Mary Augusta Thomas

As Assistant Director for Readers Services and Strategic Planning at Smithsonian Institution Libraries (SIL), Mary Augusta Thomas directs the operation of twenty libraries located in each of the museums and research institutes and works with SI staff on library planning issues to support the mission of the Smithsonian. Thomas began her career in the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology at the Smithsonian in 1976. She later served as assistant to the Director for Resource Development and as Assistant Director, Management and Technical Services for the Libraries office before beginning her most recent assignment.

Her professional commitments include serving as chair of the Advisory Board for the Library Administration and Management Association's journal Library Administration and Management. In 1999, she began a four-year term as Councilor-at-large for the American Library Association and is the current chair of the ALA Resolutions Committee. Thomas is a Past President of the District of Columbia Library Association and a former chair of their awards committee. She received the DCLA Distinguished Service Award, 2001. Elected a Rotating member of the Federal Libraries and Information Centers coordinating committee (FLICC), Thomas also served as co-chair of the FLICC Library of Congress Bicentennial Working Group. Her publications include: Information Imagineering: Meeting at the Interface, edited with Milton Wolfe and Pat Ensor, ALA Editions, 1998 and An Odyssey in Print: Adventures in Smithsonian Libraries, May 2002.

Thomas graduated cum laude from Mount Holyoke College and read Medieval Studies at the University of York, England. Her M.S.L.S. was granted in May 1978 from The Catholic University of America, Washington, DC. A member of IOTA chapter of Beta Phi Mu, she was a Senior Fellow, Council on Library Resources at the University California, Los Angeles. Ms. Thomas is listed in Who's Who in America.