An expert in the field of scientific information processing, Emily Bradford Gallup first earned a Bachelor of Science in mathematics and physics at the University of Maryland and a Master of Public Administration in information science from American University, where she cultivated her personal interest in the field by taking all the technical classes that were available to her. She then began her career doing scientific and technical aerospace reports for NASA and worked with Documentation Inc. from 1963 to 1965. She then became a technical document analyst with the David Taylor Model Basin in Carderock, Maryland, from 1965 to 1968 and an operations research analyst for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 1968.
From 1968 to 1973, Ms. Gallup was a senior systems analyst for the Computer Sciences Corp. in Falls Church, Virginia. During this time, she became a consultant to the United States government in 1972, a position she held until 1976 while also serving as a senior engineer for Creare Inc. from 1973 to 1974. She spent a year as a reference librarian at the Fiske Free Library from 1976 to 1977, before joining the Norris Cotton Cancer Center at Dartmouth College as a programmer and analyst from 1977 to 1979, and later became the director of library automation for the college from 1979 to 1984. During her tenure at Dartmouth College, she designed and created Dartmouth’s first online library catalog.
In 1984, Ms. Gallup was appointed as assistant director of libraries and director of information systems at the University of Pennsylvania. Serving in these roles until 1992, she also was a lecturer with the United States Information Agency in 1987 and an adjunct professor with Drexel University in 1989. She then went on to serve as the director of library products with IME Group Ltd. from 1992 to 1996 and the general manager of EOS International from 1996 to 2003. From 2003 until her retirement in 2012, she operated as a self-employed IT consultant, which is something she had also done on and off throughout the entirety of her career.
A gifted writer, Ms. Gallup has contributed numerous articles to various scholarly and professional publications and co-authored, with F.W. Lancaster, the 1974 book “Information Retrieval On-Line.” She has also affiliated herself with a number of professional organizations in order to keep abreast of developments in her field, such as the American Library Association, the National Academy of Sciences, the Association for Computing Machinery and the American Society for Information Science. Though she is retired, she remains very active on a civic level and has been involved with the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay, where she was an office administrator from 2012 to 2016, and the Freedom Trail Foundation.
Attributing much of her success to the sense of accomplishment that drove her through the various aspects of her work, Ms. Gallup is most proud of all the time she has spent working in various parts of the United States government. Recognized early on with an award for Best Information Science Book of 1974 for “Information Retrieval On-Line,” she has since been the recipient of a number of other honors and accolades as well. Presented with the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019, she has previously been featured in the first edition of Who’s Who in Media and Communication and the 16th and 18th editions of Who’s Who of American Women.
Ms. Gallup was born in Newton, New Jersey, to father Winslow S. Gallup, an electrical engineer, and mother Esther Hoagland, a fine arts major. Her family also includes a sister and a brother, and a number of nieces and nephews. In her free time, she enjoys sports cars and owns a 1958 Porsche. Looking toward the future, Ms. Gallup intends to remain involved in her community and continue to be active with civic events.
