About
Patrice Nakamura has served as Director of the Pickett Library — the central AB academic library — since 2018. She joined the AB staff in 2014 as Reference Librarian and was promoted to Director in 2018 after the retirement of her predecessor Dr. Eleanor Kushida. She also serves as the Curator of the Appalachian Heritage Archive (a collection of more than 18,000 items relating to north-central Appalachian history, religion, music, and labor) and is the curatorial lead for the new Storer Reading Room.
A native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (with maternal family roots in Okinawa, Japan), Nakamura holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Pittsburgh (2008), an M.L.I.S. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2011), and a B.A. (cum laude) in History and Asian Studies from Williams College (2002). Her doctoral work focused on the cultural history of Japanese-American internment and post-war community formation in the American West.
At AB she oversees a staff of seven (three librarians, two archive assistants, one tech-services staff member, and one part-time evenings & weekends supervisor), the library's 190,000-volume general collection, three special collections, the campus archives, and the Library Instruction Program (which delivers research-skills sessions to every section of the AB Hilltop Core Writing-Intensive seminar).
Education
- 2011M.L.I.S. — University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Information & Library Science.
- 2008Ph.D., History — University of Pittsburgh. Dissertation: Returning Home: Japanese-American Community Re-formation in Postwar Pittsburgh.
- 2002B.A., History & Asian Studies (cum laude) — Williams College.
Teaching
Dr. Nakamura is the lead instructor for AB's embedded library-instruction program, which reaches every first-year student through the writing-intensive Hilltop Core seminar.
- LIB 101Research Skills for the Hilltop CoreA one-credit shadow course paired with the first-year writing-intensive Hilltop Core seminar. Required for all first-year students.
- HIS 380Doing History in the ArchivesA junior-year elective co-taught with the AB History department on using primary sources, including a major project drawing on the AB Appalachian Heritage Archive.
Library Leadership & Public Scholarship
Nakamura's academic work continues alongside her library directorship. Her 2019 book The Long Way Home (University of Pittsburgh Press), expanded from her dissertation, won the Association of Asian American Studies Best Book Award. She is a frequent presenter at the American Library Association, the Society of American Archivists, and the Oral History Association annual meetings.
Under her direction the Pickett Library has launched the Storer Reading Room (2025), digitized 4,200 items from the AB campus archive, and partnered with the Library of Congress to acquire the working papers of three notable WV journalists for the Appalachian Heritage Archive.
Selected Publications & Presentations
- 2019The Long Way Home: Japanese-American Community Re-formation in Postwar Pittsburgh. University of Pittsburgh Press.
- 2024"The Small College Archive as Public History." Journal of Archival Organization.
- 2023"Building the Storer Reading Room: A Curatorial Case Study." The American Archivist.
- 2025Plenary, Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting, "Curation as Reparative Work."
Honors & Service
- 2024WV Library Association Distinguished Service Award.
- 2020Association of Asian American Studies Best Book Award.
- 2018Appointed Director, Pickett Library.
- 2014AB Hilltop Award for Excellence in Library Service.
- 2002Williams College Phi Beta Kappa.
A small academic library is not a smaller version of a research library. It is a different thing. It is the library of a community of 1,100 readers who actually know each other. The collection is built one conversation at a time.— Dr. Patrice K. Nakamura
Beyond the Classroom
Nakamura lives in Philippi with her husband Peter Crowley (a music librarian at the WVU Music Library), their daughter (currently a 6th-grader at Philippi Middle School), and two elderly cats. She is a member of First United Methodist Church of Philippi, a competitive amateur knitter (she has knitted a sweater for nearly every AB graduating senior English major since 2018), and the volunteer archivist for the Barbour County Historical Society.
She is also a serious amateur taiko drummer and one of the founding members of the Pittsburgh Taiko Drum Ensemble, which she rejoins for concerts each spring.