Mark A. Greene Emerging Leader Award: Dorothy Berry

Dorothy Berry, Digital Collections program manager at Harvard University’s Houghton Library, is the 2021 recipient of the Mark A. Greene Emerging Leader Award from the Society of American Archivists (SAA). The award celebrates and encourages early-career archivists who have completed archival work of broad merit, demonstrated significant promise of leadership, and performed commendable service to the archives profession.

Berry’s work at Houghton Library has transformed the way the institution’s materials relating to Black Americans and their history are presented and accessed. In the last two years, she has surveyed the Harvard Theatre Collection’s minstrel materials for inaccurate and problematic description and developed a proposal for a more just, accurate, and contextualized description. In 2020, Berry developed and oversaw a unique project: to digitize African American history materials and create a research dataset and collections site where these materials can be freely accessed.

Berry’s exemplary leadership and service is evident in her work with SAA, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, the Council on Library and Information Research, Digital Library Federation, Archives for Black Lives in Philadelphia, and Lighting the Way National Forum. She is a sought-after speaker on social justice, culturally diverse digital collections, and the intersection of issues of race and ethnicity with archival work. In 2020, Berry gave presentations to audiences of hundreds for regional organizations and humanities institutions, including SAA’s “Community Reflection on Black Lives and Archives.” She speaks openly, honestly, and compellingly about the most challenging aspects of archival work, presenting with kindness and empathy to help archivists better comprehend what it means to be anti-racist and how to take appropriate action.

Berry’s supporters cite her strong leadership, intellectual curiosity, and dedication to the archives profession and her peers. One nominator wrote, “Her overall brilliance, work ethic, courage, and dedication create a potent leadership package, one she is using to help the profession improve and reinvent ourselves.”

Established in 2011 and renamed in 2017, the award honors SAA Fellow and Past President Mark A. Greene.