Vita Paladino

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Vita Paladino is the Director of the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University, one of largest and most prestigious contemporary archives in the country. A native of Brooklyn, New York, she first came to the Center in 1976 when the repository was known as Special Collections, and began a 29 year apprenticeship under the tutelage of the Founder and Director, Dr. Howard Gotlieb. Dr. Gotlieb was a pioneer in the field of collecting contemporary public figures and by his example created a new frontier in the archival industry. For more than three decades Ms. Paladino served in many capacities in the Center. As Managing Director, Vita took over the acquisition activities of the Center and created an aggressive, proactive student educational outreach program consisting of classes and seminars, which allows students to have exposure to and make use of the unique manuscript holdings. Following the death of Howard Gotlieb in 2005, Vita was named Director. Ms. Paladino is committed to continuing the mission of the Center as designed by the founder. She is also committed to taking the Center in new directions regarding technology and creating programming that is designed to teach and inspire students, researchers and visitors. She believes that it is not enough to claim you have unique archival collections, you must present that material to the public by immediately listing new acquisitions and making the collections available for research, as well as for exhibitions, seminars and programs. She believes it is important to present these public figures as role models for the students studying at the University.

Vita holds her Bachelors and Masters degrees from Boston University. She serves on the boards of several Boston cultural arts organizations, as well as on the boards of the Boston University Women’s Council, Friends of the Libraries and the Nursing Archives Associates. Ms. Paladino has spoken at several conferences as well as at archival industry group meetings. She serves as the Principal Investigator for the Martin Luther King, Jr. Archival Collaborative Project, which is being funded through a major grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Project is designed to create an electronic finding aid for Boston University’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Collection, which will be searchable by subject headings and names, using the new open source program Archivists’ Toolkit. As Dr. King’s Curator, Vita feels it is imperative to find new ways to create access for the public to imbibe the words, messages and values from the rich archive of one our Country’s most important public figures, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.