Allow us to introduce our new research services librarian, Kimmi Ramnine!
Kimmi succeeds Jessica Richardson Smith, who completed five magnificent years with us before returning to her Indiana home earlier this year. Kiplinger Research Library regulars know that our research services librarian is a critical partner for all looking to access the collections for personal and professional research. But you may not have thought about how doing this job requires flexibility, patience, unending curiosity, and dedication both to service and to increasing unmediated access to local history resources. Succeeding Jessica in these areas may seem daunting, but we are confident that Kimmi is a terrific choice.
Kimmi embodies the necessary qualities in spades. She arrives equipped with long experience in local community organizing and a newly minted advanced degree in Library Science. A twin passion for activism and archives has driven her collegiate and professional careers, from creating research guides for diversity and coeducation collections at Sarah Lawrence College, to mentoring young women of color at the Sadie Nash Leadership Project. For more than five years she served with Critical Exposure, a nonprofit that trains DC youth to harness the power of photography and their own voices to fight for educational equity and social justice.
In recent years, Kimmi has contributed to local archival initiatives such as the Smithsonian Libraries’ I See Wonder teaching tool for K-12 educators. At the Maryland Reading Room of the University of Maryland’s Hornbake Library, she led hands-on primary source literacy and discovery instruction sessions and provided reference services. She is a co-creator of Ro(u)ted by Our Stories, an independent, inter-generational oral history archive dedicated to capturing, preserving, and sharing stories of the Indo-Caribbean diaspora. As the team’s sole information professional, she created a preservation plan for digital files, developed user guides, and provided other technical support.
Born in Trinidad and Tobago, Kimmi moved to Brooklyn, NY, as a teenager. She made her way to DC in 2012 as a Bill Emerson National Hunger Fellow at the Congressional Hunger Center, where she received leadership training for the movement to end hunger and poverty in the United States, with an intentional focus on anti-racism.
Kimmi holds a master’s degree in library science from the University of Maryland, and a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College with concentrations in Social Sciences, Africana and Caribbean Studies, Queer and Feminist Studies, and Poetry.
While her primary focus at the DC History Center will be public reference services, Kimmi will also work closely with Deputy Director Anne McDonough and library volunteers to carry out the organization’s commitments to the principals of critical librarianship, including anti-racist collecting policies and descriptive practices.
“I’m very excited to join the DC History Center at a time when I can help bring these public commitments to action. Increasing access to local history collections and resources is an important form of social justice.”
To that end, while in-person Kiplinger Research Library appointments will remain on hiatus indefinitely due to COVID-19 precautions, Kimmi and Anne will begin resuming remote reference services in early 2021. Stay tuned for the details!