Vanessa St.Oegger-Menn, Pan Am 103 archivist and assistant university archivist in the Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center, has been announced as the 2025 recipient of the Society of American Archivists (SAA) Spotlight Award.

Created in 2005, the award acknowledges contributions made by those who work in service to the profession and archival collections and whose work may not usually receive public acknowledgment.

St.Oegger-Menn earned an M.A. in 20-century British literature at California State University, Long Beach and she also has a master of library and information science with an emphasis in archives and cultural heritage preservation from the School of Information Studies.

In SAA, St.Oegger-Menn has served in a crucial role in SAA’s efforts to support archivists and communities who collect in times of crisis. In 2018, she was a member of the initial Tragedy Response Initiative Task Force which was convened to create and compile resources for archivists dealing with sudden tragedy.

The Task Force later grew into the Crisis, Disaster and Tragedy Response Working Group (CDTRWG) with responsibility to maintain and update SAA’s “Documenting in Times of Crisis: A Resource Kit,” develop immediate and on-going resources for archivists facing crises and develop partnerships with organizations whose relief efforts focus on cultural organizations.St.Oegger-Menn was invited to serve as one of the co-chairs of the first incarnation of the working group.

In this capacity, she has had an enormous impact on the work of this group.She has led essential efforts to build organizational infrastructure and to identify workflows to keep projects on track and worked with committee members and council liaisons to surmount obstacles.

St.Oegger-Menn has also served as one of the group’s most steadfast advocates by representing CDTRWG through speaking engagements and at regional, national and international conferences. She has co-presented on the working group to a host of internal and external organizations, including the Art Libraries Society of North America and the Australian Society of Archivists.

She co-authored an article in 2023 for SAA’s magazine, Archival Outlook, that detailed the working group’s efforts and has facilitated the working group’s ongoing speaker series. Upon her time for transitioning out of the role of co-chair, St.Oegger-Menn developed a plan for a post-chair transition to provide support to incoming co-chairs and she also agreed to remain on the working group and co-lead the Collaboration and Outreach subcommittee.

The hard work and empathy St.Oegger-Menn has brought to her work has not gone unnoticed by her colleagues. Through her work with trauma-informed archives, she has worked indefatigably to support archivists in times of crisis. As her nominator, Kara McClurken, pointed out in her nomination letter, “Her passion, her empathy and her experiences through the working group and through her position as the Pan Am 103 archivist at Syracuse University have been essential to the creation of a supportive and sustainable low-cost support network to archivists and communities experiencing trauma … Long after her time on the working group is over, the infrastructure, the tools, and the community she has fostered will serve as a legacy to her dedication to the cause.”