Complex sentence: In 1961 she was the first woman and the first black American woman to earn the doctorate in library science from Columbia University, her dissertation "The Library of Congress Classification in the United States" has been described as a seminal work in library science.
Split into simpler sentences: In 1961 she was the first woman and the first black American woman to earn the doctorate in library science from Columbia University. Her dissertation, "The Library of Congress Classification in the United States", has been described as a seminal work in library science.