Elizabeth Yakel is a Professor and Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Affairs at the University of Michigan School of Information where she teaches in the Archives and Records Management and Preservation of Information areas. Previously she taught at the University of Pittsburgh and was a practicing archivist for over 15 years. She is active in the Society of American Archivists (SAA) where she has served on the governing Council, was elected Fellow in 1999, and chaired a CEPD Task Force in 2003. Elizabeth's research interests are access and accessibility to digital archives. This includes investigations into the design and development of access systems as well as the information seeking patterns and the human information interaction of users with online archival records. Current research projects include the Next Generation Finding Aids project which features the Polar Bear Expedition Digital Collections and the Archival Metrics project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. This latter project developed standardized user evaluation surveys and toolkits that are freely available on the Archival Metrics website. Elizabeth's recent articles include "Interaction in Virtual Archives: The Polar Bear Expedition Digital Collections Next Generation Finding Aid," with Magia Krause which appeared in American Archivist and was the winner of the Fellows' Ernst Posner Award in 2008.