Julia Blase is originally from Tucson, Arizona. She moved to D.C. in 2013 as part of the Library of Congress and the Institute of Museum Library and Services’s National Digital Stewardship Residency program, where she led a digital asset management project for the National Security Archive. Prior to D.C. she lived in Denver, Colorado, where she was pursuing her master of library and information science from Denver University while managing the Denali Centennial online exhibit project at the American Alpine Club Library. She also earned a master’s degree in management from the Fuqua School of Business and a bachelor’s degree in art history from Duke University.
Julia is now the Project Manager for the Field Book Project, a collaborative cataloging, conservation, digitization, and access project involving Smithsonian Libraries, Smithsonian Institution Archives, and the National Museum of Natural History. Julia found out about the Field Book Project through the professional community in D.C. with whom she had connected while at the National Security Archive. She was excited by the cooperative nature, ambitious goals, and continuing momentum of the project.
The initiatives for the current round of the Field Book Project are to catalog another 2,000 field books held at the National Museum of Natural History, digitize 2,600 field books held at the Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Institution Archives, and make those digital images available through multiple online platforms including the Smithsonian Collections Search Center and the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Julia helps to coordinate project efforts, which involve staff and materials at the Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Libraries, and Smithsonian Archives, and also helps plan project activity to ensure that it not only meets current stakeholder needs but also anticipates future stakeholders and directions. She finds it very motivating to work with a cross-departmental project team that is so highly dedicated to helping all of the communities involved.
Julia loves winter and snow sports and was an avid skier when she lived in Denver. Currently, she volunteers at a local farmer’s market and, having once studied opera, enjoys attending as many shows at the Kennedy Center as she can afford. As is everyone who works in libraries, she is also a voracious reader.
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