This year we have four people who have thrown their hats into the ring to run for the NDSA’s Coordinating Committee (CC), of which we will elect three. 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.
Each member organization will receive an email invitation to the ballot in the coming weeks. But right now let’s meet the candidates!
- Elizabeth England, Digital Preservation Specialist, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration
Elizabeth England is a Digital Preservation Specialist at the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, where she participates in strategic and operational initiatives and services for the preservation of born-digital and digitized records. She previously was the Digital Archivist and a National Digital Stewardship Resident at Johns Hopkins University. Elizabeth currently serves on the NDSA Communications and Publications group and the DigiPres 2020 Planning Committee. As a past recipient of the NDSA Future Steward award, Elizabeth is interested in advancing NDSA as a resource and community for students and early-career digital stewards, and strengthening the Alliance by increasing representation and inclusion of smaller institutions and colleagues from groups marginalized in the field. Elizabeth is interested in joining the Coordinating Committee to help further realize this work as well as priorities identified in the 2020 Agenda, particularly around the value of digital preservation labor and exploring sustainability models for digital stewardship educational and training programs.
- Jessica C. Neal, College Archivist, Hampshire College
Jessica is a Black, queer, millennial archivist and memory worker from Mobile, AL. In addition to her work in academia, Jessica has centered her career on building frameworks around the ethics of documentation that focus on Black-led social movements, art, literature, and struggle throughout the diaspora. Specifically, she is committed to partnering with communities of color to recover, document, and maintain autonomy over the processes in which their narratives and narrative art are preserved and accessed, particularly through the oral history tradition and digital environments. Jessica also has experience working in academic libraries and archives, historical societies, federal government, and private sector organizations. She is currently the College Archivist at Hampshire College, a workshop facilitator with DocNow and a member of NDSA’s DigiPres 2020 Planning Committee.
- Linda Tadic, Founder/CEO, Digital Bedrock
Linda has served on the Coordinating Committee for the past two years. During this time, she has promoted the Levels of Digital Preservation to broader communities, in particular to media and entertainment organizations and non-academic institutions. She was a co-presenter on the Levels at the 2019 conference of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA), of which she is a founding member and former President . As an educator, she incorporates NDSA reports and projects into her courses in the UCLA Information Studies department, and has previously served as an adjunct in NYU’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program. Linda brings to the CC her diverse experience working in non-profit and educational archives, managing digital asset management systems, and founding Digital Bedrock, a managed digital preservation service provider. She has over 30 years of experience in leading preservation, metadata, and digital production operations at organizations such as ARTstor, HBO, the Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia, and the Getty Research Institute. If re-elected, Linda will continue promoting NDSA, its activities, and digital preservation concepts to new potential constituencies. Linda participates in the Infrastructure Working Group.
- Frederick Zarndt, Consultant, Digital Divide Data / Recollect CMS
Frederick has worked with historic and contemporary newspaper, journal, magazine, book, and records digitization since computer speeds, software, technology, storage, and costs first made it practical. He has experience in every aspect of digitization projects including project requirements development, project management, conversion operations (both in-house and outsourced), acceptance testing, software development for production and delivery of digital data, and digital preservation. Frederick has been a member of the IFLA Governing Board, as well as, Chair of its Division II and former secretary and chair of the IFLA News Media Section. For 8 years, he was the administrative chair of the ALTO XML Editorial Board. Frederick has more than 25 years’ experience in software development and is a member of ACM and IEEE and a Certified Software Development Professional (CSDP). He is a member of ALA and IFLA. Frederick has Master’s Degrees in Computer Science and Physics.