LIS Alumnus and UH Mānoa librarian and archivist Helen Wong Smith has been awarded the President’s Award of Excellence, a national honor, by the Council of State Archivists (CoSA) for being a leader in cultural competency in archives. Helen is currently serving as a cultural competency consultant as part of CoSA’s Institution of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant-funded BACKER (Building Archival Capacity for Keeping Electronic Records) project.
Helen has previously worked as the Hawaiian Collection Librarian at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo, lead archivist for the Pacific Island Network of the National Park Service, and currently works as the archivist and librarian for University Records at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She has been elected president of the Association of Hawaiʻi Archivists twice, served as president of the Hawaii Library Association and the Hawaiian Historical Society, and is the current Vice President/President-Elect of the Society of American Archivists.