Holly A. Smith serves as the Archivist with the Spelman College Archives. Previously she served as African American Materials Specialist in the Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her B.A. in History and Black Studies from The College of William and Mary, an M.A. in History from Yale University, and her M.S. in Library and Information Science, with a concentration in Archival Management, from Simmons College.
Ms. Smith has served as chair of the Society of American Archivists Diversity Committee, and co-chair of the Women’s Collections Roundtable. She is currently the co-chair for the National Women's Studies Association's Library and Archives Interest Group.
Additionally, she is the proud co-author of the article “This [Black] Woman’s Work: Exploring Archival Projects that Embrace the Identity of the Memory Worker” (KULA Journal) and author of the pieces “Radical Love: Documenting Underrepresented Communities Using Principles of Radical Empathy” (Journal for the Society of North Carolina Archivists) and “Wholeness Is No Trifling Matter: Black Feminist Archival Practice and The Spelman College Archives” (The Black Scholar 52:2). Ms. Smith has had the pleasure of speaking on panels about HBCU archives, digital collections, and the papers of lesbian feminist activist/writer Audre Lorde.
She is passionate about Black feminist archival practice, community archives and archival advocacy related to collections for historically under documented communities.