Meet our newest teammates!
December 8th, 2021
By the Archive-It team
Our team grew again in the second half of 2021, welcoming Catherine Falls, Bridget Collings, and Fran Alba. Each one brings a new perspective, new skills, and new drive to further our team’s service to the Archive-It community. And each one has relocated very recently closer to loved ones, enjoying the flexibility that remote work for the Internet Archive offers.
Catherine Falls
Catherine Falls joins the team as Program Officer in Community Programs. The community focus is what attracted her to this role, and she’s engaged by the idea of local communities being able to self-document the way they see themselves through the program. Prior to Community Webs, she worked as an Archivist for the Archives of Ontario and York University. Before that, she had earned two Master’s degrees from the University of Toronto in Art History and Library and Information Studies/History of the Book. She recently relocated from Toronto to Los Angeles, where she enjoys hiking and spending as much time as possible by the ocean. She also finds Zen in learning to weave on a loom that her mother shipped her from Canada during the pandemic. And once it subsides, she looks forward to exploring the Arts scene in the Los Angeles area.
Bridget Collings in front of Internet Archive Canada Headquarters, Toronto
Bridget Collings joins the team as Web Archivist. She’s excited to preserve digital collections for the long term, especially museums’ digital exhibitions. She has dreamed of working for Internet Archive Canada since graduate school at the University of Toronto, where she earned dual Master’s degrees in Information and Museum Studies, and where she snapped a photo in 2014 in front of what would become the Canadian headquarters in 2016. She returned to the very spot in 2021 to take a second snapshot on her first day working for us! She comes to our team from BiblioCommons, where she shaped their documentation for public libraries. Prior to that, she had managed digital assets for both CBC Radio and Heritage Toronto. At Heritage Toronto, her team’s digital walking tour even won a prestigious provincial award! Bridget recently relocated from Toronto to Vancouver, where she enjoys kayaking, skiing, and cooking. She’s also started learning pottery with her brother in the local area. She looks forward to many therapeutic, full-body workouts at the wheel.
Fran Alba in front of Tower Bridge, London
Fran Alba takes over the Partner Coordinator Lead position from Madeline Carruthers. She comes to us from the Center for Research Libraries in Chicago, where she managed electronic resource subscriptions for over 600 partners and put into place offers that lowered costs for them. She’s driven to become a leader in the Open Access and Open Knowledge ecosystems, and growing these ecosystems is what brought her to the Internet Archive. She would like to preserve all things online, but especially things from the global south by leveraging her bilingual Spanish-speaking abilities. She’s had a passport since she was five years old, when her parents would bring her to their home countries of Mexico and Honduras. This started a lifelong passion for travel, exploring new cultures, and meeting new people. Back in Houston now, her next travel dream is to visit every National Park in the U.S. with her family.
Please join us in welcoming Catherine, Bridget, and Fran to the team!