Where Are They Now: CLIR Postdoc Rachel Deblinger

Since its founding in 2004, the CLIR Postdoctoral Fellowship Program has provided a unique opportunity for recent Ph.D. graduates to gain valuable experience in academic libraries, archives, and museums. This highly competitive fellowship initiative has supported over 200 postdoctoral fellows, many of whom have made significant contributions to the field of library and information science.

In our series, we closely examine the current roles of CLIR postdoctoral fellows, celebrating their accomplishments as they complete their fellowships. These individuals have achieved remarkable success, holding influential positions in academic libraries, and securing tenured faculty positions at universities. We explore the profound impact of CLIR’s postdoctoral program on alumni careers, highlighting the exciting projects and initiatives they have led.

This edition spotlights Rachel Deblinger, currently serving as the Director of the Modern Endangered Archives Program at the UCLA Library. This Arcadia-funded project supports researchers and cultural heritage organizations in digitizing and making at-risk materials accessible worldwide.

Deblinger also serves as the Co-Director of the Digital Jewish Studies Initiative at UC Santa Cruz and is the Founding Director of the UC Santa Cruz Digital Scholarship Commons. Before UCLA, she managed a Mellon-funded project at The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz, focused on graduate student success and public scholarship. Deblinger began her journey as a CLIR Fellow at UC Santa Cruz, working as the Digital Humanities Specialist to foster digital humanities scholarship.

Her Ph.D. in history from UCLA, with a dissertation on American Jewish philanthropy and Holocaust survivor narratives, illuminates the transmission of knowledge about the Holocaust, media technology, and the efforts of Jewish communal organizations. Her work reveals how American Jews first learned about Holocaust survivor stories post-World War II. This underscores the importance of the CLIR postdoc fellowship program in nurturing scholars like Deblinger, whose impactful research contributes to the broader understanding of historical narratives and cultural preservation.

In today’s context, Deblinger’s work is particularly relevant as society grapples with the ongoing importance of preserving and understanding historical narratives. In a world increasingly shaped by technology, her exploration of the intersection between media technology and the transmission of knowledge about the Holocaust offers insights into the broader challenges and opportunities in preserving cultural heritage. Her emphasis on Jewish communal groups’ efforts also strikes a chord with the current conversation about institutions’ construction of collective memory and community resilience. Deblinger’s work, supported by the CLIR postdoc fellowship program, is a vital and relevant addition to the current conversation on how to preserve cultural heritage and historical narratives in the quickly changing modern world.