The Metadata & Collections Section election for chair-elect for 2022-23 is open to all members of the M&C Section through Sunday, July 10. Results will be announced on July 11.
The Section Chair is elected to a 3-year term that begins in July 2022 and ends at the conclusion of the 2025 ALA Annual Conference, serving one year each as Chair-Elect (2022–2023), Chair (2023–2024), and Immediate Past-Chair (2024–2025).
Candidates
Mary Gilbertson
![Photo of Mary Gilbertson](https://alacorenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Mary-Gilbertson-400x400-1.jpg")
About Mary
I am the Head of Acquisitions at the University of Arkansas. I have twenty-four years of professional academic library experience serving primarily in programs that support discovery and access to content and collections. I also participate in liaison services, research instruction, and collection development. I have served on many national, state, and local committees, including chairing what was the acquisitions section of the ALCTS publications committee in 2019. I participate in budget planning and have oversight of the monographs budgeting. I have direct responsibility for selection and monitoring the spending of more than a dozen fund codes that include but are not limited to Philosophy, Faculty Publications, and Middle East Studies. I have worked diligently to keep workflows, technologies, and operations current and moving forward. I have worked to balance the digital transformation that is changing libraries and universities by embracing the purchase of electronic resources with the traditional values of preserving the diverse cultural heritage for all citizens by continuing to manage the acceptance of print gifts. I have direct experience with collection development, cataloging, metadata, and acquisitions. My current research interests include library technical services staff morale, streaming video acquisition trends, evidence-based acquisition trends, and acquisitions workflows. My academic library experience is enhanced by early career experience in public libraries, government documents and microforms, and in serving at the reference desk.
Candidate Statement
Library collections are central to the mission of most cultural institutions. Metadata specialists are the foundation of collection management and have the responsibility to organize information in a way that facilitates searching and retrieval of materials. As such, members of the Core Metadata and Collections Section have the important job to share best practices in areas that support selection, acquisition, description, access, and preservation of collections. I am in favor of open and affordable learning that include a diverse range of subjects and diversity of thought. My research interests have often stemmed out of the need to inform and/or share findings from my daily work, and the American Library Association has provided a platform for that type of sharing. The American Library Association has also been integral source that has contributed to my personal learning about industry standards and trends. Having worked in Metadata, Acquisitions, and Collections for over 20 years, I look forward to assisting the members of Core in distributing this type of information to the library community.
Steve Kelley
About Steve
I am the Head of Continuing Resources and Database Management at the Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University, where I have worked since 2002. I have been a member of ALA for 22 years. I was the last person elected as Vice Chair/Chair Elect of the ALCTS Continuing Resources Section in 2019. In 2020, I was appointed to the leadership team of the Core Metadata and Collections Section, on which I currently serves. I have worked on a number of ALA committees, including CC:DA, the Continuing Resources Cataloging Committee, and many of the technical services related award committees. In addition, I served on the ALA Presidential Advisory Committee from 2018 to 2020 at the invitation of ALA President Wanda Brown. I have also been very involved in other library organizations and served as Vice President/President/Past President of NASIG from 2013 to 2016. In my day-to-day work, I supervise a section that has responsibilities that include serials cataloging, authority control maintenance, catalog database maintenance, government documents cataloging, serials receiving, and the binding and marking of materials. I previously worked as a librarian at Ball State University and as a paraprofessional at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Washington University in St. Louis.
Candidate Statement
I believe most observers would agree that the merger of ALCTS, LITA, and LAMA into the Core division, while largely successful, has had its difficulties. One of the major challenges that has faced the Metadata & Collections Section, which incorporated almost all the committees that were part of ALCTS, is how it can be an integral part of Core and not simply a recreation of the ALCTS division on the section level. Having served as an appointed member of the M&C Section Leadership Team since 2020, I have worked to negotiate the process of integrating the former ALCTS committees with Core, while recognizing that some of these committees have complex ongoing relationships with organizations outside of ALA that require special attention. I believe that were I elected Vice Chair/Chair Elect that I could continue to work to integrate M&C with Core as a whole, while recognizing the unique character of our committees and interest groups. Also, as member of the M&C Leadership Team, I was the first person to raise the issue of section leadership succession with the Core leadership and to push for holding elections. Thankfully, the M&C membership voted overwhelmingly in favor of electing chairs. If I am not elected Vice Chair/Chair Elect, I will still be proud that I advocated for holding elections and enormously gratified that the M&C membership has chosen its leadership.
