Leadership Group

Leadership Team

The NDSA Leadership consists of the elected Coordinating Committee, the chairs/co-chairs of the Interest and Working Groups, and a representative from the Host Organization. Together, the Coordinating Committee and the Interest and Working Group chairs work to articulate a long-term, strategic vision for NDSA. The Leadership group meets once a month online and in person once during the Digital Preservation Annual Conference.

Select activities of the Leadership group include:

Approving new NDSA member applications.
Creating and reviewing NDSA publications (e.g. The NDSA Agenda).
Evaluating the effectiveness of the Interest and Working Groups and providing guidance and assistance to the Group chairs as appropriate. This can include recommending the creation, consolidation, or disbanding of Interest or Working Groups and working to eliminate unnecessary duplication of effort.
Coordinating with DLF on administrative management of the NDSA.
Working with international partners to extend digital preservation advocacy and awareness.
Working with parent organization to plan the DigiPres conference.
Creating and reviewing the annual roadmap for the NDSA.

For items that need to be voted on, the Interest and Working group chairs are considered to be ex officio members; they do not vote and their presence is not counted as part of a quorum. Only the elected CC members may vote.

Coordinating Committee

Members may also pursue becoming a member of the Coordinating Committee (CC). Members of the Coordinating Committee serve a three-year elected position that works with the chairs of the Interest and Working groups on the strategic goals of the NDSA. Details about the purpose, charge, and expectations of the committee are recorded in the Coordinating Committee Information document. The primary responsibilities and expectations of individual CC members include:

Approving and/or participating in Interest Groups and Working Groups as needed or required.
Actively promoting and representing the work of the NDSA in their own professional communities.
Actively engaging in the ongoing work of the CC, with an expected 75% attendance record for monthly CC meetings.
Communicating clearly, respectfully, and in a timely fashion to support active participation by all members of the project team, especially when leading or participating in CC projects.

The NDSA Leadership Group comprises the Coordinating Committee, the Interest Group and Working Group co-chairs, and the Host Organization representatives, which in collaboration provide strategic leadership for the organization. Committee members serve staggered terms of three years.

Host Organization

NDSA derives its administrative and financial support through a Host Organization. The Host Organization:

Provides a membership mechanism, coordination, and support for the NDSA organization.
Provides outreach and communication frameworks to NDSA leadership, which may be used to inform the broader digital preservation community about NDSA activities, events, and products.
Represents the NDSA organization with a distinct and branded web presence.
Supports the work of the NDSA Coordinating Committee and provides one voting member of the leadership in conjunction with elected members of the CC.
Supports and coordinates the execution of an annual NDSA conference.
Commits to a 3-year (renewable) term as NDSA host organization.

Coordinating Committee Members

Elizabeth England

Elizabeth England (1st term, 2021-2023) is Senior 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 of the federal government. Prior to joining NARA, Elizabeth was the Digital Archivist and a National Digital Stewardship Resident (NDSR) at Johns Hopkins University. Elizabeth previously served as co-chair of the 2021 NDSA Staffing Survey and on the NDSA Communications and Publications Working Group.

Stacey Erdman

Stacey Erdman (1st term, 2022-2024; 2023 DigiPres Chair; Membership Working Group Co-chair) is the Digital Preservation Librarian at University of Arizona Library. In this position, she has responsibility for designing and leading the digital preservation and curation program for UA Library. She is the former Digital Preservation Officer at Arizona State University; 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, the Membership Task Force, and was previously part of the Levels of Preservation Assessment subgroup. She received her MA in Library & Information Studies, with a concentration in Archival Administration from UW-Madison, and holds a Digital Archives Specialist certificate from the SAA.

Louisa Kwasigroch

Louisa Kwasigroch (CLIR representative) is the director of outreach and engagement for the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) and Interim Senior Program Officer for the Digital Library Federation (DLF). Her mission at CLIR centers around working with members, funders, affiliates, and the overlapping library/information communities to find places to collaborate and further the field. Louisa’s experience spans organizational design, marketing, business development, nonprofit management, fundraising, and communications. She is a Kodak Portfolio award-winning photographer and part of the Beta Phi Mu International Library & Information Studies Honor Society. Her work in higher education and library and information science is dedicated to breaking down barriers via cross-industry collaboration. Louisa holds a Master of Business Administration and a Master of Science in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a Bachelor of Arts in photography from Columbia College Chicago.

Jen Mitcham

Jen Mitcham (1st Term, 2022-2024; Levels of Digital Preservation Co-Chair) 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.

Jessica Neal

Jessica C. Neal (1st term, 2021-2023) is an archivist, records manager, and memory worker. She is currently the Sterling A. Brown Archivist at Williams College and Records Management Program Assistant at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Jes’s work centers archives, preservation, data management, and developing ethical frameworks to better steward digital collections and projects that specifically focus on Black-led and -created social movements, oral histories, and literary history and culture. Jes received her B.A. in African World Studies from Dillard University and her M.L.I.S in Archival Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Shira Peltzman

Shira Pelztman (1st term, 2023-2025) 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

Deon Schutte (1st term, 2023-2025; Content Interest Group Co-Chair; 1st term, 2022-2024) 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, specialising in Digital Curation) candidate at the University of Cape Town (the first African member of the NDSA). He serves as the Chair of the Association of Southern African Indexers and Bibliographers and is a Fellow of the South African Chefs Association. He works at Africa Media Online in the production team that is busy arranging and digitising the extensive archive of one of the prominent politicians of the anti-Apartheid struggle. He resides in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.

Bethany Scott, 2023 Vice Chair

Bethany Scott (1st term, 2023-2025) 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.

Linda Tadic

Linda Tadic (2nd term, 2021-2023) is founder and CEO of Digital Bedrock, a managed digital preservation service provider that serves any type of organization, and even individuals. She has 30 years’ 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. Over the course of 20 years, Linda also taught as an adjunct professor in UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies (teaching Digital Asset Management), and at NYU’s Moving Image Archiving and Preservation program (courses in collection management and cataloging and metadata). She consults and lectures on digital asset management, audiovisual and digital preservation, metadata, and copyright, with clients as diverse as WNET/Thirteen, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, SBS (Australia), Dunhuang Research Academy (China), ESPN, and the Missouri History Museum. She is a founding member and former President of the Association of Moving Image Archivists (AMIA).

Hannah Wang, 2023 Chair

Hannah Wang (1st Term, 2022-2024) works at Educopia Institute, where she is the Program Officer for Digital Infrastructure. Her role encompasses research, consulting, and community cultivation for digital preservation communities and projects, including the MetaArchive Cooperative and the DPSC Planning Project. Her work and research focuses on issues related to sustaining technical communities, digital stewardship, and organizational development. 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.

Interest and Working Group Chairs

Samantha Abrams

Samantha Abrams (she/her/hers) (Web Archiving Co-Chair) is the Head of Collections at the Center for Research Libraries where she plays a key role in the development of collections, partnerships, and community engagement policy, strategy, and operations. As the Head of Collections, Samantha leads a team whose functional responsibilities span area studies, and digital and distinctive collections, with a focus on forming and managing forward-thinking partnerships that advance expanded forms of engagement with cultural heritage collections. She is also an Associate Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's iSchool. Before joining the Center for Research Libraries, Samantha worked for the Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation as their Web Resources Collection Librarian, and at StoryCorps, as their Community Archivist. In addition to her role as co-chair of the Web Archiving Survey Working Group, Samantha serves on the Excellence Awards Working Group and the Membership Task Force. Samantha has a Master’s degree in Library and Information Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Rachel Appel

Rachel Appel (Membership Working Group Co-Chair; 1st term, 2022-2024) is the Digital Preservation Librarian at the University of Pennsylvania where she develops, documents, implements and oversees preservation workflows, procedures and policies for the Penn Libraries' digital collections and assets, both digitized and born-digital. Prior to this role, Rachel was the Digital Projects and Services Librarian at Temple University, coordinating digital collections, implementing metadata projects related to cultural heritage and scholarly communication, and managing ongoing services. Rachel holds a Bachelor of Arts in Film Studies from Smith College and a Master of Science in Information Studies with a specialization in Digital Archives and Preservation from the University of Texas at Austin.

Angela Beking

Angela Beking (Levels of Digital Preservation Co-Chair) is the Manager of Information and Data Management Policy at Privy Council Office, Canada. Formerly a Senior Digital Archivist at Library and Archives Canada, Angela's research interests include the alignment of information and data management policies and procedures with those of digital preservation, with an eye to the overall advancement of digital curation.

Brenda Burk

Brenda Burk (Content Interest Group Co-Chair; 1st term, 2020-2022) joined Clemson University Libraries in 2014 as the Head of Special Collections. As part of the Clemson University Libraries, the Special Collections and Archives houses the University Archives, Records Management, Manuscript Collections, and Rare Books. Previously she was the Philanthropic Studies Archivist at IUPUI University Library and Public Records Archivist at the Wisconsin Historical Society. In her current position, she continues to build a premier research collection that supports the university and creates an environment encouraging scholarly inquiry, creative thinking, and lifelong learning. Her research interests include information-seeking behaviors of users, course-integrated instruction, public awareness and perceptions of archives. Brenda graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a BA in History and a MA in Library and Information Studies with an emphasis in archival administration.

Zakiya Collier

Zakiya Collier (she/they) (Web Archiving Co-Chair) is the Digital Archivist at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture where she uses web archiving tools to ethically expand the nature of archival collections to reflect 21st-century Black life and experiences. She is also the Project Archivist for the Weeksville Heritage Center and Semantic Lab at Pratt Linking Lost Jazz Shrines project, which seeks to apply linked open data principles to a jazz oral history collection. She is a Certified Archivist through the Academy of Certified Archivists (ACA) in 2020 and she holds an MA in Media, Culture, and Communication from New York University, an MLIS from Long Island University, and a BA in Anthropology from the University of South Carolina. Zakiya is an affiliate of the Center for Critical Race and Digital Studies (CR+DS) at New York University, an Interim Board Member of the Archival Education and Research Initiative (AERI), and a guest editor of a forthcoming special issue of The Black Scholar on Black Archival Practice.

Felicity Dykas

Felicity Dykas (Standards and Practices Interest Group Co-Chair; 1st term, 2019-2021) is an adjunct instructor and Librarian IV Emerita at the University of Missouri. Previously, she served as Head of Digital Services at the University of Missouri Libraries, overseeing the work of MOspace (the University of Missouri institutional repository), the MU Digital Library, and digitization work. She also has experience as a cataloger, catalog department head, library website co-chair, and ILS redesign chair. Her professional interests include open access, equitable access to digital resources, long-term preservation of digital resources, the organization of information, and the development and promotion of useful standards for discovery and preservation of information resources.

Ann Hanlon

Ann Hanlon (Standards and Practices Interest Group Co-Chair; 1st term, 2022-2024) is the Head of Digital Collections and Initiatives at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She also co-founded and leads the UWM Libraries Digital Humanities Lab. Ms. Hanlon has over twenty years of experience working with digital collections, including positions at the University of Maryland, Marquette University, and since 2012 at UWM. She has led projects to build digital archival collections of all shapes and sizes, and also works in the areas of digital preservation and digital scholarship. She has published and presented in the fields of digital collections and scholarship, digital preservation, and digital humanities. Ann has an MA in History from the University of Maryland and her MSLIS from the University of Illinois.

Carol Kussmann

Carol Kussmann (Communications and Publications Working Group Chair; 2nd term, 2022-2025) is the Digital Preservation Analyst at the University of Minnesota Libraries. In this role, she works across many departments within the Libraries, as well as outside the Libraries including through the statewide Minnesota Digital Library Program. She addresses current and future requirements for the long-term preservation of electronic records in the areas of archives and special collections, information and data repositories, and journal publishing. As co-chair of the Libraries Electronic Records Management Group her efforts focus on developing and implementing workflows for ingesting, processing, and providing access to incoming electronic materials that are part of the Archives and Special Collections units. As an inaugural Digital Preservation Outreach and Education (DPOE) trainer, she works with Minitex to provide digital preservation training in the region on a regular basis. After completing the initial implementation work for the Council of State Archivists’ (CoSA) Electronic Records Resource Center she remains a member of CoSA’s Tools and Resources Subcommittee. Other current activities include teaching Digital Archives Specialist courses for the Society of American Archivists.

Eric Lopatin

Eric Lopatin (Infrastructure Interest Group Co-Chair; 1st term, 2021-2023) is Product Manager for the California Digital Library's digital preservation initiatives, including the Merritt repository that preserves library special collection content from libraries across all ten University of California campuses, as well as eScholarship publications, ETDs, and datasets submitted to Dryad from organizations worldwide. In this role, he leads the product development of Merritt and its integration with CDL systems, while also directly supporting campus-specific preservation efforts. Through ongoing UC-systemwide initiatives, he helps promote the adoption of digital preservation best practices and associated technologies. Prior to joining CDL, Eric worked at the Public Library of Science where he was product owner for a development team focused on bolstering editorial process efficiency across journal operations. His recent work in Open Access publishing, as well as a string of years spent at Adobe Systems enabling cross-application workflows and shared technology, have all contributed to his interests in the realms of preservation, publishing and software development.

Courtney Mumma

Courtney C. Mumma (Long Term Conference Planning Working Group Co-Chair), is a an archivist and a librarian. She is the Deputy Director of the Texas Digital Library consortium, a collective of university libraries working towards open, sustainable, and secure digital heritage and scholarly communications. She has over a decade of experience in open source software development and maintenance, infrastructure support and digital preservation good practice and education.

Dan Noonan

Dan (Communications and Publications Working Group co-chair; 1st term, 2023-2025) is an Associate Professor and the Digital Preservation Librarian for The Ohio State University Libraries University Libraries. Reporting to the Associate Dean for Distinctive Collections and Digital Programs, he plays a key role in developing a trusted digital preservation ethos and infrastructure at University Libraries. This position contributes strategy and expertise, and provides leadership through close collaboration with faculty, staff, and other leaders in the University Libraries. With over 20 years of experience in the archives, records management and library professions, he is a frequent contributor to the local, regional, national and international digital preservation communities. Most recently, Dan served on NDSA’s Coordinating Committee, and previously co-chaired NDSA's Levels of Preservation Revision Work Group. You can learn more about Dan at http://go.osu.edu/noonan.

Krista Oldham

Krista Oldham (Excellence Awards Working Group Co-Chair; 2nd term, 2021-2023) is the University Archivist at Texas A&M University, College Station, where her responsibilities include overseeing the acquisition, description, and preservation of University records, as well as supporting and promoting their use. Additionally, Krista provides oversight for the Texas A&M records management program. She earned a M.I.S. from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and earned both a M.A. in History and a B.A. in History from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. Prior to starting her position at Texas A&M, Krista worked at Clemson University as the University Archivist, Haverford College as the College Archivist/Records Manager for Quaker and Special Collections and at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville Special Collections as the Senior Archivist and the Senior Archives Manager. In addition to her archival work, Krista served as Co-Director of the Arkansas Delta Oral History Project, an initiative led by the endowed Brown Chair in English Literacy. She is a co-author of The Arkansas Delta Oral History Project: Culture, Place, and Authenticity, which was published in 2016 by Syracuse University Press.

Robin Ruggaber

Robin Ruggaber, (Infrastructure Interest Group Co-Chair; 1st term, 2022-2024), works as the Director for Strategic Technology Partnerships & Initiatives for the University of Virginia Library. As a founding member of several opensource repository technologies, preservation, open access, and accessibility solutions (Fedora, Blacklight, Samvera, Academic Preservation Trust, Investment in Open Infrastructure, and Education Materials Made Accessible), UVA has a long-standing commitment to protecting availability and open access to intellectual and cultural knowledge. Robin serves in a strategic or technical advisory capacity in these types of technical collaborations, forges new partnerships, and serves as a technology consultant within UVA and across higher education. She is drawn to the complex problems facing the digital stewardship community and sees the work of NDSA as critical to addressing those challenges.

Lance Stuchell

Lance Stuchell (Long Term Confence Planning Working Group Co-Chair) is Head of the Digital Preservation Unit at the University of Michigan Library where he advises the library and campus communities and leads the continued development, implementation, and management of a comprehensive digital preservation program aimed at providing long-term access to the library’s digital collections. Work in this area often includes policy development and assessment, building and implementing workflows for the preservation of digital assets, and consulting with campus partners on how to incorporate digital preservation practice into research and publishing projects.