Welcome to Archivist Gwendolyn Fougy Henry!

We would like to welcome Gwendolyn Fougy Henry, our new Library Assistant and Archivist! Gwendolyn will be working on the BHL, and also on Alexander Agassiz’s collection of glass plate negatives, dating to the 1890s. Included are plates of expeditions by the Albatross and others to places such as Australia, Brazil, Easter Island, Newport, RI (one of Alexander’s private homes), and more. There are about 1000 plates; some are labeled with who is in the picture or location but some are not labeled in any way. Gwendolyn’s job will be to organize, arrange, research, describe, assign metadata and do conservation work as needed in consultation with Weismann Preservation Center. Once the negatives have been digitized, we will begin the task of linking the slides to publications and specimens in the MCZ collection. Gwendolyn will also be enhancing metadata and quality for our contributions to the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

A native of Boston, Gwendolyn received a degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1997 in Human Development and Psychology. She worked as a mental health counselor and also in clinical research in nutrition, obesity, and diabetes for several years in Philadelphia and in Boston. She has also worked as a personal chef, pastry chef, and caterer. Switching careers, she attended Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science and graduated in August 2011 with a concentration in Archives Management. She believes that the field of librarianship combines many of her organizational and analytical skills. She is a Cambridge resident, a practicing vegan and when she’s not in a library or archive she’s either taking a long walk with her two children and husband, dancing to Kompa, Zouk or Soca music, or doing natural hair care for her friends. She enjoys creating healthy, wholesome, and flavorful dishes with organic foods!