The Council of State Archivists (CoSA), a national organization representing the heads of the country’s 56 state and territorial archives, presented the Library of Virginia’s Governor Tim Kaine Email Project Team with its Rising Star award in recognition of being the first state government archives in the United States to make the emails of a previous administration freely available to the public online. The award, which recognizes outstanding contributions by individual staff members or teams to their state archives and constituencies, was made at the joint meeting of the Society of American Archivists/National Association of Government Archives and Records Administrators/Council of State Archivists in Washington, DC, on 14 August.
Roger Christman accepts CoSA's Rising Star award on behalf of the Library's Governor Tim Kaine Email Project Team, 14 August 2014, CoSA/NAGARA/SAA joint annual meeting, Washington, DC. Photo courtesy of Craig Huey Photography.
Rising Star Award Certificate
The Kaine Email Project Team put Virginia’s state archives on the forefront of open government in the modern age. The Library received approximately 1.3 million email messages from the administration of Governor Kaine (2006-2010). To date, the Library has reviewed nearly 562,000 emails, and placed 130,644 archival records online in an organized searchable database, Kaine Email Project @ LVA. Users can search and view email records from the Governor’s Office and his cabinet secretaries; learn about other public records from the Kaine Administration; go behind the scenes to see how the Library of Virginia made the email records available; and read what others are saying about the collection.
The lead project team consists of Roger Christman, senior state records archivist; Susan Gray Page, digital archives coordinator; and Kathy Jordan, digital initiatives and web services manager. Providing logistics and support to the project were Ben Bromley, state records archivist; Rebecca Morgan, digital collections systems engineer; Paige Neal, state records archivist; Jason Roma, web developer; and Anita Vannucci, former records and information management coordinator. This outstanding team not only won the award, but their nomination packet was deemed so professionally put together that the CoSA Board hopes it will serve as a model for other states to emulate in the future.
About the Council of State Archivists’ Awards Program:
The Council’s Awards Program was expanded in 2013 to highlight outstanding people and projects in the nation’s state archives. Awards are presented at CoSA’s annual meeting each summer. CoSA is deeply committed to the positive impact state and territory archives make toward documenting government, preserving history and securing rights. CoSA’s efforts to advance and promote this impact are critical elements of its work.
For more information on CoSA and the Awards Program, please visit their web page.
