“It’s not that she belongs in the past, it’s that the past belongs to her.”
Meet Diana
As an experienced librarian and lover of all things historical, I pursue an interest in family history and in preserving historical records. After retiring from a full time library job at San Francisco University High School, these interests seem a natural progression in my live. Librarians are interested in knowing and in recognizing relationships between events, facts and people. We like to dig and inform. I love the pursuit!
After receiving my undergraduate degree from Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, I graduated with my Masters in Library Sciences from San Jose State University. In 2011, I became certified with the Western Archives Institute. In the Spring of 2016 I successfully completed the online Certificate Program in Genealogy Research at Boston University.
Family history and the search for ancestors is really a search for stories and history – your history. It is very frequently a story of immigration and migration; a story of overcoming adversity and improving the future of your family. The pedigree charts and the facts of a family are the foundation that ties the stories together, linking generations across time.
Sometimes the stories are amazing and profound while other times they are ordinary and predictable. They all become a fabric of a larger tapestry which reflects not only individual achievements but the direction and concerns of the greater society. In order to understand your family history it is important to know what was going on in the country and in the world at the time the family lived.
Preserving records and artifacts seem to seamlessly interact with my love of history. Consider how eager archeologists and researchers are to "dig up the past." Why not be conscious that within any span of time families or organizations are creating records that will be significant, maybe historic, to the next generation or the generation following the next. If care isn't taken to preserve these records, they might be lost and the memories gone. Family stories link us to our fore bearers and the experiences that created us.
Similarly, the archives and the institutional memory of an organization is important in providing a continuum of values, a reminder of purpose, and a record of its achievements.
