NCC News: News

Specialist Spotlight: Keiko Hill

Through our Specialist Spotlight series we periodically shine a spotlight on the librarians and information specialists of NCC who are often behind the scenes working to support students, faculty, and staff. Whether you’re in the classroom to learn or teach or are conducting research near or far, these hardworking individuals make Japanese Studies possible.

This month we are happy to shine our Specialist Spotlight on Keiko Hill, Senior Assistant Librarian at University of Washington Libraries. Despite a life-long interest in library services, Hill’s path to East Asian information sciences as a career was not a direct one. She began with a liberal arts education in Japan receiving a BA from Waseda University before taking up a role as an administrative assistant at the National Institute for Physiological Sciences after graduation. There Hill oversaw organizational and budgetary duties for a research laboratory for a decade, and between 1995 and 2015 was employed variously as a professional conference organizer and assistant for editorial and administrative work in the field of neurochemistry for international events and journals.

This interest in global connections and attention to detail eventually led back to work with Japanese and then Hill’s passion for libraries. She was employed as an instructor and curriculum coordinator for the Japanese Language School of Cleveland from 2008 to 2013. This was followed by earning a Master’s Degree in Library and Information Science at Kent State University (2015), which included an internship in the Oberlin College East Asian Library. It was here that she began cataloging professionally in Japanese and Chinese, acquiring skills in metadata creation, digital preservation, discoverability, and rare book librarianship. Her work developing metadata for the nineteenth and twentieth century Japanese illustrated books of the Mary Ainsworth Collection were especially inspiring and affirmed for her the significance of cataloging librarians’ contributions to the field.

In 2017, Hill began work as a Japanese and Special Format Cataloger at The Ohio State University Libraries, where she worked for three years honing her skills in cataloging monographs, serials, cartographic materials, media, and special collections before taking up a position as Japanese Cataloger/TEAL Serials and Electronic Resources Librarian of the Tateuchi East Asia Library at the University of Washington in Seattle in 2020. Although the COVID-19 pandemic made this professional transition challenging, Hill actively took advantage of virtual opportunities for professional development and networking during this period, taking part in a variety of workshops and organizations to enhance her knowledge of e-resource practices, especially. As a Senior Assistant Librarian, she continues to serve the University of Washington East Asian Studies community. In particular, a critical part of her cataloging and metadata services work involves creating important links between physical holdings of the library in digital spaces, a collaboration that takes place in dialogue with the subject librarian at TEAL. For example, in examining records for an early nineteenth century woodblock from the Tateuchi East Asia Library Special Collections, Sugiwaigusa, Hill was able to link it to the printed monograph, assuring that students and faculty can understand the connection between them and explore the materiality of the Sugiwaigusa’s creation.

As a part of her professional activities, Hill has not only co-authored guides to “Critical Cataloging and Archival Description” for the University of Washington Libraries (2021) and developed reports on equity, diversity and inclusion at her home institution (2023) but also applies her skills to make contributions to local communities outside of her job. Inspired by work with Tomoko Bialock at UCLA on the Tule Lake Japanese Language Library Collection, in her free time Hill has been undertaking research into the Japanese Language Library of the Minidoka Incarceration Camp in rural southern Idaho (Fig. 1). She is particularly interested in the history of residents from Seattle who were forced to leave their homes and the intellectual history that emerges from the journey of those residents and the books that moved with them to Idaho.

Hill is an active member of the library and information science community within East Asian Studies, serving on numerous Council on East Asian Libraries committees, such as the Committee on Japanese Materials (2020-2023), Committee on Technical Processing (2020-2023), Special Committee on Election Procedure and Guidelines (2023), Committee on Electronic Resources Metadata Standards Best Practices (2023-present), and serving as an Executive Board Member and Treasurer (2021-2024). As a part of NCC, Hill has contributed to our Cooperative Collection Development Working Group since 2023, a group that supports robust and diverse collections development throughout North America. We are grateful to Keiko Hill for the important work she does for the field in promoting the discoverability and accessibility of Japan Studies materials!