Left to right: Sally Blanchard O'Brien, Shir Bach, Marcelle Leahy, Senator Patrick Leahy,
Erica Donnis and Chris Burns.
Silver Special Collections welcomed three Leahy Congressional Papers Archivists this summer. Over the course of five years, Shir Bach, Erica Donnis and Sally Blanchard O’Brien will arrange and describe the Senator Patrick J. Leahy Papers, which document his 48 years in Congress. They will also digitize content from the collection and make it available online and conduct an oral history project with Senator Leahy and his staff.
Shir Bach comes to the University of Vermont from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where he received his master's in library science and worked at the Southern Oral History Program. Shir received his bachelor's in history at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, where he studied the history of medicine.
A lifelong Vermonter, Erica Donnis has more than twenty years' experience as an archivist, museum curator, and collections consultant. She comes to the University of Vermont from Champlain College, where she served as Special Collections Director. Among other publications, Erica is the author of Shelburne Farms: A Changing Landscape, An Evolving Vision (2010) and coauthor of "Primary Source Instruction as a Social Justice Pathway," in From Interrogation to Integration: Centering Social Justice in Special Collections, Archives, and Preservation (ACRL Press, 2024). Erica is a graduate of the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture (now American Material Culture).
Sally Blanchard O’Brien worked for the Vermont State Archives & Records Administration (VSARA) from 2012 to 2023, first as a Records Analyst, then as an Archivist and finally the Roving Archivist for the Vermont Historical Records Program. Prior to VSARA, Sally worked as the Digital Support Specialist for the Vermont Digital Newspaper Program at the University of Vermont. She received a Masters of Library and Information Science from San Jose State University in 2012 and became a Certified Archivist in 2020.
To learn more about the Leahy Papers, read UVM's announcement.