Waldo Gifford Leland Award: Dorothy Berry

Dorothy Berry, digital curator for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, is the 2026 recipient of the Waldo Gifford Leland Award given by the Society of American Archivists (SAA) for her work The House Archives Built & Other Thoughts on Black Archival Possibilities, published by We Here Press in 2025. The award is given for writing of superior excellence and usefulness in the fields of archival history, theory, and practice.

Berry is an award-winning archivist and writer whose work at a variety of archives and cultural heritage institutions has focused on making archival collections related to Black life more broadly available. In addition to numerous speaking engagements, her writing can be found in The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Public Domain Review, and Lapham’s Quarterly.

The House Archives Built & Other Thoughts on Black Archival Possibilities weaves together these threads and conversations along with archival theory and Berry’s own personal experiences and family history. Described as a “bold memoiristic manifesto” by Public Books, this collection of short essays is richly illustrated with images from Berry’s personal family archive. The House Archives Built acknowledges the expertise and labor of Black archivists, challenges simplistic notions of archives, and asks questions that all archivists should be grappling with, in writing that, according to one reviewer, “is short, concise, but memorable and impactful.”

This work has become a common addition to syllabi at colleges and universities both in library science programs and in the arts and humanities. By creating an accessible and personal introduction to archival practice and theory, Berry has introduced creatives and scholars to a historical approach that views archivists as intellectual colleagues as opposed to only service providers. As evidence of its impact, this “powerful, poignant, reflection on the past and future of Black archives” (Kirkus) has sold out its first three printings. 

Established in 1959, the Waldo Gifford Leland Award is named for the author of Guide to the Archives of the Government of the United States in Washington (1904), who played a central role in the establishment of the U.S. National Archives and served two terms as SAA President during the 1940s. Past recipients include Ilaria Scaglia and Valeria Vanesio for Archives and Emotions: International Dialogues Across Past, Present, and Future (Bloomsbury, 2025); Eira Tansey for A Green New Deal for Archives (Council on Library and Information Resources, 2023), and James Lowry for Disputed Archival Heritage (Routledge, 2022).