Dr. David B. Gracy II - Recipient of 2005 Katherine Drake Hart History Preservation Award
Longtime Austin History Center supporter and former AHCA board member Dr. David B. Gracy II received the 2005 Katherine Drake Hart History Preservation Award for his noteworthy contribution to the preservation of Austin and Travis County history. “To be recognized for playing a role in maintaining this unique and irreplaceable asset of the City is an honor above honors,” says Gracy. “The Austin History Center is a place of discovery, especially discovery of ones’ self, by experiencing the lives of others.”
Dr. Gracy and his past students in the Archival Enterprise Program at the University of Texas Graduate School of Information Science received a special appreciation award from the Austin History Center and the Austin History Center Association at the 2000 Annual Membership Meeting. The award was in recognition of the valuable archival work in the Austin History Center Dr. Gracy’s students have completed as part of their course work. In addition to that very valuable service for the history center, Dr. Gracy has served as a member of the Austin History Center Association’s Board of Directors and as chair of both the AHCA’s Audray Bateman Randle Lecture Series Committee and Building Committee.
A Certified Archivist and a Ph. D. in History, Dr. Gracy is the Governor Bill Daniel Professor in Archival Enterprise in the School of Information at the University of Texas, a position he has held since 1986. During more than forty years as a practicing archivist, records management specialist, author, educator, and consultant, he has gained an extensive knowledge of, as well as participated in the development of, the conduct of modern archival and records enterprise.
For twenty years, Dr. Gracy directed the archival program of the Southwest Collection of Texas Tech University, 1966-1971; established both the University Archives and Southern Labor Archives of Georgia State University, 1971-1977; and served as State Archivist of Texas, 1977-1986.
Dr. Gracy has written extensively in both archival enterprise and history. His works include: • An Introduction to Archives and Manuscripts (Special Libraries Association, 1981), a primer designed especially for prospective archivists and administrators to whom archivists report; • Archives and Manuscripts: Arrangement and Description (Society of American Archivists, 1977), a manual of practice kept in print for nearly ten years by the second largest association of archivists in the world; • “Too Lightly Esteemed in the Past”: Archival Enterprise, Records Management and Preservation Administration in Texas (Texas Historical Records Advisory Board, 1996), an assessment of conditions in Texas on which the Board formulated its strategic plan; • Littlefield Lands: Colonization on the Texas Plains, 1912-1920 (University of Texas Press, 1968), a study of the organized settlement of ranch land on the High Plains of Texas; • Moses Austin: His Life (Trinity University Press, 1986), a full-length biography of the father of the American lead industry and the man who obtained initial permission to bring Anglo-American settlers into Spanish Texas; and • Sunrise! Governor Bill Daniel and the Second Liberation of Guam (in progress), a study of the man whose work anchored President John F. Kennedy’s Pacific Policy.
In UT’s School of Information, Dr. Gracy teaches and has taught courses in archival enterprise (from records organization to detection of forgeries), preservation, the broad field of information studies, and indexing. He has been recognized with the Texas Excellence in Teaching Award voted by the students. In addition to teaching full courses in Archival Enterprise at San Jose State University and the University of Arizona, Gracy has taught short courses and lectured at the University of the Philippines, University of the Republic (Uruguay), Federal University of Santa Maria (Brazil), Dutch Archives School, School of Archivists of the National University of Cordoba (Argentina), Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and the American School of Classical Studies (Greece).
Dr. Gracy is the Editor of Libraries & the Cultural Record (University of Texas Press), and has served on the editorial boards of Provenance (which, under the title Georgia Archive, he founded), the American Archivist, and Texas Military History. He worked on the bibliography advisory board of The New Handbook of Texas.
As an academic administrator, Dr. Gracy served as Associate Dean of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science (predecessor of the School of Information), 1991-1995, and as Director of the Center for the Cultural Record of the School of Information, 2000-2004.
As a consultant, Dr. Gracy has been retained by institutions as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the State of New Mexico, the City of San Antonio, the King Ranch of Texas, the Martin Luther King, Jr., Center for Non-Violent Social Change, the Alamo Archives and Library of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, and the National Archives of the Episcopal Church.
Active in professional associations, Dr. Gracy has served as President of the Society of American Archivists, 1983-1984, of the Academy of Certified Archivists, 1999-2000, of the Society of Georgia Archivists, 1972-1974, and of the Austin Chapter of the Association of Records Managers and Administrators, 1980-1981. Additionally, he has served as Secretary of the Council on Library and Information Resources, 1997-2000, Vice President of the Section on Archival Education and Training of the International Council on Archives, 1996-2000, and United States Representative on the Archives Committee of the Pan American Institute of Geography and History, 1982-1997.
Among boards on which he has served are those of the Commission on Preservation and Access (elected by the CPA board), National Historical Publications and Records Commission (Society of American Archivists appointment), and the Historical Records Advisory Boards of Georgia and Texas (gubernatorial appointments).
Dr. Gracy has been named a Fellow of the Society of American Archivists, the Texas State Historical Association, and the Texas State Genealogical Society. He received the 1993 San Jacinto Award for Distinguished Service to Texas History from the San Jacinto Descendents, and his biography appears in Who’s Who in America.