IASA Executive Board 2023: election candidates

Dear IASA Members,

As you know, 2023 is an election year for the IASA Executive Board. As stated in the IASA constitution: “The Executive Board shall be elected by the members of the Association. Any member in good standing shall be eligible to stand for election.”
 
As required by the constitution, a nominating committee was appointed at the 2022 conference and a call for nominees was undertaken. The nomination process is now complete and the committee is pleased to announce that the following are the election candidates for the IASA Executive Board for 2023-2026.

For President (acclaimed): Patrick Midtlyng 

For Vice-President (in alphabetical order; three to be elected)
Audra V. Adomenas
Andrew Martin 
Bronwyn Officer
Rosie Rowe 

For Secretary-General (acclaimed): Pedro Felix

For Treasurer (acclaimed): Nadia Lai 

For Editor (acclaimed): Jennifer Vaughn

For Web Manager (acclaimed): Bright Joshua

The current IASA President, Tre Berney, will become Past President.

Voting for the roles of the 3 Vice-Presidents will be held soon, by electronic ballot. All members in good standing are eligible to vote, and all eligible members whose email addresses are up-to-date on the members e-list will receive an email invitation from Helios Voting Administrator that includes: brief instruction, a link to the online ballot, your voter ID, and your voter password. Instititutional members are entitled to two votes each: one person from each institution will receive two votes.

If you believe you are a member in good standing and do not receive the invitation message from Helios Voting Administrator, please contact Bruce Gordon (bgordon@fas.harvard.edu). Voting is very simple and will only take you a few minutes.

All ballots must be cast on or before 25 August 2023.

Thanks to all the candidates for agreeing to support IASA by running for the Executive Board.

The candidates' election statements and biographies are provided below.

Best wishes,

Bruce Gordon
Chair, IASA Nominating Committee
Aaron Bittel
Member, IASA Nominating Committee
Brad McCoy
Member, IASA Nominating Committee


For President:

Patrick Midtlyng (acclaimed for President) 

I'm currently the Head of the Recorded Sound Section at the Library of Congress. I've been with Recorded Sound since 2018, when I was hired to be the Head of Processing (cataloging/description and collections management). Before then I was the Sound and Moving Image Archivist at Syracuse University Libraries, managing the AV Collections at the Belfer Audio Archive, Special Collections Research Center, and University Archives.

There's an Estonian proverb: The work will teach you how to do it and I've always felt that AV archiving is a mix of practical realities and aspirational goals. I got my start in audio archiving and description as a graduate student at the University of Chicago. I was part of an NEH grant in 2005/2006 to describe and digitize the field recordings of linguists and anthropologists dating from the 1940s through the late 1990s. I gained experience transferring bare aluminum discs, open reel tape, audio cassettes, and DATs. I even repaired a Uher tape recorder once. I branched out to recommending recorders and standards for born-digital recordings for colleagues going out to do field work and set up class recordings for field study seminars. I started learning how to build databases and work with XML and content standards like DACS, Dublin Core and OLAC. I fell in love with the work, so I took my MA in Linguistics and left for Syracuse's Belfer Audio Archive.

As I've moved through my career, I've looked for ways to collaborate with colleagues on projects and to mentor and teach students, staff, and interns about AV archiving. I've necessarily championed MPLP and batch processing approaches to ensure discoverability and reduce backlogs and I've sought to make connections in the profession and build communities of practice around the shared principles and values that drive us. I hope to serve IASA to promote discoverability and access to our AV historical record. If elected, I would work with members and institutions to further build a knowledge base around practices and theories of archival work that are centered on practical advice and best practice aspirations. I would work to empower our members to make connections between and among local, regional, and State/National Libraries and Archive partners to make the best decisions for their collections, to advocate for innovative solutions to common issues, and to continue to learn from the work to be done.

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Vice-Presidents

Audra V. Adomenas (candidate for Vice-President)

Audra V. Adomenas is the founder and president of the Lithuanian Archives Project (LAP), a not-for-profit organization in the United States that preserves and digitizes Lithuanian diaspora history. Audra is the daughter of University of Chicago-trained intellectual historian Antanas J. VanReenan (Adomenas). From the time she was a little girl, Audra was her father's constant companion, interviewing members of the Lithuanian diaspora community, and, along with her Dad, immersing herself in historical research, oral histories and unearthing previously unseen archival materials. Years later, Audra rescued a prominent Lithuanian diaspora archives from obscurity, thus founding the Lithuanian Archives Project in 2009. Formally incorporated as a not-for-profit organization in 2012, LAP collects and digitizes Lithuanian diaspora materials from its home office in Chicago, Illinois. Audra is honored by the nomination to serve on the IASA board. If elected, Audra would dedicate her time to promoting equality and enhancing visibility to less known archives. Audra is passionate about networking and making resources, training and funding available to archivists worldwide, especially to archivists who are located in developing countries. She would be honored with a chance to serve on the IASA Board, to continue the work of enhancing both archivists' access to resources as well as being as inclusive as possible and drawing in new members to the IASA family worldwide. Audra believes that it is the personal connections that sometimes matter the most, and, thus, strives to understand and get to know each archivists' story individually, so that we can all work better together towards common goals.

Andrew Martin (candidate for Vice-President)

Andrew Martin  worked in regional television in several audio and video operational roles before moving to the National Film and Sound Archive as a Audiovisual Preservation Officer in 2003.
As a founding employee, Andrew established DAMsmart in 2008, and is currently in the role of Operations Manager. Andrew oversees a variety of projects, from digitisation of broadcast archives, to specialist born digital collections and audiovisual artworks. Andrew is currently the Secretary of The IASA Technical Committee, a contributor to IASA-TC 06 Guidelines for the Preservation of Video Recordings, and a Steering Committee Member for The Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures (PARADISEC). Andrew has a Post Grad Certificate in Audiovisual Archiving from Charles Sturt University.

Statement: IASA's role in supporting audiovisual archives will become critical in the next few years, through education, knowledge sharing, and further TC publications. IASA has an opportunity as an International organisation to promote a diverse range of experiences and ideas through conferences, committees and online. IASA will need to play a critical role during the 2023-2026 term, as technology obsolescence and degradation of media will be a critical issue for audiovisual archives. IASA has an opportunity to lead the sector in a collaborative and flexible approach, of which I believe I can be a useful guide and member of the executive council.

Bronwyn Officer (candidate for Vice-President)

Bronwyn Officer was born at the bottom of Te Waipounamu the South Island of Aotearoa New Zealand and studied at Otago University in Dunedin, completing an honours degree in music composition with a particular interest in electroacoustic music. In 1987 she took up the position of "Sound Officer" at the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa in Wellington responsible for the preservation and conservation of audiovisual recordings before becoming part of the Collection Care team as senior sound conservator.
She has been a IASA member since 1987 (through the National Library and then personally) and is currently on the Technical Committee, serving as secretary from 2006 - 2016. From 2008-2021 she was a Board member of ASRA (Australasian Sound Recordings Association). Bronwyn is currently a subject matter expert for the National Library for Utaina! a multi-year digital project to preserve and protect Aotearoa’s  audiovisual heritage collection working with an external vendor alongside Archives New Zealand and Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision.
Recently she has given audiovisual preservation planning workshops through the National Preservation Office to assist iwi, libraries, archives and museums to look after their av taonga.

Vision 2023 - 2026: Bronwyn is extremely grateful for the support of IASA as an institution and through individual members at the start of her career and would like to give back to the organisation by serving on the IASA Board and promoting IASA membership.  She sees IASA supporting a global and diverse community protecting audiovisual taonga and content for the future as equals in a reciprocal relationship. Recent disaster events in Aotearoa with the floods have shown how important it is to keep people connected to our culture for the present and future wellbeing of our communities.

Rosie Rowe (candidate for Vice-President)

Rosie Rowe is the founder/owner of AV Collective, an audiovisual preservation, collection management, infrastructure design, and workflow consulting group. They are also the Chair of IASA’s inaugural DEI committee.  At Iowa State University Library, Rosie designed and implemented the AV preservation lab for the preservation of ISU’s moving image and sound collections. Also, Rosie received the Council on Library & Information Resources (CLIR) Recordings at Risk grant for the preservation of the National Farmers Organization film collection, the Silos and Smokestacks Heritage grant for an archival film screening outreach program, and the National Recording Preservation Foundation grant for the preservation of the Iowa State Lecture series recordings. Previously, Rosie was the AV Preservation Senior Advisor for the New Zealand National Archives, where they advised on the procurement of Peter Jackson’s film lab for a massive film-to-film preservation project of New Zealand’s governmental film collections. Rosie’s main professional focus is designing AV preservation infrastructure and workflows which are friendly to institutions that may have fewer resources available, and to focus on inclusion and accessibility within our field as practitioners and within our collections. Rosie was awarded the Iowa State University Dr Martin Luther King Jr 2022 Advancing One Community Award for their DEI work on campus and within ISU’s archival moving image and sound collections.

My vision for the future of IASA: Our perceptions and experiences often translate into the way we shape, and care for our archival collections. Prioritizing cultural competency as a core value of the work needed to broaden and care for archival collections, will create not only a more dynamic collection, but also a more welcoming, and inclusive environment for all. I will bring this philosophy as an executive board member to help shape IASA’s future. I understand this to be as important as the technical competencies we expect of our team members. It is critical to support professionals who can seek out, and care for collections that might be under-the-radar. In doing so, we can continue to build collections, skillsets, and professionals that have thus far been underutilized. For that reason, it is crucial that we support the people who bring the community knowledge and lived experience within IASA to properly advocate for these collections so critical to our social memory.

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Secretary-General:

Pedro Felix (acclaimed for Secretary General)

Pedro Felix  is the coordinator of the Installing Team of the Portuguese National Sound Archive, a structure - created by the Portuguese Government and directly supervised by the Minister of Culture and the Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education - mandated to carry out a survey of the sound heritage in Portugal, produce all the technical documentation necessary for the creation and operation of the National Sound Archive and technically monitor its construction and implementation. Previously, he was part of the team responsible for the preparation of the Fado proposal to UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage, designed and coordinated the creation of the Digital Archive of the Museu do Fado and the European project HeritaMus (in the field of metadata community’ curation). He participated in the organisation of several private sound collections and collaborated with public and private institutions organising phonographic archives. He also works on the publication of phonograms from historical recordings (digitisation and audio restoring). As a researcher, his subjects were sound technologies for industrial production and musical creation within multinational phonographic companies and sound archivism. At IASA, he has been serving as chair of the Ambassadors committee and vice-chair of the Discography committee.

Global cooperation across any divide. The domain of AV heritage is going through a turning point. Countries from the “global north” have already completed projects - or are on track - to digitise their own AV funds. On the contrary, most institutions across the globe deal with multiple hardships in accessing technology, technicians, specialised training, financial resources, even public and institutional recognition of the importance of this typology of documents. However, in the face of adverse contexts and disadvantageous circumstances, innovative projects emerge, with practical as imaginative and stimulating responses. Considering those partners as equals among equals - and not as clients - will reinforce our identity as community.
The role of IASA as a reference and authoritative entity for archival and heritage of AV documental heritage should not only be unequivocally recognised, but also disseminated outside the community, reinforcing the worldwide role of the Association. By contributing to the reinforcement of IASA as a whole, we will be simultaneously building each one’s role and the recognition of the importance of this documental typology in our contexts and geographies.
With this framework, it is my intention to:
1. Strengthen communication between the various IASA committees through concrete joint projects with tangible outcomes;
2. promote a logic of international affirmation, from the technical and political point of view, seeking to pursue the efforts to institutionalise the technical documentation issued by the IASA;
3.  analyse and try to provide a practical answer to pressing questions:
3.1. the need for a generational renewal of technicians necessary for the future of our institutions, ensuring the transmission of knowledge and expertise on all fields,
3.2. expand membership, represent under-represented geographic areas, mobilize current members for greater involvement,
3.3. reinforce the training program as a gateway for new members,
3.4. promote and/ or intensify contacts with “neighbouring” entities (other professional and technical associations) reinforcing the role and international impact of the IASA, beyond the community already aware of it,
3.5. promote technical and technological independency across the globe among memory institutions dealing with AV heritage.

More broadly, I project the future of the IASA into four necessarily interconnected domains:
A. Social: through intense, dynamic and cooperative sharing of knowledge, information, and technology across borders, history, geographies, organisations. Collective involvement and mobilisation before emergency and or precarious circumstances.
B. Technical: Research and permanent improvement on AV “archivism” standards namely on issues like digital rights, metadata structures, controlled vocabularies, digital preservation, AV technology and techniques, open-source tools, among others.
C. Educational: Collective involvement and mobilisation to design and implement the training program at different levels (basic / introductory; advanced).
D. Political: Reinforce the role of IASA as advocacy group for the recognition and support of AV heritage protection actions across multiple and distinct socio-cultural and political contexts.

 

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Treasurer

Nadia Lai (acclaimed for Treasurer)

Nadia Lai has worked as head of cataloguing and training at the Swiss National Sound Archives in Lugano since September 2015. She mainly deals with data quality controls, data consistency, cataloguing rules as well as with the training of the Swiss National Sound Archives staff. Since her arrival at the Swiss National Sound Archives, Nadia has regularly attended the IASA Conferences and given presentation on various subjects related to cataloguing and collection management. Since January 2022 she is chair of the Training and Education Committee. Previous to this experience, Nadia worked mainly in libraries and libraries networks. Her professional career includes a three and a half year-experience as cataloging coordinator in the Library Network of Western Switzerland (RERO) and a four and a half year-experience as system librarian for the Alexandria Network and the Swiss National Library.
Nadia earned a degree in English Literature and Science of Religions at the University of Fribourg and a post-graduate certificate in Information and Documentation Science at the School of Business Administration of Geneva and the University of Geneva.

Vision IASA 2023-2026: Continue to contribute to the preservation of the world’s audiovisual heritage through the valuable work of IASA specialized committees, its annual conferences, its trainings, its scientific publications. Set in place new initiatives and new forms of communication to make IASA precious work known and accessible.
Promote the cooperation of IASA members from all around the world in order to spread knowhow, standards and any tools that will support organizations and institutions in their task of preserving audiovisual heritage.
Encourage and strengthen a diffuse IASA presence throughout the whole world through the creation of new local branches under the umbrella of the IASA, which are rooted in the local context and know its characteristics and peculiarities. Local branches can help organizations take decisions and actions respectful of IASA standards and best practices and adapted to the local needs and requirements.
Fully exploit the potential of IASA cooperation with similar or related associations to reach out as many audiovisual organizations as possible and join efforts to achieve common goals in the mission of the preservation of audiovisual heritage.

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Editor

Jennifer Vaughn (acclaimed for Editor)

In the years leading up to my first term as Editor, many significant changes were put in place for the IASA Journal: the move to a fully online, Open Access publication; the introduction of peer review, and formation of an Editorial Board to provide oversight and guidance. While these changes were integral for increasing the profile, readership, and professionalization of the journal, they were not accompanied by increased resources or support for the editor.

During my term as Editor, I have dedicated myself to improving the IASAJ’s adherence to scholarly publishing standards and the quality of its individual articles. It’s been frustrating to not have time to embark on several projects I view as vital to producing a high-quality scholarly journal, such as the creation of a style guide, recruiting a larger pool of peer reviewers, ensuring consistent standards of review, and applying for membership in the Directory of Open Access Journals. I have only managed to put together one issue of the journal per year, and have had little time to work with the newly formed Editorial Board. I’ve worked on several translation projects of the IASA’s special publications, but no progress has been made on working with the Technical Committee to plan for IASA-TC 07. Serving as Programme Chair for the annual conference has also taken up an enormous amount of my time, as the role took on greater responsibilities as IASA shifted to offering online and hybrid conferences.

Part of me is tired and could use a break, but a bigger part of me wants to enact positive changes that will improve the quality of IASA’s publications and give greater support for future editors. Therefore I’ve decided to stand for election for another term on the basis of a series of  proposed changes that I presented to the Executive Board at our spring meeting in Frankfurt. Based on an analysis of similar journals in the archives field, I have recommended that we create a new Managing Editor role that will be co-opted by the board, and also to increase the size and scope of the Editorial Board. The overlapping structure of the Past President/President roles on the Executive Board served as inspiration to these proposed changes: the two editor’s terms will overlap for three years to improve continuity, preserve institutional knowledge, create a more supportive and collaborative working environment, and also will enable greater journal output and the ability to take on some of the necessary administrative projects I mentioned above. I also encourage the next Executive Board to identify a suitable IASA member not on the Executive Board to manage the intricacies of hybrid and online conferences to relieve editors of this task.

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Web Manager

Bright Joshua (acclaimed for Web Manager)

I have been active in records and archives management since 2008 when I joined the National Records and Archive Services of Malawi where I am currently working as Chief Conservator. I hold a BSc in Mathematical Sciences and MSc in Informatics. I have a strong background in ICT through which I acquired knowledge of web development and management skills among other skills. I hold professional certificates from ICCROM sound and moving image, FIAF film summer school, and SEAPAVAA Safeguarding Sound and Image Collections and have worked at the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv in Hoppergarten, Germany. In my career as an archivist, I have served for 1 year as secretary for the Malawi Association for audiovisual managers where I was in charge of organizing meetings for the association and liaising with Malawi national commission for UNESCO in behalf of the association. I have played leading roles in many projects as National Coordinator for Digitization of strategic Government records, development of digital archives for selected private and public institutions, digitization of 16mm reel films, gramophone records, 8mm magnetic tape and audio cassettes. In 2017, Malawi hosted the ESARBICA conference where I executed a number of tasks that included coordinating activities of the local organizing committee, arrange meetings, create and submit content for the conference website, manage subscriptions and funds for the conference, serve as a point of contact for the task force members, stakeholders and ESARBICA board.

My passion for wanting to be part of the IASA board stems from the fact that the association is an all-inclusive establishment that connects people from all walks of life, diverse backgrounds, professions and unites them towards one goal of preserving audio visual heritage. IASA provides a golden platform for networking, awareness on new technology and innovations vital for everyday management of audiovisual heritage. I therefore believe that my contribution as a web manager will go a long way in ensuring that IASA remains vibrant in its quest to providing care, access and long-term preservation of the worlds sound and moving image heritage.

Web managers are very important for every establishment as they represent a first line of contact for an establishment, its members and the outside world. If voted into office as web manager for the IASA executive board, I am ready to bring immense value to the association as I have a good ICT background, experience in developing and managing websites, good communication skills, respect for other people's opinions and experience working in multi-cultural environment. My vision for IASA in the years 2023-2026 is to make the association a global professional body that spearheads the management of audio-visual heritage for posterity by becoming a global hub of training, provision of support and consultation, enabling environment for development of tools, platform for sharing knowledge and standards for audio visual heritage management.

I believe this vision will be achieved through the following:

· Planning, implementing, managing, monitoring, and upgrading the organization's website with latest information on audiovisual innovations, research and breakthroughs.

· Creating appropriate website content aligned with the organizations strategy of functioning as a medium for international co-operation between archives that preserve recorded sound and audiovisual documents.

· Enabling appropriate website security measures by responding to security breaches and providing timely response to queries from website users.

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