The Oral History Section is holding special elections for two seats on the Steering Committee: vice chair/chair-elect and member at-large. Please see the candidate statements below and be sure to vote by Monday, October 13 at https://mysaa.archivists.org/myballots.
Vice Chair/Chair-Elect Candidates (three-year term)
Patrick Daglaris
Patrick Daglaris is the archivist and assistant department head for the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program at the Oklahoma State University Library, where he oversees the collection management and digital preservation of their 2,800+ interview holdings. His research interests include examining transcript revisions by narrators, the intersection between oral history and death ritual, and tornado narratives as expressions of regional identity. He believes in the importance of proactive community engagement and collaboration by archival institutions and provides workshops, digitization, and project support to partners and communities across the state. He currently serves as a Steering Committee Member of the Oral History Section and has previously served on the Communications Committee of the SAA Preservation Section and as a representative for the Regional Archival Associations Consortium.
Candidate statement
My experience creating and managing oral history collections is what brought me to the archives profession over a decade ago and I remain a dedicated advocate for archival principles and best practices in the field of oral history. I believe the SAA Oral History Section plays an important role in creating space for practitioners from various institutional contexts to come together to discuss emerging challenges, strategies and resources in the field, and I hope to contribute my own experiences while learning from others in the field. Oral history collections are complex and messy, from rights management, digitization, digital preservation, metadata, to determining what access or ‘done’ looks like. In my current position I work with many local and statewide cultural heritage institutions in navigating these challenges to determine next steps and sustainable workflows for their oral history projects. I am excited for the possibility to make meaningful contributions to the Oral History Section and the broader oral history archives community served through the Steering Committee.
Steering Committee Member Candidates (two-year term)
Matthew Strandmark
Matthew Strandmark is an education archivist and oral historian at the University of Kentucky (UK) Special Collections Research Center. In addition to managing an active instruction program for UK students and faculty, Strandmark has managed and served as an interviewer for multiple oral history projects through the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History. He holds Master of Arts, History, and Master of Library Science degrees from Indiana University, Bloomington. In 2023, Strandmark wrote Gatewood: Kentucky’s Uncommon Man, which was published by the University Press of Kentucky as part of the Kentucky Remembered: An Oral History Series.
Candidate Statement
My professional and personal goals focus on building bridges between students, faculty and researchers, and the resources that illustrate our shared human story. While this work takes many forms, oral history is at the core of humanistic inquiry and promotes historical connections that are vital to understanding the shared story of humanity. I am interested in continually finding new ways to provide access to oral history collections and to promote their vitality and access for researchers and students everywhere. I want to facilitate conversations through the Oral History Section about those very issues, and I welcome the opportunity to support the work already undertaken by the steering committee and the section overall.
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Anu Kasarabada
Archivist/Oral Historian
University of Kentucky
Lexington, KY
akasarabls@gmail.com------------------------------