To meet teaching and learning needs across MIT, library staff engage with the community through research support, instruction, outreach, and much more. It all makes for a busy and varied workday! Discover how experts across the Libraries might spend a typical day as they support faculty, students, and researchers at the Institute and beyond.

Avery Boddie
Lewis Music Library Department Head
Boddie manages Lewis’ extensive collection of music, audio, and media resources and oversees all library operations while performing outreach, instruction, and research consultations. A typical workday for Boddie might include:

• “Working with a PhD researcher who was writing a dissertation on the history of Black-invented technologies. Part of this research involved a music mixer, the MPC One+, which was revolutionary in the evolution of rap and hip-hop in the late 80s and 90s. I decided to order one for the library and play around with it, so I would be more familiar with the technology and able to assist in their research.”
• “Collaborating closely with Music and Theater Arts (MTA) on our ‘Artist Forum’ series. These are events in Lewis where we’ll bring in a prominent local composer, artist, or musician to give a lecture on their work or area of research. It’s been exciting to restart this series after the pandemic, as it’s historically been very popular with our users.”
• “Meeting with stakeholders across MTA to coordinate how the music library might continue to serve the MIT community as the new MIT Music Building (W18) opens this fall.”
• “Administering Lewis’ wide-ranging collections: I’m working with our Music Library Assistant Laura Brisson to do a muchneeded weeding project, involving an overview of our 30,000+ scores, to allow us to collect more diverse genres and composers of music, better fitting the curricular needs of MTA and our user community. Part of this work also involves providing our users greater access to our resources by purchasing an increasing number of digital scores.”

Kai Alexis Smith
Architecture and Planning Librarian
Smith helps the MIT community find information on architecture, art, design, and urban studies and planning. She is the liaison librarian for the International Design Center and the School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P) and oversees exhibits in the Rotch Library Gallery. Smith lists some other recent activities:

• “Supporting students virtually and in person with research questions like hunting down standards from different countries in different languages, or tracking down theses from faculty in different countries, or archives where drawings might be located, among other things.”
• “Managing Rotch Library orientations, including recorded and in-person sessions for SA+P constituents. I coordinate and lead comprehensive tours, showcasing Rotch Library history, design evolution, and the diverse services offered at the different service points and collections.”
• “Reaching out to new SA+P and Media Lab faculty, fellows, and MITDesignX cohorts with research resources.”
• “Organizing events like the popular ‘Books and Bites’ to showcase our rare and hidden collections – like artists’ books, zines, and ephemera – to encourage usage in research and classes.”
• “Co-organizing a workshop with the Women and Gender Services Center in conjunction with the MIT Reads selection, Disability Visibility. I lectured on zine history, and colleagues shared items from Distinctive Collections and taught accessible zine-making techniques.”

Thera Webb
Women@MIT Project Archivist
Webb leads the Women@MIT archival initiative, which adds the papers of MIT women faculty, staff, students, and alumnae to the historic record by collecting, preserving, and sharing their lives and work. She is actively involved with donors to the archives, organizes outreach to promote the collections, and leads instruction sessions for classes and student groups. Webb describes some more examples of her daily activities:

• “Working with a researcher on identifying collections related to a women scientist or a group of women at MIT – this can be something as simple as identifying what courses someone taught or trying to find a copy of an unpublished dissertation chapter that may be in her advisor’s files.”
• “Archiving and uploading new oral histories for the Margaret MacVicar Memorial AMITA (Association of MIT Alumnae) Oral History Project.”
• “Meeting with a retiring faculty member to go through her office and pack up items she wants to donate to the archives related to her work at MIT.”
• “Working on my own research projects on women at MIT – current projects include updating the biographical information on [MIT founder William Barton Rogers’ wife] Emma Savage Rogers, creating a comprehensive list of the women employees at the RadLab which operated from 1940 to 1945, and trying to find information about Pauline Hopkins (1859-1930), who was one of the earliest science fiction writers and was a Black woman who worked as a stenographer at MIT in the 1920s.”

See all MIT Libraries’ subject experts at libraries.mit.edu/experts/