When Marguerite Roby (BA ’00, MLIS ’08) became a graduate assistant at Penrose Library, her career path was changing trajectories. She had bartended for six years but decided to return to DU to get a master’s degree in library and information sciences.
Her experience as a graduate assistant at Penrose gave her the skills that would land her at the Smithsonian Institution.
Marguerite Roby's job at the Smithsonian is to figure out how to establish intellectual and physical control over three million photographs and make them accessible to the public. Photo courtesy of Marguerite Roby.
“She had zero experience,” says Greg Colati, digital initiatives coordinator at DU and Roby’s adviser. “But, she was intelligent, creative and interested in learning.”
At the time, Penrose was embarking on a new project to digitally archive photographs from DU Athletics.
Colati put Roby on a team in charge of developing the metadata encoding and transmission standards for the project, which allowed the public to search for photos at DU and find them easily.
“She became the technical expert in this metadata standard,” Colati says. “She knew more about it than anyone at the library. We relied on her.”
The project Roby initially worked on is what Penrose calls Peak Digital. It archives anything that has permanent value from scholarly articles to pictures or video.
It’s a trend going on at libraries and museums everywhere as people expect to search for information digitally. Organizing that digital information is also a very specific skill-set, one needed by the Smithsonian.
“Marguerite was chosen from over 150 qualified applicants,” says Sarah Stauderman, collections care manager for the Smithsonian Institution Archives. “We realized she already had a taste of [the project] with her work at the University of Denver.”
The project at the Smithsonian is massive. Roby’s job is to figure out how to establish intellectual and physical control over three million photographs and make them accessible to the public. Most are stored in a cold, climate-controlled vault.
“There is a great opportunity to share the kind of institutional memory not on display to the public in our museums,” says Roby, photograph archivist for the Smithsonian Institution Archives. “I’m confident that my time at the University of Denver has prepared me for the task.”
Colati isn’t worried in the least. In fact, he refers to Roby as the new model of librarian, someone who is smart, creative and doesn’t wear sensible shoes.
“The Smithsonian is one of the most prestigious places you can work,” Colati says. “Our graduates can work there and make a difference.”