Annette Lewis Phinazee

Alethia Annette Lewis Hoage Phinazee (July 23, 1920, Orangeburg, South Carolina – September 17, 1983, Durham, North Carolina) was the first woman and the first black American woman to earn the doctorate in library science from Columbia University.[1] She was called a trailblazer for her work as a librarian and educator.

Education

Phinazee attended the public schools of Orangeburg and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in modern foreign languages from Fisk University in 1939. She received the bachelor of library science degree in 1941 and the master of library science degree in 1948 from the University of Illinois. In 1961 she was the first woman and the first black American woman to earn the doctorate in library science from Columbia University.[1] Her dissertation, "The Library of Congress Classification in the United States", has been described as a seminal work in library science.

Career

Phinazee started her teaching career in North Carolina at the Caswell County Training School from 1939 to 1940 as a teacher-librarian. She was a cataloguer in the library at Talladega College in Alabama from 1941 to 1942. From 1942 until 1944 she held the position of journalism librarian at Lincoln University, Missouri. She taught cataloging and classification courses at the Atlanta University School of Library Service (1946–57) and became renowned as teacher and counselor to generations of black American librarians. Phinazee served for a period of time as a cataloguer at Southern Illinois University (1957–62). She returned to Atlanta University as head of special services, which included the administration of the Trevor Arnett Library's Negro Collection - a world-renowned depository of American Africana (1962–67) - and returned to a professorship at the School of Library Service (1963–69). In 1969 Phinazee took the assistant directorship of the Cooperative College Library Center in Atlanta. This was a library-centered service adjunct of the United Board for College Development whose mission was to develop college libraries in the historically black college and university sector of American academia.

Notes

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Gunn, Arthur C. (1994). "Phinazee, Alethia Annette Lewis Hoage". Black Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. p. 920. ISBN 0-253-32774-1.

References