Department: Libraries
Areas of expertise:
- Special collections (archives, manuscripts, rare books, ephemera)
- Digital archives and digital preservation
- Oral history
Birch is an assistant professor and Director of Digital Scholarship and Distinctive Collections in JMU Libraries. She teaches in partnership with faculty from a wide variety of academic disciplines to support the use of rare and primary source materials in the classroom and encourage digital scholarship methods.
Birch’s research focuses on participatory archives, post-custodial archives, collections discovery and access, sustainability of digital projects, and the intersection of special collections and digital scholarship.
Birch earned a bachelor's degree in English with a concentration in Journalism at the University of Delaware and dual master's degrees in History and Archives Management at Simmons College (now Simmons University).
Media contact: Eric Gorton, gortonej@jmu.edu
