Allaina Howard, scientific collections organization and accessibility

When Allaina Howard arrived at NSIDC as the new professional librarian and archivist, she encountered storerooms containing almost 30 years of scientific materials that completely lacked organization, preservation, access, and defined purpose. In a very short time, she brought order to the chaos of an unusable collection through developing a program using free student volunteers and securing funding sources that has now allowed a significant number of these scientific collections to be accessible to researchers. Most notably, she has expanded, promoted, and made accessible the Glacier Photograph Collection of rare and valuable images, glass plates, and field notebooks where thousands of images are downloaded through the NSIDC web site each month and images have been presented in several national media outlets. Her work with this collection has been recognized by NOAA managers as one of the most successful programs in the Climate Database Modernization Program, and her achievements have resulted in being invited to give presentations at the Geological Society of America and Polar Libraries Colloquy in Rome. Her resourcefulness enabled her to digitize a historic 1930's film of glaciers and field expeditions in the Rocky Mountains that was deteriorating from age at no cost to NSIDC. Allaina’s ability to collaborate with others, her leadership role in data stewardship, and her inspiration to seek out grants and proposals to fund projects has exceeded all expectations of her service to the NSIDC.