Tamar Evangelestia-Dougherty (Source: Smithsonian Libraries and Archives)
Smithsonian Libraries and Archives recently welcomed Tamar Evangelestia-Dougherty as our inaugural director. Join us as we get to know the new leader of our organization!
[Clip]
2.) Tell me about your background in your own words. What attracted you to the field of libraries and archives as a career?
The path to my career was a challenging process. My mother wanted me to be a successful Black woman which in her eyes was to have a respectful career in which I made lots of money. She wanted me to be a doctor, and then when it turned out I was no good at calculus she said, “Well, I guess you need to be a lawyer.” She never really embraced or wholly understood my library career.
However, when I was in high school and college I worked in libraries for extra money and started getting closer and closer to them. I always felt there were smart people in libraries, people who liked to read and were interested in different esoteric things like me – and then I learned about special collections. I realized from my Chicago Historical Society experience that there were curators in libraries. I eased into the profession by working odd and temporary LIS jobs, and then the jobs kept becoming more and more permanent with greater responsibilities. Working as a special collections assistant in Princeton University Library’s Rare Book and Manuscript reading room is what sealed the deal for me for library school. For a time, I did not reveal to my family what I was getting a master’s degree in.
[Clip]
4.) Why do you believe that libraries and archives are important to the Smithsonian?
We are the keepers of history for the entire organization. We have an important mission to provide resources for the research that curators, scholars, and scientists need. Every museum object has a story to tell, but that story may be documented within our archives or put into better context by our library research material. I also believe that we are called upon for a bigger, global mission to provide documentation to society. We have a lot in our collections that speaks to what it is to be America and American. I see us as playing a much bigger role more similar or parallel to the Library of Congress – on that top level. We are America’s library.
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.
From Fox 17 (Grand Rapids): The folks over at the Grand Rapids Public Library made a fascinating discovery while digging through their massive archives back in March 2021, and are ...
The article linked below was recently published by the International Journal of Communication. Title Knowledge Work in Platform Fact-Checking Partnerships Authors Valérie Bélair-Gagnon University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, USA Rebekah Larsen ...
A Guide to Communicating With Others: Messaging Apps (via Privacy International) De Gruyter Acquires Mercury Learning and Information Report by the French Committee for Open Science Working Group on Electronic ...
From an Internet Archive Blog Post by Jason Scott: It’s time to add another family of emulated older technology to the Internet Archive. The vast majority of platforms within what ...
The article linked below was recently published by Quantitative Science Studies. Title Crossref as a Bibliographic Discovery Tool in the Arts and Humanities Authors Ángel Borrego Universitat de Barcelona, Melcior ...
Colorado: Suspensions Increase at Pikes Peak Library District Under New Security Protocols (via The Gazette) Montana: ImagineIF Trustees Hold Special Meeting on Library Security Concerns (via Daily Inter Mountain) North ...
From the Associated Press: A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were ...
From The Sydney Morning Herald: Authors, illustrators, and editors will be compensated for e-book and audiobook library borrowings for the first time, in a move by the federal government to ...
From the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA): A draft Customer Research Agenda was open for public review and comment in October 2022. “We’re grateful for the feedback we received ...
From MIT Technology Review: Hidden patterns purposely buried in AI-generated texts could help identify them as such, allowing us to tell whether the words we’re reading are written by a ...
From the Congressional Research Service: Nearly one in four Americans has a disability, according to 2018 estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. Congress has recognized that in addition to making ...
From The NY Times: When [Joan] Didion died in 2021 at age 87, the news set off an outpouring of tributes to a writer who fused penetrating insight and idiosyncratic personal voice, ...