nancymackay.net

Welcome to my website! My name is Nancy Mackay and I am a librarian, oral historian, and educator. My website summarizes my professional interests and projects, along with some links to my favorite relevant sites. I am also an advocate of open access to information, and you will see this interest reflected throughout the site.

Librarian. I graduated from UC Berkeley library school in 1983, back when there was still an MLIS bestowing graduate program. I specialized in the history of books and printing and never touched a computer. At the time I graduated, the libraries were converting from card catalog to online catalogs, and I worked my way through school typing the information from catalog cards into the new bibliographic utility, OCLC. We were awestruck to be able to type into a computer and the information would go all the way from California to Ohio!!

After I graduated I worked for a number of years as an itinerant librarian, with jobs as a Spanish language cataloger for the California State Library, on a special project on library services to Spanish speakers, as a reference librarian in public libraries, and a short stint in the corporate world. In between jobs I traveled, but that is another story.

In the spring of 1989 I joined the library staff at Mills College Library as technical services librarian and have worked there ever since. Four months after I began, the 1989 earthquake rattled the Bay Area, and Mills College was near the faultline. In two short months, we moved out of our seismicly challenged old library and into the unfinished F.W. Olin Library building, and brought up our first automated library system.

That first year at Mills was the most exciting, but since then I've had the opportunity to explore and develop skills in all library functions -- serials, circulation, preservation, collection development, automation, cataloging, and working with music and special collections. Cataloging is my first love, and I've observed with interest the changes in the world of cataloging over the span on my career.

I've seen many changes over the last twenty years, and many more on the horizon. It's an exciting time to be a librarian.

Oral Historian. I discovered oral history through my interest in dance. I stumbled upon a flyer for a free workshop on oral history offered by Jeff Friedman, founder and then director of the Legacy Oral History Program. Jeff began collecting oral histories of San Francisco dancers as a response to AIDS. By the end of the first evening of the workshop I was sold on oral history, and from that time on it has been a big part of my life.

My first oral history project, SlavonicWeb Oral History Project, was for the Croatian American Cultural Center in San Francisco. I collected stories of Croatian Americans and others associated with the Center. I learned about the rich and varied experience of coming to America or growing up as a child of immigrants. I learned about their identity as Americans and as Croatians and how that shifts from one generation to the next. I learned about the role of music, food, family, culture, and politics that shape lives. Each narrative is filled with rich detail.

In 2001 I set up and coordinated the Oakland Living History Program (OLHP) at Mills College. The program was designed to bring Mills College students closer in contact with the surrounding Oakland neighborhoods. Through classes and workshops, we trained community members and students in oral history. They collected oral histories around Lake Merrit and Laurel District neighborhoods, Japanese American internment, and Mills faculty and alums. All the interviews were digitized, transcribed, catalogued and deposited at the Mills College Library and Oakland Public Library. Transcripts are available online by typing "Oakland Living History" into the Mills College Library catalog.

In my dual role as program manager and archivist at OLHP, I learned about the problems specific to archiving oral histories, and the misunderstanding between archivists and oral historians. I turned these questions into a research project, and later a book, Curating Oral Histories. In the book I examine the issues around legal documents, transcribing, cataloging and preserving oral histories. Click here for more about Curating.

Recently I've become interested in community oral history projects, that is, projects that arise in community groups instead of in academia. Some oral history projects I've worked with recently are the Fremont Stories, Oakland Chinatown Oral History Project, In Our Words: Negro Spirituals Heritages Keepers. This interest is growing into a publication project. Along with my colleagues Barbara Sommer and Mary Kay Quinlan, I'm working on a book series for communities doing oral history projects. We are excited about this project and in filling a gap in guidelines specifically for community projects.

Educator. In 2008 I began teaching at the San Jose State School of Library and Information Science. I teach information retrieval, one of the core classes. I use a practial approach to the subject. and I introduce concepts such as classification, controlled vocabulary, data structures, and user behavior through everyday life examples and practical experience. Here is the syllabus.