BOSTON (August 21, 2018) – The American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB), is pleased to announce the addition of six new members to the AAPB Executive Advisory Council, a distinguished group of 13 individuals that informs and guides the strategic direction of the AAPB to ensure that the Archive continues to serve the needs of public media stakeholders and the American people. The AAPB, a collaboration between Boston public media station WGBH and the Library of Congress, has been working to digitize and preserve more than 50,000 hours of broadcasts and previously inaccessible programs from public radio and public television’s more than 70-year legacy.

New Executive Advisory Council Members

Edward Ayers
Ayers is the Tucker-Boatwright Professor of the Humanities and president emeritus at the University of Richmond and co-host of BackStory with the American History Guys, a nationally syndicated radio show and podcast, Ayers was awarded the presidential National Humanities Medal in July 2013 as historian of the American South and pioneer in digital history. He won the Bancroft Prize and Beveridge Prize in American history and has collaborated on major digital history projects including the Valley of the Shadow, American Panorama, and Bunk.

Jennifer Lawson – Vice Chair
Lawson is a media consultant based in Washington, D.C. A former executive vice president of Programming and Promotion Services at PBS, in 2016 Lawson received the Ralph Lowell Award, public television’s highest honor. Lawson has also received lifetime achievement awards from American Public Television and the Public Television Programmers’ Association. Lawson was senior vice president for Television and Digital Content at the CPB and served as vice chair of the PBS Board, Chair of the American Public Television and as a member of the Advisory Board of Washington Women in Film and Video.

Mary Minow
Minow is a Presidential Appointee to the National Museum and Library Services Board at the Institute of Museum and Library Services and a Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Minow serves as a Board Member of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), consultant to the American Library Association, and is an attorney, consultant, and a former librarian.

Lloyd Morrisett
Morrisett served as President of The John and Mary R. Markle Foundation where he initiated the Foundation's program in communications and information technology. Previously, Morrisett was Vice President of the Carnegie Corporation of New York and of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching where he worked to start the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). He was co-creator of the Sesame Workshop and is a trustee and chairman emeritus of the Sesame Workshop.

Bill Siemering
Siemering was a member of the founding board of directors for NPR and the author of its original mission statement. As NPR’s first director of programming, Siemering led the development of All Things Considered and developed Fresh Air into a national program. The recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, Siemering worked with the Open Society Foundation in Eastern Europe, Africa and Mongolia before founding Developing Radio Partners to enrich the programming of local stations in Africa. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from NPR and currently serves as Senior Fellow at the Wyncote Foundation.

Judy Woodruff – Chair
Woodruff is Anchor and Managing Editor of the PBS NewsHour. She’s covered politics and news for more than four decades, serving as anchor and senior correspondent for CNN, as the chief Washington Correspondent for The MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour, anchor at the PBS’s award-winning documentary series “Frontline with Judy Woodruff” and as White House correspondent at NBC. Woodruff is a founding co-chair of the International Women's Media Foundation, an organization dedicated to promoting and encouraging women in communication industries worldwide. She is the recent recipient of the Cine Lifetime Achievement award, the Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award in Broadcast Journalism/Television, the University of Southern California Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism, and many other awards.

The Executive Advisory Council provides strategic guidance to the AAPB project team and raises awareness of the collection. Council members serve for three years. The newest members of the Council were inducted in February, 2018. Award-winning journalist, author and EAC member Cokie Roberts was recently appointed as Vice Chair. A full list of the members of the Executive Advisory Council can be found at http://americanarchive.org/about-the-american-archive/executive-advisory-council.

The AAPB is a national effort to preserve at-risk public media and provide a central web portal for access to the programming that public stations and producers have created over the past 70 years. To date, over 50,000 hours of television and radio programming contributed by more than 100 public media organizations and archives across the United States have been digitized, and the Archive aims to grow by up to 25,000 additional hours per year. The entire collection is available for research on location at WGBH and the Library, and currently more than 30,000 programs are available in the AAPB’s Online Reading Room at americanarchive.org to anyone in the United States.
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About the American Archive of Public Broadcasting
The American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) is a collaboration between the Library of Congress and the WGBH Educational Foundation to coordinate a national effort to preserve at-risk public media before its content is lost to posterity and provide a central web portal for access to the unique programming that public stations have aired over the past 70 years. To date, over 50,000 hours of television and radio programming contributed by more than 100 public media organizations and archives across the United States have been digitized for long-term preservation and access. The entire collection is available on location at WGBH and the Library of Congress, and more than 30,000 programs are available online at americanarchive.org.

About WGBH
WGBH Boston is America’s preeminent public broadcaster and the largest producer of PBS content for TV and the Web, including Frontline, Nova, American Experience, Masterpiece, Antiques Roadshow, Arthur, and more than a dozen other prime-time, lifestyle, and children’s series. WGBH also is a major supplier of programming for public radio and a partner with Public Radio International (PRI). As a leader in educational multimedia for the classroom, WGBH supplies content to PBS LearningMedia, a national broadband service for teachers and students. WGBH also is a pioneer in technologies and services that make media accessible to those with hearing or visual impairments. WGBH has been recognized with hundreds of honors: Emmys, Peabodys, duPont-Columbia Awards and Oscars. Find more information at www.wgbh.org.

About the Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the world’s largest library, offering access to the creative record of the United States - and extensive materials from around the world - both on site and online. It is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office. Explore collections, reference services and other programs and plan a visit at loc.gov, access the official site for U.S. federal legislative information at congress.gov and register creative works of authorship at copyright.gov.