On August 31, 2015, Sandra Still, Humanities Subject Librarian for English Literature, will retire from Emory University after 22 years of service.
Actually, Sandra’s ties to Emory began earlier, as she received an MA and a PhD in English Literature and English History (through the ILA). Her first career was in retail bookselling in Atlanta; her second was in publishing in New York, where she was in showroom sales at Crown Publishing and then became an editor and finally editorial director at W. H. Smith Publishing.
Sandra returned to Emory to join the Emory Libraries first as an Out-of-Print Specialist in Acquisitions, then Gift Coordinator, then a selector for Women’s Studies & Art History, and finally, in 2002, she became a Subject Librarian for both English Literature and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.
Today, she is our primary liaison to Emory’s well-ranked and dynamic English department, which includes 40 faculty, over 50 graduate students, and more than 150 undergraduate majors. Sandra also works with MARBL to acquire poetry collections, fine-press books that incorporate poetry and art, and contemporary artists’ books of interest to an ever-expanding audience.
Sandra Still was a pioneer of digital scholarship. She collaborated with the Beck Center to publish the online, open access project, “The Civil War in America from the Illustrated London News” (http://beck.library.emory.edu/iln/), serving as the originator and editor.
She was a team member on the Mellon-funded post colonial website team, run by DiSC (now ECDS). Finally, she coordinated the Artists’ Book ShowCase project (http://artistsbooksshowcase.digitalscholarship.emory.edu/) utilizing the OMEKA platform and highlighting not only our own MARBL artists’ book collection, but also pedagogical assignments that can be inspirations for other instructors who want to teach with artists’ books.
You might recall Sandra Still as the Emory Libraries’ first MyEmory “cover girl.” She was the perfect choice to represent us, since she gives generously to many entities across campus, including a MARBL endowment fund and the Michael C. Carlos Museum.
Sandra’s service to the Libraries and the University includes too many search committees and working groups to list, so I will just highlight a few noteworthy contributions. Sandra ran the library book sales for many years, first in the old Candler Library and then, most recently, in the Jones Room. In 2004, Sandra co-curated two exhibitions for the library, “The Books of Jill Timm” and “Works by Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr.” Sandra helped run several deaccession and storage projects, and can often be seen in the stacks evaluating her collections.
While Sandra has always been very active in the academic life across campus, attending colloquia, auditing classes, etc., she has given much of her time toward the success of the Bill and Carol Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry, including acting as the library’s liaison to the center, initiating the CHI fellow library orientation program, and convening a long running, continuing Fox Center Interdisciplinary Research Seminar, the Contemporary Women Novelists Reading Group.
Sandra Still’s professional development included many years of involvement with the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA), serving in leadership roles at both the SE chapter and national level. In 2007, Sandra was the co-chair, local events, and chair, special events, for the national conference held in Atlanta. She has even volunteered to continue with conference planning next fall, when the chapter will return to this locale.
Sandra Still will continue to use the same e-mail, libsjs [at] emory [dot] edu, after she retires.
I want to acknowledge and thank Sandra for her commitment, dedication, and service to the Libraries and the University.
Please join me in wishing Sandra all the best in her future endeavors.
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