By Anna Cook

This week the Library Reader Services staff welcomes two new Library Assistants onto their team: Andrea Cronin and Betsy Boyle. Both Andrea and Betsy come to us from the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College and are beginning their careers as librarians with a special interest in archives and research libraries.

Andrea began her studies in the summer of 2010 and hopes to complete her degree with a concentration in Archives Management by January 2012. In addition to her coursework at Simmons, she has completed two internships as part of the Archives program. The first internship took place here at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Collections Services, where she impressed her supervisors with her keen interest in primary source materials and the speed with which she mastered new skills. She is currently an intern at the Baker Business Library (Harvard University). She completed her undergraduate degree in History and Creative Writing at George Washington University in 2010 and is particularly interested in Eastern European and Russian history. As a staff with backgrounds in mostly American, British, and Western European history, we are excited about the new areas of historical expertise that Andrea brings to the team.  An historian to the bone, she recently noted that her birthday falls on the same day as the Boston Massacre (though needless to say not the same year!). She has plans to continue on with her education and eventually earn her Ph.D.

Betsy completed her Master’s in Library Science last spring. Her library experience includes two years as part of the Reference and Collections Services teams at the Simmons College Beatley Library, a summer assistantship at the Frances Loeb Library (Harvard School of Design) and volunteer work at the Boston Public Library’s digitization lab and the Multnomah County Library special collections in Portland, Oregon. While living in Portland she also worked as a bookseller at the famous Powell’s Books. Betsy’s background is in photography and teaching. She earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Visual Art and Literature from the University of California (Santa Cruz) in 1994 and completed a Master of Fine Arts in Photography at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2002. We are excited to welcome someone so knowledgeable about art and art history onto our staff and expect that Betsy will be a valuable resource in the months to come helping us to highlight the non-manuscript and non-print aspects of the MHS collections.

Both Andrea and Betsy will be seen regularly by visitors to the library as they staff the front desk, the reading room, and the reference desk. In coming weeks, they will also begin working with off-site researchers by telephone and email, assisting patrons with reference questions and requests for materials. 

Please join us in giving them a warm welcome!