Chela Scott Weber
Senior Program Officer
Chela Scott Weber is a Senior Program Officer for the OCLC Research Library Partnership (RLP), where she focuses on work supporting archives, special, and distinctive collections. Chela leads learning and engagement programming designed to advance the community in this strategically important area for research libraries, and also serves as a liaison to broader special collections and archives communities. Her recent work includes leading OCLC’s research on the Building a National Finding Aid Network project, and the RLP working group that created the Total Cost of Stewardship report and tool suite. She also authored the Research and Learning Agenda for Archives, Special, and Distinctive Collections in Research Libraries, and shaped a portfolio of work exploring the needs of research libraries to better steward the rare and unique audiovisual media in their collections.
Chela’s research interests grew out of the practical challenges she encountered working in archives, especially related to addressing legacy practice that has created inequitable and poor access to collections. Before joining OCLC, Chela held leadership roles at the California Historical Society, New York University Libraries, and Brooklyn Historical Society. She taught in NYU’s Archives and Public History MA program, and has previously held positions at the Microsoft Archives, New York Transit Museum, and the Benson Ford Research Center at The Henry Ford.
Chela holds an MLIS and certificate of archival administration from Wayne State University, and a BFA from Cornish College of the Arts. She is a member of the Society of American Archivists.
Contact Chela
Hanging Together
Chela is a frequent contributor to the OCLC Research blog, Hanging Together
Publications
Summary of Research: Findings from the Building a National Archival Finding Aid Network Project
31 May 2023
Chela Scott Weber, Lynn Silipigni Connaway, Brooke Doyle, Lesley A. Langa, Merrilee Proffitt, Bruce Washburn, Itza A. Carbajal
Synthesizes OCLC’s findings for the Building a National Finding Aid Network project. The research investigated end user and contributor needs for finding aid aggregations and evaluated EAD encoded finding aid data quality and consistency from existing regional archival aggregators.
EAD Analysis: Findings from the Building a National Archival Finding Aid Network Project
30 May 2023
Bruce Washburn, Merrilee Proffitt, Chela Scott Weber
Analyzes a corpus of EAD encoded collection descriptions provided by regional finding aid aggregators in the US to assess existing EAD data as raw material for building a national finding aid aggregation.
Focus Group Interviews: Findings from the Building a National Archival Finding Aid Network Project
30 May 2023
Chela Scott Weber, Merrilee Proffitt, Lesley A. Langa, Lynn Silipigni Connaway, Brittany Brannon, Brooke Doyle
Investigates the needs of archivists and others who might contribute to a national archival aggregator through focus group interviews with archivists and archives administrators from across the United States.