Brown University Library News

Hilary Wang joins the Library in the role of Digital Archivist within Digital Services at the John Hay Library. First day: August 1.

Hilary will be preserving and providing access to born digital and reformatted digital collection materials including websites, social media, email and other digital record types from archival and manuscript collections at the John Hay Library to advance the integrative scholarship and educational mission of the University. She will provide access and support widespread dissemination of digital collection materials through the Brown Digital Repository and other portals, with a particular focus on materials from the priority collection areas identified in the John Hay Library’s collecting directions.

Hilary comes to Brown from Yale University’s Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library and the Yale Center for British Art Archives where she was the Kress Fellow in Art Librarianship. As part of her fellowship, Hilary described and arranged hybrid archival materials, including describing born-digital materials and preparing those for ingest into a long-term preservation system. In addition Hilary served on the Reparative Archival Description Working Group at Yale.

Previously Hilary was an Archives Intern at the Isamu Noguchi Museum, the Born Digital Archives Pratt Fellow at the Guggenheim Museum, and a User Experience Researcher and Data Analyst at the Pratt Center for Digital Experiences.

Hilary holds a Master of Science in Library and Information Science from Pratt Institute School of Information. She is very familiar with Providence as she holds a Bachelor in Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design.

The Library is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Christopher West as the inaugural Curator for the Black Diaspora at the John Hay Library. He will curate special collections, provide instruction and outreach, contribute to programming, and strengthen relationships with key partners like the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice and the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America. He will also work closely with the Library’s Academic Engagement unit as the subject liaison for Africana Studies. First day: August 8.

Christopher brings deep subject and collections expertise to this role. He most recently served as the Black Culture Literacy Librarian Assistant at the Central Branch of the Multnomah County Library in Portland, Oregon, where he assessed the current holdings of the Library’s Black Resources Center, conducted outreach, and developed programs with Black & African arts organizations in the Portland Metropolitan Region. One example of the collaborative work in which he has participated is the exhibit Reckoning: Racism & Resistance in Glendale, which examines systemic racism in this city. Christopher also developed Historic Central Avenue: A Public History Resource Website which focuses on mid-20th century Central Avenue, a commercial and business district in South Central Los Angeles, based on a 1930s Black business directory with supporting materials including oral histories and thematic essays.

Previous roles include Pasadena City College, in California, where for eight years he served as the College Diversity Initiative Coordinator and for 9 overlapping years as an Assistant Professor of History. He also worked for six years at the California African American Museum in Los Angeles, as Curator and Program Manager. In 2007, Christopher was awarded a PhD in American History from the University of Southern California.