Adonna Thompson joined the Archives staff in August 2022 as the Rice Diet Program Collection Processing Librarian, a 2 year grant funded position. Adonna, a familiar face to some of the Library, has over 15 years of experience working in Archives with a strong background in archival management. In her previous roles at the Duke Medical Center Archives she served as Director and Archivist of the Physician Assistant History Center; Librarian for Research, Outreach and Education; and Archives Assistant Director. After leaving Duke she worked for six years as the founding archivist for the Martha Smith Archives and Research Center at Avila University in Kansas City, Missouri. During her time there she was responsible for managing all aspects of the archives including policy creation and implementation, research, outreach and education, donor relations, collections management, digitization, and managing the archives’ reading room. In addition, she served as adjunct faculty in the History Department teaching undergraduate students about archives and public history.
In her current position, Adonna will develop and implement a plan for processing the Rice Diet Program Collection, which consists of over 450 linear feet of materials. She will also serve as liaison to the BIN Foundation and the on-going Rice Diet research project that focuses on the impact of the Rice Diet on hypertension and metabolic diseases. This position reports to the Director of the Medical Center Archives & Digital Initiatives.
She is an avid reader, loves consignment clothes shopping, yoga, and gardening and is low-level obsessed with ancient Egypt and humankind’s funerary practices.
This blog post was contributed by Medical Center Archives Assistant Director Lucy Waldrop.