Written by Camille White // Photo by Morgan Pickering
Electronic resources librarian Amy McGohan was recently awarded the Suzanne Spurrier Academic Librarian Award from the Arkansas Library Association.
McGohan is the fourth Harding librarian to receive this award since its beginnings in 2001. It is named in honor of Suzanne Spurrier, who served as the director of the Brackett Library 1990-98. This award is given once a year to an academic librarian in Arkansas.
According to the Arkansas Library Association’s website, the Suzanne Spurrier award is given to an academic librarian who has “a spirit of outstanding service and dedication, professionalism to all library patrons; an attitude of devotion to the library profession and fellow colleagues.”
Brackett Library director Jean Waldrop nominated McGohan to receive the award. McGohan has been part of the Arkansas Library Association since she began working at Harding eight years ago.
“[McGohan] has been very active in the Arkansas Library Association,” Waldrop said. “She’s always been very involved in some of the activities that go on in the state.”
McGohan said the awards committee called her and told her she had won.
“I was super shocked when she called me,” McGohan said. “It’s such an honor to win. It’s so special to me because it is named after Suz.”
McGohan said the award is there to honor Spurrier’s legacy. Henry Terrill, Ann Dixon and Jean Waldrop were previous Harding librarians to receive this award.
“It’s really all like my library legends and heroes,” said McGohan “It’s amazing to just be a part of that, on the same awards plaque with them.”
The Suzanne Spurrier award plaque is located in the library next to a photo of Spurrier by printer one. The plaque has a list of all the recipients of the award on it.
In addition to being the electronic resources librarian, McGohan is the subject librarian for behavioral sciences, communication, criminal justice, education, film studies, K-12 resources, psychology and social work.
Senior Noah Bankhead met with McGohan for assistance with a research project for his communication research class.
“They will do a lot of pre-requisite work for you, before you even go in,” said Bankhead. “So they’re really helping you find and nail down what you actually want to know.”
Each Brackett Library librarian serves different departments on campus to help provide research consultations. Each research consultation with a librarian is 30 minutes long. They can help with finding scholarly articles and citing sources.
