Mr. Thomas James Connors has begun his role as the Teamsters Labor Archivist. Prior to joining the Special Collections Research Center Tom Connors served as the Senior Curator of the Broadcasting Archives at the University of Maryland at College Park. Before moving to Maryland in 1993, Tom worked as a consulting archivist for the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power. While in Los Angeles, he also conducted oral history interviews with West Coast labor union officials for the UCLA Oral History Program. For five years, 1982-1987, Tom was Assistant Archivist at the George Meany Memorial Archives, AFL-CIO, in Washington DC. Prior to that he was a project archivist at the University of Vermont and Yale University.

Tom served on the Society of American Archivists’ governing Council from 2000 to 2003. He is the founder and co-chair of SAA’s International Archival Affairs Roundtable and he was made a Fellow of the Society in 2006. Tom has also been active in the International Council on Archives.

Tom’s recent publications and presentations have dealt with access to government information during the George W. Bush presidency. From 2000 to 2007 he was an adjunct professor in the University of Maryland’s College of Information Studies where he taught a summer course on audiovisual archives.

Dr. Meredith Evans Raiford has begun her role as Director, Special Collections Research Center. She comes to the Gelman Library System with more than 5 years experience arranging, describing, developing, and digitizing important archival collections such as the Clarke Africana Collection, the Morehouse College Martin Luther King, Jr. Collection, and the Maynard Jackson Papers. Dr. Raiford has more than 12 years experience as a manager in both academic and commercial settings and brings extensive expertise in financial accountability such as purchasing, budgeting as well as hiring and training with her to this position.

Dr. Raiford received her Ph.D. from the School of Information and Library Sciences from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her dissertation title was: Record Keeping Practices in Selected Atlanta Area Black Churches. In addition to her Ph.D., she also has a Masters of Public History from North Carolina State University and an M.L.S. from Clarke Atlanta University.

She remains active in archival and library education and teaches in the San Jose State University’s School of Library and Information Science. Her research interests include strengthening community-based record-keeping practices; developing effective methods of collection development and access in an increasingly digital society; the relationship between custody of records, appraisal, description, and social memory; and the impact of collaboration as it pertains to the collection of historical documents.

Dr. Raiford has evaluated record keeping programs within six different churches to foster collaboration with professional archival institutions. In her immediately prior position to becoming Head of Special Collections at Gelman, she assisted with the development of library policies and procedures and was an active member of a variety of committees, including the Digital and Technology Services Committee. She is an active member of the Society of American Archivists, the American Library Association, and the National Council of Public History.

Brad Sabin Hill assumes the role of Curator of the I. Edward Kiev Judaica Collection as of January 14, 2007.   In the two week period prior to that date, Mr. Hill will be working on a variety of projects related to the collection.

Mr. Hill comes to GWU with extensive knowledge and experience in Hebraic and Judaic bibliography and librarianship.  Before serving as Dean of the Library and Senior Research Librarian at the YIVO Institute in New York (2002-2007), he held positions in Britain and Canada, as Librarian and Fellow in Hebrew Bibliography at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies (1996-2001), as Head of the Hebrew Section of the British Library (1989-1996), and as Curator of Rare Hebraica in the National Library of Canada in Ottawa (1979-1989).  The author of a number of books and articles in the field of Hebrew bibliography and booklore, including Incunabula, Hebraica & Judaica (1981) and Hebraica from the Valmadonna Trust (1989), Hill has published studies on Hebrew typography and Hebrew libraries, as well as on Yiddish manuscripts and Yiddish bibliography.  He has curated exhibitions of rare Hebraica in Ottawa, London and New York, among them a display of early Hebrew printing at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, and most recently on Spinozist writings in Yiddish at the YIVO Institute.  Formerly a member of the Oriental Faculty of the University of Oxford, Hill is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and a Senior Associate of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. 

Once Mr. Hill takes over as curator of the collection, the I. Edward Kiev Judaica Reading Room will resume its normal schedule of being open Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters has contributed $2 million to The George Washington University to create an endowed archivist position at GW and establish an exhibition of its archives for public display to enhance research on 20th century U.S. labor relations. The Teamsters archives, which date back to the early 1900s, also will reside at GW on permanent loan. It is among the nation’s preeminent collections of primary labor movement documents. The funding is the first part of a comprehensive Teamsters education and archives project in cooperation with the University.

The archives include presidential papers from James R. Hoffa and James P. Hoffa, autographed political cartoons from the early 20th century, and several hundred photographs and memos from the labor and civil rights movements, such as a photo of Jimmy Hoffa with Martin Luther King, Jr., and telegrams from President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The archives also contain a wire recorder, circa 1930s, believed to be one of the few remaining in the world. 

The archivist position will be responsible for cataloging the archives and acquiring additional important historical labor documents through GW’s Gelman Library System. These initiatives will arrange the Teamsters archives, making public never-before-seen documents, letters, and photographs and provide access by researchers and labor history professionals to these records.

The University also will begin a collection of valuable materials from all aspects of U.S. labor history that will benefit labor studies in history, law, political science, business, and other academic disciplines. GW plans to collect primary documents, photographs, and recordings from other labor groups. In growing its U.S. labor special collection, the University will remain intellectually neutral, providing researchers with a wealth of information previously unavailable to the public.

The Teamsters Union was established in 1903 and represents more than 1.4 million hardworking men and women throughout the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico.

Gelman Library’s Special Collections Department collects, preserves, and makes accessible primary resources and rare materials to researchers within and outside of the GW community. The collection includes more than 25,000 linear feet of archives, books, images, manuscripts, maps, microforms, directories, theses, dissertations, faculty publications, periodicals, and ephemera. The University houses the archives from PNC (Riggs) Bank and of journalist Jack Anderson, among others.

For the full press release, please go to: http://www.gwu.edu/~Emedia/pressrelease.cfm?ann_id=26008

The George Washington University’s Gelman Library System is pleased to announce that Brad Sabin Hill has been offered and accepted the position of Curator of the I. Edward Kiev Judaica Collection. 

Mr. Hill comes to GWU with extensive knowledge and experience in Hebraic and Judaic bibliography and librarianship.  Before serving as Dean of the Library and Senior Research Librarian at the YIVO Institute in New York (2002-2007), he held positions in Britain and Canada, as Librarian and Fellow in Hebrew Bibliography at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies (1996-2001), as Head of the Hebrew Section of the British Library (1989-1996), and as Curator of Rare Hebraica in the National Library of Canada in Ottawa (1979-1989).  The author of a number of books and articles in the field of Hebrew bibliography and booklore, including Incunabula, Hebraica & Judaica (1981) and Hebraica from the Valmadonna Trust (1989), Hill has published studies on Hebrew typography and Hebrew libraries, as well as on Yiddish manuscripts and Yiddish bibliography.  He has curated exhibitions of rare Hebraica in Ottawa, London and New York, among them a display of early Hebrew printing at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, and most recently on Spinozist writings in Yiddish at the YIVO Institute.  Formerly a member of the Oriental Faculty of the University of Oxford, Hill is a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and a Senior Associate of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies.  Brad Sabin Hill will take on his new duties as Curator of the Kiev Collection at the end of 2007.

The I. Edward Kiev Judaica Collection was established in 1996 with the donation of the personal library of Rabbi I. Edward Kiev, late chief librarian of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York.  The original donation of about 18,000 books, pamphlets, and periodicals, as well as manuscripts, graphics, artifacts, maps and Jewish music, has grown to over 22,000 volumes.  Comprised of both Hebraica and western-language Judaica, the Kiev Collection covers the range of Jewish studies, from biblical exegesis and rabbinic texts to archeology, Jewish history and modern Hebrew literature.  Together with much German-Jewish scholarship and extensive Judaic bibliographic literature on which I. Edward Kiev was expert, the collection holds Hebraica printed over five centuries, and is especially rich in books from Central and Eastern Europe.  The Kiev Collection is housed in its own reading room in the Gelman Library, suite 710.