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Helen Wong Smith

University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo’s Helen Wong Smith has been appointed as one of three representatives of the Society of American Archivists, North America’s oldest and largest national archival professional association, to serve on the Coalition to Advance Learning in Archives, Libraries and Museums. Wong Smith is the coordinator for pharmacy and health sciences information at the Daniel K. Inouye College of Pharmacy at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo, serving as librarian and archivist.

She is on the SAA Council and is the first archivist from Hawaiʻi to serve on the council since 1968. Wong Smith has been placed on the coalition’s Assessing the State of the Field Working Group, which entails doing a survey to determine the demographics and opportunities available to the library, archive and museum professions.

She is a strong advocate of professional development opportunities offered virtually, an advocacy she’s maintained for over 30 years, and as part of the coalition she can potentially impact local, state and Pacific Basin communities.

“This will be another avenue for me to advocate for Hawaiʻi,” she says. “It’s another way for both archivists and Hawaiʻi to be in the conversation.”

Wong Smith explains librarians are a larger profession than museum or archive professionals in this country. She says with the new appointment to the coalition, “they get a twofer because I’m also representing an underrepresented profession from an often forgotten geographic area.”

Hawaiʻi in general is too easily overlooked, and that’s been shown time and time again,” she explains. “I’ll be privy and able to shepherd opportunities that UH Hilo and the rest of the Pacific will be able to take advantage of.”

Read UH Hilo student Kara Nelson’s article on the UH Hilo Stories website for more on Wong Smith.

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