Kari became a Co-Chair for the EAWG and has sought to increase transparency and ensure equity and inclusion in all aspects of EAWG processes by initiating new activities and encouraging more standardization in completing and documenting the awards cycle. Kari has also been a member of the NDSA DigiPres Planning Committee (PC) for 2022 and the 2023 Storage Survey Working Group and is currently a member of the Events Strategy Working Group. Her work with other professional organizations includes Co-Chair of the 2025 BPE Program Committee, member of DLF PC 2020-2024, member of LD4 PC 2022, Digital Preservation Coalition Digital Preservation Awards guest Judge 2022, and member of SAA Collection Management Steering Committee 2023-2025.

Kari feels that digital stewardship challenges continue to expand and require professionals to provide creative solutions supported by limited resources. Working with the Coordinating Committee would offer an opportunity to encourage valuable connections throughout the field of digital stewardship and offer strategies to foster collaboration to maximize benefits for all.

Matt McEniry

Matt McEniry is the Director of the Digital Scholarship Lab at Texas Tech University Libraries. The Lab provides digital preservation, digitization, and data management services for TTU and Lubbock organizations. His areas of expertise include project management, digital preservation, digitization, metadata description, data management, and copyright curation. Matt is currently working on a publication describing the complex working relationships between archives, collection owners, and digitization labs. He has previously presented on his work with community partners and their digital collections at DigiPres 2023 and DigiPres 2024 Redux.

Matt first became involved in the NDSA in 2013 with the Infrastructure Working Group and helped with the Innovation awards until 2015. In 2023 he served on the DigiPres 2023 Planning Committee and is the current co-chair of the Excellence Awards Working Group. He along with his co-chair, Kari May, helped to successfully plan and present the awards at DigiPres 2023. Having worked with the Strategy Team to help update NDSA’s Foundational Strategy, Matt wants to be able to help see these goals and strategies through as part of the Coordinating Committee. He wants to learn from the committee and engage with NDSA on a broader level, especially during this time of transition.

Margo Padilla

Margo Padilla is the Digital Preservation Librarian at New York University where she unifies strategies and processes across the Division of Libraries to facilitate the preservation of digital resources. Prior to NYU, she was the Digital Archivist at the New-York Historical Society where she led the development of infrastructure for collecting, preserving, and providing access to born-digital collections. Margo recently served as a member of the National Best Practices for Archival Accessioning Working Group born-digital accessioning and digital preservation subgroup, and previously participated in Collective Responsibility: National Forum on Labor Practices for Grant-Funded Digital Positions.

Margo received her MLIS with a concentration in Management, Digitization, and Preservation of Cultural Heritage and Records from San José State University and her undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Margo is interested in furthering the conversation on reliance on contingent labor in cultural heritage organizations, as well as advancing digital preservation best practices that can be realistically implemented by differently resourced institutions. She brings active engagement to committee work and believes the value of NDSA membership is derived from the collective dedication of the digital preservation community, as exemplified by the Interest and Working Groups.

Max Prud’homme

Patrice-Andre (Max) Prud’homme, PhD, is the Director of Digital Curation at Oklahoma State University. He provides leadership and management in the areas of digital curation, preservation, and discovery of digital resources, developing and applying digital and computational methods to augment the value of digital archival materials. He recently served on the 2023 NDSA Storage Survey Working Group. He served on the NDSA Membership Working Group, collaborating on writing membership engagement proposals, and on the 2021 NDSA Fixity Survey Working Group. He has also served as a Project Lead, instructor, and advisor in Digital POWRR since its inception in 2011, and helped bring one of the Digital POWRR Institutes to the Oklahoma State University campus in June 2024. He also serves as Digital Archivist for a five-year grant program funded by the Senate Historical Office. He is the former Head of Digital Collections at Illinois State University. Max looks forward to advancing the NDSA mission by advocating for greater collaboration and participation with other communities (including engaging students and new professionals). His goal is to augment sustainable knowledge-sharing in the area of digital stewardship to benefit the greater digital preservation community.

Tuelo Ntlotlang

Tuelo Ntlotlang is a Subject Librarian at Botswana International University of Science and Technology (BIUST) Library, who is actively engaged in open science and digital scholarship initiatives. She is enthusiastic about open access and digital preservation activities in BIUST. Tuelo has sold the open science movement to BIUST research community, and then established an institutional repository (BIUSTRE) that focuses on ensuring that BIUST intellectual output remains accessible to the global community. She is also actively involved in advocating for adoption of open science and open access at a national level, working closely with Botswana Open Data Policy Working Group as a secretariat and Botswana Library Consortium Board Members as a treasurer. Furthermore, Tuelo is a standing committee member of IFLA Academic and Research Libraries (ARL) Section serving in the webinar team, where webinars are organized to address the new trends in academic and research libraries globally, including open science and digital preservation.

She is pleased to report that she contributed to IFLA ARL, receiving the Dynamic Unit and Impact Award at the IFLA Conference in 2021. Therefore, Tuelo believes that her strong academic and intellectual abilities coupled with her experiences and skills acquired position her in good stead to perform well on the NDSA Coordinating Committee (CC). Tuelo holds a Master’s degree in library and information studies from University of Botswana. She vows to bring experience and welcomes the opportunity to engage in an environment that she will work with diverse community of peers and colleagues in NDSA Coordinating Committee (CC). Tuelo understands that time and effort will be required to understand, support and represent the interests of the group, therefore she is willing to make that effort.

Kathryn Slover

Kathryn Slover has been the Digital Archivist at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) Libraries since August 2020. In this position she leads the exploration, evaluation, and implementation of methods, tools, and systems related to the preservation of born-digital and digitized content. She manages the web archiving program at UTA as well as works with donors and record creators to transfer digital materials to the archives. In addition to her digital preservation work, she also leads the departments collecting efforts related to LGBTQ+ materials in Tarrant County.

Kathryn earned a Bachelor of Arts in History from the University of Redlands in 2014 and obtained a Master of Arts in Public History from Middle Tennessee State University in 2016. Prior to her current role at UTA, she previously served as the Electronic Processing Archivist at the South Carolina Department of Archives and History (from 2018-2020) and as the Archives Assistant at the Rutherford County Archives (from 2016-2018). She has been a Certified Archivist since 2020 and recently served on the NDSA Storage Survey Working Group from 2023-2024.

Sylvia Umana

Sylvia is a dedicated Digital Collections Librarian at the Namibia University of Science and Technology Library with a deep passion for her role in preserving and managing digital assets. She holds a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Namibia in 2020, where her area of research focused on the digital preservation of institutional repositories. In her role as the digital collections’ librarian, Sylvia worked on various digitization projects including collaborations with the National Archives of Namibia and Desert Research Foundation of Namibia. She is committed to advancing her knowledge on active digital preservation, and thus continues to explore as she aims to actively implement these in her organization.

With a strong commitment to safeguarding digital collections for future generations, she is eager to expand her expertise and contribute to the evolving field of digital preservation and information management especially in developing countries such as Namibia. Her enthusiasm for learning and her attention to detail drive her mission to ensure the longevity and accessibility of valuable digital resources

Announcing Incoming NDSA Coordinating Committee Members for 2023-2025

Please join me in welcoming the three newly elected Coordinating Committee members Shira Peltzman, Deon Schutte, and Bethany Scott. Their terms begin January 1, 2023 and run through December 31, 2025.

Shira Peltzman is the Digital Archivist for UCLA Library Special Collections where she works with stakeholders on an enterprise-wide basis to preserve and make LSC’s born-digital material accessible to the widest possible audience. As a current member of the NDSA Staffing Survey Working Group, she has seen firsthand the importance of undertaking this work collectively and the impact that it has on the field. Shira is interested in serving as a member of the NDSA Coordinating Committee because she would like to help guide and coordinate this work to maximize the quality, relevance, consistency, and overall effectiveness of the publications that come out of all Interest and Working Groups.

Deon Schutte worked as a freelance typesetter in the educational publishing industry in South Africa for many years. In 2018 he completed his B.INF (Bachelor of Information Science) through the University of South Africa and his B.INF Honours in 2019. Deon is a MPhil (Master of Philosophy, specializing in Digital Curation) candidate at the University of Cape Town. His research interests are hermeneutics, heuristics, and sensemaking as cognitive processes that support the curation of archival arrangements. Deon serves as the Chair of the Association of Southern African Indexers and Bibliographers, and he is a Fellow of the South African Chefs Association. He works at Africa Media Online as the project manager of a team that is tasked with the organizing and arrangement, prior to digitisation, of the extensive personal archive of one of the prominent politicians of the anti-Apartheid struggle.

Bethany Scott is the Head of Preservation & Reformatting at the University of Houston Libraries. In this role she provides strategic leadership for the Libraries’ physical and digital preservation programs, and digitization and reformatting services for the Libraries and its patrons. Bethany also serves as Product Owner of the Libraries’ open-source digital access and preservation ecosystem, which incorporates Avalon, Hyrax, Archivematica, and ArchivesSpace. Her areas of expertise include digital preservation, born-digital archives, scanning and imaging, and reuse of archival metadata.

We are also grateful to the very talented, qualified individuals who participated in this election.

We are indebted to our outgoing Coordinating Committee members, Courtney Mumma, Dan Noonan, and Nathan Tallman, for their service and many contributions. To sustain a vibrant, robust community of practice, we rely on and deeply value the contributions of all members, including those who took part in voting.

Hannah Wang, Vice Chair

On behalf of the NDSA Coordinating Committee

Call for Nominations to the NDSA Coordinating Committee – Extended

NDSA will be electing three members to its Coordinating Committee (CC) this year, with terms starting in January 2023. CC members serve a three year term, participate in a monthly call, and meet at the annual Digital Preservation Conference. The Coordinating Committee provides strategic leadership to the organization in coordination with group co-chairs. NDSA is a diverse community with a critical mission, and we seek candidates to join the CC that bring a variety of cultures and orientations, skills, perspectives and experiences, to bear on leadership initiatives. Working on the CC is an opportunity to contribute your leadership for the community as a whole, while collaborating with a wonderful group of dynamic and motivated professionals.

If you are interested in joining the NDSA Coordinating Committee (CC) or want to nominate another member, please complete the nomination form by 11:59pm EDT Friday, August 19, 2022 which asks for the name, e-mail address, brief bio/candidate statement (nominee-approved), and NDSA-affiliated institution of the nominee. We particularly encourage and welcome nominations of people from underrepresented groups and sectors.

As members of the NDSA, we join together to form a consortium of more than 260 partnering organizations, including businesses, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, professional associations and universities, all engaged in the long-term preservation of digital information. Committed to preserving access to our national digital heritage, we each offer our diverse skills, perspectives, experiences, cultures and orientations to achieve what we could not do alone.

The CC is dedicated to ensuring a strategic direction for NDSA, to the advancement of NDSA activities to achieve community goals, and to further communication among digital preservation professionals and NDSA member organizations. The CC is responsible for reviewing and approving NDSA membership applications and publications; updating eligibility standards for membership in the alliance, and other strategic documents; engaging with stakeholders in the community; and working to enroll new members committed to our core mission. More information about the duties and responsibilities of CC members can be found at the NDSA’s Leadership Page.

We hope you will give this opportunity serious consideration and we value your continued contributions and leadership in our community.

Any questions can be directed to ndsa.digipres@gmail.com.

Thank you,

Hannah Wang, Vice Chair

Announcing Incoming NDSA Coordinating Committee Members for 2022-2024

Please join me in welcoming the three newly elected Coordinating Committee members Stacey Erdman, Jen Mitcham, and Hannah Wang. Their terms begin January 1, 2022 and run through December 31, 2024.

Stacey Erdman is the Digital Preservation & Curation Officer at Arizona State University. In this position, she has responsibility for designing and leading the digital preservation and curation program for ASU Library. She is also currently serving as the Acting Digital Repository Manager at ASU, where she has been working with the repository team on migrating repository platforms to Islandora. She is the former Digital Archivist at Beloit College; and Digital Collections Curator at Northern Illinois University. She has been a part of the Digital POWRR Project since its inception in 2012, and is serving as Principal Investigator for the recently funded IMLS initiative, the Digital POWRR Peer Assessment Program. Stacey currently serves on the 2021 NDSA Program Committee, and is also a member of the Membership Task Force. She has been excited to see the steps that the NDSA has taken recently to diversify the member base, and looks forward to working as a part of the CC to help make this work mission-critical. Stacey feels passionately about making the digital preservation field more equitable and inclusive, and would be a strong advocate for expanding NDSA’s outreach, advocacy, and education efforts.

Jen Mitcham is Head of Good Practice and Standards at the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), an international membership organization with charitable status based in the UK. In her role at the DPC, Jenny is responsible for promoting and maintaining the DPC’s maturity model for digital preservation, the Rapid Assessment Model (DPC RAM), and leads a digital preservation project with the UK’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. She has recently led the DPC’s taskforce on EDRMS preservation which has resulted in the publication of an online resource. She is involved in the organization of events and commissioning publications on digital preservation issues and provides support to DPC Members in a variety of different areas. Jenny was previously a digital archivist at the Archaeology Data Service and the University of York and has been working in the field of digital preservation since 2003. She has been involved in several initiatives with the NDSA over the last few years, including the revision of the NDSA Levels of Preservation and the 2021 Fixity Survey.

Hannah Wang works at Educopia Institute, where she is the Community Facilitator for the MetaArchive Cooperative and the Project Manager for the BitCuratorEdu project. Her work and research focuses on digital archives pedagogy and amplifying and coordinating the work of digital preservation practitioners through communities of practice. She currently serves on the NDSA Staffing Survey Working Group. Hannah was previously the Electronic Records & Digital Preservation Archivist at the Wisconsin Historical Society, and has taught graduate-level archives classes as an Associate Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison iSchool. She received her MSIS from University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and lives in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.

We are also grateful to the very talented, qualified individuals who participated in this election.

We are indebted to our outgoing Coordinating Committee members, Stephen Abrams and Salwa Ismail, for their service and many contributions. To sustain a vibrant, robust community of practice, we rely on and deeply value the contributions of all members, including those who took part in voting.

NDSA Announces 2021 Slate of Candidates for Coordinating Committee

NDSA is happy to announce the 2021 slate of Coordinating Committee (CC) candidates. Elections will soon be held for three (3) CC members. The CC is dedicated to ensuring a strategic direction for NDSA, to the advancement of NDSA activities to achieve community goals, and to further communication among digital preservation professionals and NDSA member organizations. The CC is responsible for reviewing and approving NDSA membership applications and publications; updating eligibility standards for membership in the alliance, and other strategic documents; engaging with stakeholders in the community; and working to enroll new members committed to our core mission. The successful candidates will each serve a three year term. Ballots will be sent to membership organization contacts in the coming weeks.

Stacey Erdman

Stacey Erdman is the Digital Preservation & Curation Officer at Arizona State University. In this position, she has responsibility for designing and leading the digital preservation and curation program for ASU Library. She is also currently serving as the Acting Digital Repository Manager at ASU, where she has been working with the repository team on migrating repository platforms to Islandora. She is the former Digital Archivist at Beloit College; and Digital Collections Curator at Northern Illinois University. She has been a part of the Digital POWRR Project since its inception in 2012, and is serving as Principal Investigator for the recently funded IMLS initiative, the Digital POWRR Peer Assessment Program. Stacey currently serves on the 2021 NDSA Program Committee, and is also a member of the Membership Task Force. She has been excited to see the steps that the NDSA has taken recently to diversify the member base, and would work as a part of the CC to help make this work mission-critical. Stacey feels passionately about making the digital preservation field more equitable and inclusive, and would be a strong advocate for expanding NDSA’s outreach, advocacy, and education efforts.

Daniel Johnson

Daniel Johnson is the Digital Preservation Librarian at The University of Iowa and Consulting Archivist for The HistoryMakers. Previously Johnson worked as a digital archivist at The HistoryMakers and as a project archivist for the Gordon Hall and Grace Hoag Collection of Extremist and Dissenting Printed Propaganda at Brown University. Johnson has experience working in digital preservation, digital archives, reformatting/digitization, digital file management, web archiving, metadata standards, database management and project management. Johnson has presented on digital preservation related topics at many conferences including the American Library Association, the Society of American Archivist, the Digital Library Federation and the Upper Midwest Digital Collections Conference. Johnson earned his B.A. degree in English from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007 and his MLIS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2009.

Jen Mitcham

Jen Mitcham has been working in the field of digital preservation for 17 years after an early career as an archaeologist. Her data preservation work began at the Archaeology Data Service where she worked on the preservation of a range of different types of datasets, including databases, laser scan data and Geographic Information Systems, also developing front ends for online access. At the Archaeology Data Service, she led a successful application for the Data Seal of Approval (now CoreTrustSeal) and was involved in the ‘Big Data Project’. From here she moved to the Borthwick Institute for Archives at the University of York where she focused on establishing policy and procedures for both digital preservation and digitisation. Here she was heavily involved in research data management, both as a facilitator in training sessions for researchers and in working on a preservation infrastructure. She led the Jisc funded project ‘Filling the Digital Preservation Gap’ which was a finalist in the Research and Innovation category of the 2016 Digital Preservation Awards. She currently holds the post of Head of Good Practice and Standards at the Digital Preservation Coalition and has been working closely with the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority over the last two years on a digital preservation project. As part of this work, she has been involved in the development of a new maturity model for digital preservation called the Rapid Assessment Model and chairs a task force with a focus on the preservation of records from Electronic Document and Records Management Systems. She works with Coalition Members internationally to help facilitate collaboration and communication in the field of digital preservation. Jen has been involved in several NDSA efforts, including the NDSA Levels Revision working group., NDSA Level Steering group, the Standards and Practices interest group, and the Fixity Survey working group.

Hannah Wang

Hannah Wang works at Educopia Institute, where she is the Community Facilitator for the MetaArchive Cooperative and the Project Manager for the BitCuratorEdu project. Her work and research focuses on digital archives pedagogy and amplifying and coordinating the work of digital preservation practitioners through communities of practice. She currently serves on the NDSA Staffing Survey Working Group. Hannah was previously the Electronic Records & Digital Preservation Archivist at the Wisconsin Historical Society, and has taught graduate-level archives classes at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is interested in joining the Coordinating Committee because she wants to advance the NDSA as an educational and advocacy resource for practitioners, particularly students and early-career professionals. She is also interested in exploring how the NDSA can align itself with the activities of other communities working toward the common goal of advancing digital stewardship practice through collaboration and knowledge exchange.

Call for Nominations to the NDSA Coordinating Committee

NDSA will be electing three members to its Coordinating Committee (CC) this year, with terms starting in January 2022. CC members serve a three year term, participate in a monthly call, and meet at the annual Digital Preservation Conference. The Coordinating Committee provides strategic leadership to the organization in coordination with group co-chairs. NDSA is a diverse community with a critical mission, and we seek candidates to join the CC that bring a variety of cultures and orientations, skills, perspectives and experiences, to bear on leadership initiatives. Working on the CC is an opportunity to contribute your leadership for the community as a whole, while collaborating with a wonderful group of dynamic and motivated professionals.

If you are interested in joining the NDSA Coordinating Committee (CC) or want to nominate another member, please complete the nomination form by 11:59pm EDT Friday, August 13, 2021 11:59pm EDT Friday, August 20, 2021, which asks for the name, e-mail address, brief bio/candidate statement (nominee-approved), and NDSA-affiliated institution of the nominee. We particularly encourage and welcome nominations of people from underrepresented groups and sectors.

We hope you will give this opportunity serious consideration and we value your continued contributions and leadership in our community.

Any questions can be directed to ndsadigipres@gmail.com.

Thank you,

Nathan Tallman, Vice Chair
On behalf of the NDSA Coordinating Committee