Annette Lewis Phinazee

Alethia Annette Lewis Hoage Phinazee (July 23, 1920 – September 17, 1983, in Durham, North Carolina) was the first woman and the first black American woman to earn the doctorate in library science from Columbia University. Born Alethia Annette Lewis, she took the surnames of her first (George Lafayette Hoage, m. 1944, d. 1945) and second (Joseph Phinazee, m. 1962) husbands.

Phinazee attended the public schools of Orangeburg and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in modern foreign languages from Fisk University in 1939. She received the bachelor of library science degree in 1941 and the master of library science degree in 1948 from the University of Illinois.

In 1961 she was the first woman and the first black American woman to earn a doctorate in library science from the Columbia University School of Library Service. Her dissertation, "The Library of Congress Classification in the United States: A survey of opinions and practices with attention to the problems of structure and application ", has been described as a seminal work in library science. Her research, which examined how Library of Congress Classification was used by library staff and patrons, was one of the first instances where patron use of the system was considered. She was renowned by colleagues as an educator and counselor to generations of black American librarians, receiving honors from the Black Caucus of the American Library Association in 1978.

Legacy Phinazee died on September 17, 1983, in Durham, North Carolina.

In 1984 the Annette Lewis Phinazee Award was established at the NCCU School of Library and Information Sciences. The award was conceived as a memorial to her work to improve the people of North Carolina's access to African-American children's literature and is awarded each year to an individual or organization doing similar work. She was posthumously awarded the North Carolina Library Association's Distinguished Service Award in 1989.