Hi everyone! We are happy to share with you the all the wonderful entries we received for the “Elevator Speech” contest and to announce the winner -?Aliza Leventhal!

An archivist preserves and organizes materials that uphold the memory?of a person, organization or community to ensure greatest access to the?information by the public.

Thank you to everyone who sent in an entry and to everyone who voted, and while the contest is officially closed, we encourage you all to read through the other entries and continue to submit your own “Elevator Speeches” in the comments section below! (If viewing this from the SCoSAA website homepage, you may have to click on the title link above to get the individual post page, where you can leave comments.)

Allison Blakeslee
Ever had so many files on your desktop that you couldn’t see the background??Now pretend those files were one-of-a-kind documents.?Archivists make those files organized and searchable.

Abigail Cramer
Archivists preserve records from organizations, institutions, and individuals?who are representative of social, political, and cultural movements in?order to insure that we can learn authentically about history.

Stephanie Bennett
An archivist determines what records are worth keeping and then?describes their contents and organizes them so people can use the?history or information in the documents.

Dorothy Karlin
An archivist preserves the stuff of history ?the papers, the sketches,?the programs, the memos ? showing the breadth and depth of?life in a way a narrative cannot.

Kristen Koob
Archivists make the human story accessible to the public by?managing historical materials to ensure their accurate application?in representing people and past events.

Elise Dunham
An archivist is someone who collects and preserves records that are?important to history.? Their ultimate goal is to make these records?available to researchers and the public.