Alison Newman

Candidate statement

Alison Newman, special-collections librarian and archivist, based in Milwaukee (currently unaffiliated). My scholarly interest is the business and art of books during the hand-press period. Professionally, SHARP is a wonderful place for me to listen to and learn from scholars, to improve my knowledge of curating collections and providing researchers access to primary source materials. I joined SHARP in 2017, went to my first conference in 2019, and felt immediately welcomed by the SHARP community. With colleagues in Milwaukee I proposed our city for SHARP 2021 and worked with Josée Vincent, the previous Director of Conferences. However, shortly after our final proposal was submitted, the pandemic struck, and the host institution did not renew my work contract. I joined the SHARP21 Muenster Team as a member of the programming committee. As Director of Conferences, I see great potential in using the experiences of remote meetings and virtual conferences to incorporate aspects of asynchronous, live virtual, and physical attendance to make annual and focused conferences more engaging and accessible. I’m hopeful that we will be able to experience the abundant global textual histories more easily through hybrid conferences. I want to encourage the use of inclusive technologies and environments as well as continue to implement ecologically responsible conferencing. As the materials in the Conference Resources get updated, I look forward to hearing from and working with the community to reflect the current and future state of SHARP conferences.