Welcome to Our New Assistant Director!
A few months ago, SCRC welcomed our new Assistant Director, Lindy Smith. We asked Lindy a few questions to help us get to know her better.
Q: Tell us about your job at SCRC.
A: I'm the Assistant Director of the Special Collections Research Center. In this position, I'm responsible for collection stewardship more broadly, which means I supervise staff who manage processing, conservation/preservation, and collections management, and I liaise with colleagues outside the SCRC on projects related to cataloging and digitization. I also participate in general departmental management and strategic planning.
Q: How did you become an archivist/librarian?
A: Libraries were really important to me as a child in rural Ohio, so I’ve wanted to do work that connects people with information and ideas and stories to expand their thinking and experience, no matter where they live. I studied music in college, then went straight to library school, and got a second degree in music. I worked in libraries and archives all through my education and as a professional have worked in both archives/special collections and music libraries. I’ve been fortunate to have had a number of jobs that combine the two areas.
Q: What’s your favorite thing that you’ve encountered in an SCRC collection so far?
A: This is always such a difficult question to answer, and I know it’ll change as I encounter more items, but so far I’ve enjoyed working with some of our music collections, which include everything from Gregorian chant to early recordings to Hollywood film scores. We also have some really amazing activist collections that I’m starting to dig into and that’s been exciting.
Q: What is the most exciting/interesting project you’ve worked on so far?
A: This might not be exciting project to most people, but I’ve been working on a long-term plan for more strategic collections storage. It will help us stay organized, manage workflows better, and find and return items more easily. Plus, I got to create a really complicated spreadsheet to manage the process, which is one of my favorite things.
Q: Tell us about something interesting on your desk.
A: I always smile when I see the small wood manikin who models a miniature traditional Icelandic lace shawl that I knitted on a hiking and knitting trip among the fjords and elves of East Iceland almost a decade ago.
SCRC Assistant Director Lindy Smith holds a wooden mannequin modeling a miniature traditional Icelandic lace shawl that Lindy knitted.