Kara is currently the co-chair of the Society of American Archivist’s Crisis, Disaster, and Tragedy Response Working Group. She also serves on the Advisory Committee for the Academic Preservation Trust and is the past president of the Preservation and Reformatting Section of the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services of the American Library Association and the Preservation Section of the Society of American Archivists. Prior to coming to the University of Virginia, Kara served as Preservation Field Services Librarian for the Southeastern Library Network and worked in the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College as a project archivist and preservation specialist. Kara has served on a variety of preservation and emergency preparedness committees and task forces in the cultural community, including the Society of American Archivists and the American Library Association. Kara consults and teaches on a variety of preservation topics, including disaster preparedness and response, collecting in times of crisis, preservation management, and archives preservation. Kara has an M.L.S. with a concentration in Archives and Preservation, an M.A. in history from the University of Maryland where she worked in both Special Collections and the Preservation Department, and her A.B. from Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio.