Director of Smithsonian Libraries and Archives delivers commencement address at alma mater
Tamar Evangelistia-Dougherty delivered the commencement address at Simmons University in Boston earlier this month, where she also was conferred an Honorary Doctor of Library and Information Science degree.
Dr. Tamar Evangelestia-Dougherty delivered a commencement address, reflecting on her own experience as a Simmons graduate student in the wake of September 11, 2001, and drawing parallels between living and learning through that national crisis with the global pandemic today’s graduates faced. “I was a library student, interrupted,” she recalls, praising the brave community of Simmons students, faculty, and mentors who supported her, “during a time of resigned perseverance.”
Evangelestia-Dougherty described obtaining a master’s degree as “an act of self-preservation and self-care.” As an archivist and a graduate of the U.S. News and World Report #1 school for archives and preservation, the preservation of history is a core value of her work. She derived inspiration from Simmons graduate Vivian G. Harsh, the Chicago Public Library system’s first African American librarian and the creator of their Afro-American History and Literature collection. She said, “If Vivian could do it, so could I.”
Evangelestia-Dougherty addressed the risk of curating yourself to fit the expectations of others. She touched on the career of Belle da Costa Greene (1879-1950), the personal librarian of J.P. Morgan who passed as white in her professional career. “She was surrounded by scrutiny and truncated by narratives of a Black woman who was passing for white, which often eclipsed her formidable talent for building the extraordinary manuscript collections of the Morgan Library… Say what you want to about Belle, but she paved [the way in] her librarianship… This example shows that no one can tell a better story about yourself than you can.”
As someone who works in archives, Evangelestia-Dougherty expressed the importance of archival traces for everyone, not just librarians: “Working in archives involves acts of preservation…. Librarians and archivists facilitate discoveries of collections for researchers by creating finding aids. We serve as a guide to the making of history and collective memory. Archives embody evidence. And like all living beings, you will leave something behind that is evidence of your existence.”
Read more from Simmons University.
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Posted: 30 May 2023
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