Keeper of Memories

The Smithsonian Libraries is the world’s largest library system, housing nearly 2 million books. The UH alumna in charge of them doesn’t take that responsibility lightly.

By Peter Simek

University of Houston alumna Tamar

Evangelestia-Dougherty (’96) first experienced libraries not only as a place of learning but also as a refuge.

Growing up the daughter of a single mother on Chicago’s West Side, there were times when her family experienced homelessness. That’s when the Chicago Public Library became more than just a place to find free books—it served as a shelter to stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer. At 14, EvangelestiaDougherty earned her first job shelving books there.

“Libraries made me feel safe,” she says. “I like them, and they like me. I know that’s a strange thing to say, but it seems like I was always able to get a job in one.”

At the Smithsonian, EvangelestiaDougherty is responsible for overseeing some of the United States’ most precious historical collections and cultural archives. Decisions made around how to acquire and appraise archives and then catalog, digitize and disseminate these materials play a powerful role in shaping the collective understanding of our nation’s history. And yet, EvangelestiaDougherty jokes that when she tells people she’s a librarian, they still think of the “stereotype of the bun and the glasses shushing people.”

“People don’t understand that it is really the science of information,” EvangelestiaDougherty says. “It’s cultural heritage. It’s keeping memory.”

While attending the University of Houston, Evangelestia-Dougherty worked late shifts at the Fred Parks Law Library on San Jacinto Street. She studied political science with a minor in Japanese and planned to pursue a legal career. But libraries continued to draw her in. After college, her experience working as a special collections assistant in Princeton University Library’s rare book and manuscript reading room inspired her to pursue a Master of Library Science at Simmons College (now Simmons University) in Boston. In 2021, Evangelestia-Dougherty was named the inaugural director of the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, perhaps the most prestigious library job in the country.

Evangelestia-Dougherty entered the librarian profession in the early 2000s, at a time when the way in which American institutions preserve cultural memory was being called into question. Historically, dominant cultural narratives have excluded marginalized communities, she says, and exerted undue influence on the stories our artifacts and collections tell.

Much of Evangelestia-Dougherty’s work has been leading institutions toward more representative and inclusive narratives of the past. Sometimes that means advocating for social accountability through reparative justice, like when she helped repatriate the diary of Fidelia Fielding, an important elder of the Mohegan Tribe, from the Cornell University Library to the Tantaquidgeon Museum—the oldest Native American-owned and -operated museum in the U.S.

The biggest challenge, she says, is learning to approach the past with as unbiased a view as possible. That’s not always easy. There have been times when digging through the archives has unearthed uncomfortable personal details that challenged her views on historical figures she had once admired.

A good librarian and archivist, she says, must try to maintain an ethical compass that points toward the truth. It is a mission that reflects EvangelestiaDougherty’s personal experience of the library as a cultural sanctuary.

“Librarians,” she says—“we’re very powerful in that we are the ones who facilitate the memories of things you see.”