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Daina Andries (’09), photo: Donna Sokol, Library of Congress
Daina Andries (’09), photo: Donna Sokol, Library of Congress

The website of the Library of Congress has published , a metadata technician with the Digital Resources Division of the Law Library of Congress. In it Miss Andries discusses her work at the library — “capturing and reviewing metadata, or data about data, which renders a resource more searchable by supplying identification information about the resource� — as well as her background, which includes a master’s degree in French from the University of Delaware and a master’s of science in information from the University of Michigan.

She also describes her education at 91ºÚÁÏ, and how it prepared her for the complex, detailed-oriented line of work that has become her passion. “The curriculum at Thomas Aquinas was rigorous and interdisciplinary. Every class was taught as a seminar, providing practice in critical thinking, reasoning logically from first principles, and grappling with scientific, literary, and philosophical texts held to have shaped Western thought,â€� she says. This “foundation in logical reasoning and philosophyâ€� helped, she adds, “with learning about semantics and knowledge organization, object-oriented programming, and analytics.â€�

Having graduated from Michigan and moved to Washington, D.C., just last year, Miss Andries is still very much a newcomer to the Library of Congress. It is “a place that stirs the imagination,� she says. “It’s the largest library in the world, and you’re guaranteed to find something with regard to any topic you can imagine. It’s a privilege to help with the work of making the Library’s wealth of unique resources accessible to researchers and to the public.�