Pat Galloway worked as a medieval archaeologist in Europe in the 1970s and then became involved with humanities-oriented computing, which she supported in the Computer Unit of Westfield College of the University of London, where her primary interest was text analysis. From 1979 to 2000 she worked at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH), where she was a documentary editor, archaeological editor, historian, museum exhibit developer, and electronic records program director, while at the same time creating the MDAH's automation program from scratch as manager of information systems. She is the author of Choctaw Genesis 1500-1700 (1995) and Practicing Ethnohistory(2006). From 1997 to 2000 she directed the NHPRC grant-funded project at MDAH to create an electronic records program for the state of Mississippi.
Since coming to the School of Information, Pat has developed a suite of courses designed to prepare students to become what has recently been referred to as "Archival Engineers," capable of managing and maintaining digital cultural objects indefinitely; she also teaches archival appraisal and a course on historical museums. Her research interests to underpin this work include institutionalization of digital repositories and appropriate appraisal practices for digital records. In keeping with her interests as a historian, she is also interested in understanding how archiving and cultural preservation in general fit into their historical and cultural contexts.
