I am excited to seek the position of Secretary for ACRL-NEC. My career has been shaped by a deep commitment to documentation, collaboration, and building community across institutions — skills that translate directly to the Secretary role. As a board member and current Past-President/Treasurer of Digital Commonwealth, I have firsthand experience keeping a regional, all-volunteer organization running through careful record-keeping, clear communication, and sustained engagement with members across New England. I know how much organizational infrastructure and memory matters to the health of a chapter like ACRL-NEC.

I would bring strong writing and organizational skills, experience with board governance, and genuine enthusiasm for helping to foster connections with colleagues and resources across the region. As an academic librarian working at UMass Dartmouth-- and with roots Facing History and Ourselves, Wheaton College, and at WPI-- I have seen the value of professional community from many vantage points.

As Secretary, I hope to ensure board decisions are clearly documented and accessible, and to use my two-year term as a foundation for deeper, long-term service to ACRL-NEC. 

BIO: Kate Boylan is the STEM Librarian at the Claire T. Carney Library, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, with over a decade of experience in academic librarianship, archives, and digital initiatives across institutions including WPI and Wheaton College. She holds an M.S. in Library and Information Science from Simmons College and has been an active contributor to the New England library community, including service as Past-President and Treasurer of Digital Commonwealth, a nonprofit dedicated to equitable access to digital collections across Massachusetts. A frequent presenter at regional and national conferences, Kate brings a strong commitment to professional advocacy and collaboration to her work. She is eager to bring that same energy to supporting ACRL-NEC's members and operations as Secretary. 

I feel strongly that librarians, particularly academic librarians who are fewer in number than our school and public librarian colleagues, benefit from belonging to professional library associations such as ACRL-NEC. From past experience I also know that such groups rely on volunteers from among the membership to operate. As a relatively recent transplant to the northeast from Oklahoma, I want to engage with the library community here and contribute to ACRL-NEC’s mission of offering opportunities for members to network and to grow in our profession.

My previous experience in professional organization leadership includes two separate terms as the Chair of the University and College Division of the Oklahoma Library Association and six years of service as the Treasurer of the University of Oklahoma School of Library and Information Science Alumni Board. In the latter capacity I monitored the group’s finances and worked with the library school to support scholarship funding annually; I also provided regular reports to the board. I would like to put that experience to work again for ACRL-NEC by serving as the Treasurer-elect and Treasurer. 

BIO: Kristen Burkholder is Head of Access & Visitor Services at the Homer Babbidge Library on the Storrs campus. She collaborates with other staff to create the best experience possible for library patrons and is always looking for new ways to improve the library’s services. Kristen has worked in academic libraries since 2010 and holds an M.L.I.S. from the University of Oklahoma, an M.A. and a Ph.D. in History from the University of Minnesota, and a B.A. in History from Scripps College. In her free time, she reads widely and voraciously and writes the occasional piece of fanfiction. 

I am interested in representing Maine on the ACRL/NEC board so that I can share the view from our state with the organization, and bring information and resources from ARCL/NEC back to colleagues in Maine. As a library leader at Bates College, a governing board member of the Colby-Bates-Bowdoin library consortium, and an active librarian in the state, I can offer perspective from the leadership of private colleges and also will leverage my network of colleagues from our public colleges and universities. In office, I would aspire to gain a better understanding of ACRL/NEC’s value to Maine, and work to create programming that is financially and geographically accessible to those in our state, which can feel remote at times. While I am open to supporting the board in a variety of capacities, I am particularly interested in working on programming related to NELIG, including the annual conference. 

BIO: Ben Peck is the Associate College Librarian for Research Services at Bates College. Ben is a graduate of Bates where he majored in Music, and he also holds a Masters Degree in Library Science from Indiana University, and a Masters Degree in Educational Studies from the University of New Hampshire. At Bates, Ben leads the research services team and is liaison to the philosophy, education, and religious studies departments. He serves on the writing committee at Bates, and is a member of the Colby-Bates-Bowdoilinn library consortium governing board. Ben’s professional interests include creative approaches to information literacy instruction and student-centered librarianship. He previously worked at the University of Southern Maine, the University of New Hampshire, Pace University, and Connecticut College. 

I have been a librarian for several years in New England, first at Tufts University and now at Brown University. The New England region is so unique in the library world on account of a high density of academic libraries. Yet, we, as a region, have faced a lot of difficulties recently. I am thinking of things like tighter budgets and  the closing of regional universities. There are also new challenges like integrating artificial intelligence tools into our instruction and workflows. Professional networks like ACRL-NEC can provide leadership and support for these kinds of issues. It has been a goal of mine to get involved at a regional level once I felt comfortable navigating my daily librarian work. I am now at that point. At Brown I have stepped into a few leadership roles such as serving as a representative on our Library Advisory Board, co-leading our “Critical AI Learning Community” and “Library AI Labs”, and taking the lead on developing a new library instruction program. I relish the opportunity to become involved on a regional level as well. I would like to be a part of a group like ACRL-NEC which serves  the needs of individual libraries and librarians rather than just benefiting from the work that ACRL-NEC does. I’m not usually one for sports metaphors, but “Put me in Coach!” 

BIO: Micah Saxton is the Humanities Librarian at Brown University Library. Before coming to Brown University, Micah was the Research Librarian for the Humanities at Tufts University from 2020 to 2025 and the Head Librarian at the Iliff School of Theology from 2015 to 2020. In those roles his main responsibilities have been in instruction, reference, and collection development. Micah completed his PhD in the study of Religion at the University of Denver in 2014 and his MLIS at the University of Denver in 2018. 

Having now served a term as the Vermont State Representative, I feel that I have an understanding of how ACRL-NEC works and what I can bring to the table. Vermont is frequently see as an outlying territory of the chapter, and I would love to find a way to reinvigorate engagement within the Vermont community. Although we are small, we are mighty, and we should continue to find a way to show up at the table for ACRL-NEC events. 

BIO: Anthony Bassignani is a native of Massachusetts but has been working at Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, VT since he was an undergraduate. He currently works as the Associate Director for Circulation Services, and also serves as part of the College’s Research & Instruction team. In his free time, he enjoys reading (shocking!), board games, hiking, and travel.