Mote welcomes new librarian

Written by: Jenna Landis

Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium is excited to welcome Kay Garsnett as the new librarian.
 
As librarian and archivist, Garsnett is responsible for managing the library’s print, electronic, archives, and special collections. She also provides reference, document delivery, and research services for library users. In addition, she provides instruction, departmental presentations, and develops training materials so that Mote staff can fully access the library resources that are available to them. To assist staff with research and publication, she stays current on issues related to scholarly communications including copyright, open access, repositories and the licensing of online resources. 
 
In the future, Garsnett plans to fully process the papers of Mote's Founding Director, Dr. Eugenie Clark, publish an online finding aid and create a digital collection of some of Clark's artifacts and documents. The digital collection will serve as a marketing tool to attract researchers learning about Dr. Clark to Arthur Vining Davis Library and Archives so that they can fully access this very important collection.
 
Prior to working at Mote, Garsnett worked as an archivist at John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum, Marian University's School of Liberal Arts, and the Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library at the Alamo. Garsnett has been a certified archivist since 2012.
 
Garsnett earned her Bachelor’s degree in Geography  and Secondary Education, focusing on Social Studies, at the University of Maryland, her Masters of Library and Information Studies at the University of Hawaii, and her Certificate of Advanced Study in Archives & Records Administration at the University of Wisconsin.

Q&A with Kay Garsnett 

What sparked your interest in becoming a librarian and when?
 
I have always loved libraries, but my first professional experience was actually as a schoolteacher. I taught middle school science and high school history. I loved teaching. I taught for a short period of time then I moved to Hawaii with my husband. The University of Hawaii has a wonderful Masters in Library Science program. I felt that it would be a good time to pursue graduate work and was very interested in information and actually how to make it accessible to people and help people find what it is they need to know. After I graduated, I did one year in a public library in Hawaii, which was so much fun. I really would’ve done that job for free. I really enjoyed it.  Then I worked at a library in Wahiawa, which was very close to plantation farms so we had a very unique group of library users, a lot of outreach, and lots of interest in environmental issues.
 
How and why did you become a certified archivist?
 
I went back to school and got a post-graduate certificate of advanced study in archives because I think it is important that people move on in certain points of their lives, and branch out. I became an archivist, then took the certification exam and became a certified archivist. I did very interesting internships with the Daughters of The Republic of Texas, the Alamo, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential library in Springfield, Illinois, and the JFK presidential library in Boston.
 
What is the main difference between a librarian and an archivist?
 
The main difference is we are both concerned with access, but librarians are mostly concerned with printed, published materials while archivists are concerned with making unpublished materials accessible. Often times unpublished materials are the things scientists are most interested in. These works such as personal papers, manuscripts, collected papers, and even electronic records, all generate valuable information. In terms of Mote, some of Eugenie Clark’s personal papers, from during the course of her work as a researcher, may have made it to print, but some of them may have been research projects that she started but didn’t finish. As we collect those materials and document them, it will help if future researchers can look at her work, and possibly be able to be informed by it and help their own work. An archivist focuses on acquiring, preserving and making papers, documents, and other materials, accessible to people who otherwise would not have had access to those things just due to the fact that they are generally unpublished.
 
Have you ever worked in science-based research facility like Mote before?

 
The University of Hawaii was the first science-based library I worked at. Then I had an internship at the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics library. I was mostly working with geophysicists and volcanologists to catalog lava. This library was similar to Mote’s in terms of size and how it is research-oriented.
 
Why did you apply to work at Mote?
 
My husband and I lived in Florida in the seventies and our children were born in Homestead, Florida. We always enjoyed Florida and visited many times throughout the years because we have had family scattered across the state. When the opportunity came up for Sarasota, and I saw the advertisement for Mote,  I thought this would be very interesting. I always really love working in cool places.
 
What is your main goal for your new position?

 
Primarily I want to get this library fully functioning for researchers in terms of ordering new materials, acquiring new databases so they can get a hold of more articles, and having a research assistant.
 
Then my goals as an archivist are to process the collection of Dr. Eugenie Clark and make that accessible to researchers. They are currently unavailable because we have not had a chance to go through the collection, process it, and preserve it. After organizing and creating the finding aid, the collection can be put online. I believe that this collection is going to draw people into this library. This collection is so important, not only to Mote, but to the world in general.

I just want to make it accessible so people can go online and look at visual digital objects and various things from her collection. There is a process, which is one of the ways that archivists differ from librarians. Librarians like to put things in subject order and archivists like things in their original order, to keep the information in context. The two main components of archival theory are original order and provenance. In Dr. Eugenie Clark’s case it came right out of her office. I think this is going to be the most important work of my own career, and I am very anxious and excited to get a good start. This is very exciting and so important; she is the face of Mote.
 
Did you know about Dr. Eugenie Clark before applying for the job?
 
I knew about Dr. Eugenie Clark when I was a young adult librarian in Hawaii. Everyone in Hawaii knows Dr. Eugenie Clark. Not only was she a very fascinating researcher in shark research, but she was also one of the first female marine researchers. So, she is very important in women’s science history and women’s history as a whole. We always used her in the librarian world as our role model when talking with young adult students about careers. We always talked about Eugenie Clark when we talked about marine biology. So, by having this job now, my career really has come full circle.