Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz’s journey to become dean of Barnard Library was art-filled, community-centered, and interconnected. At the age of 16, the Brooklyn native co-founded Sister Outsider — an organization for and by self-supporting young women from New York City’s Brownsville and East Flatbush neighborhoods. In 2024, she co-edited two books on gender and sexuality in information studies titled Grabbing Tea: Queer Conversations on Identity and Libraries (Volume One) and, Grabbing Tea: Queer Conversations on Archives and Practice (Volume Two).
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The Barnard Library connects our community with collections and resources for discovery — enabling our students to engage purposefully with the full scope of their education.
Today, the librarian, archivist, and fiction writer is leading Barnard’s library while keeping in mind a term coined by queer Black librarian-scholar Fobazi Ettarh — “vocational awe.”
“It is the tendency to treat libraries as sacred and beyond critique,” said Smith-Cruz. “As an administrator and educator, I walk with that warning as a reminder to stay attuned to community needs and not be bound solely by the limitations of legacy practices. The library as a space for community-driven scholarship is also a workplace with finite resources. Even with its implied boundlessness, the library, too, has walls.”
Smith-Cruz’s connection to Barnard traces back to 2001 when, at 18 years old, she was invited to join a Barnard Scholar and the Feminist Conference panel on campus and spoke about young women as viable workers. She returned to the College as a panelist over the years for the Barnard Zine Fest and Scholar and Feminist Conferences — such as Case Studies in Archiving for Activist Movements.
“The Zine Library cataloged my first Worldcat entry,” said Smith-Cruz. “It felt affirming to visualize myself as a scholar via community service.”
Smith-Cruz said her entry into the field of information is premised on “articulating ways of knowing outside of singular and dominant perspectives.” With her scholarly pursuits spanning across and beyond lesbian studies, critical race theory, and narrative studies, Smith-Cruz has centered Indigenous ways of knowing — including what she has learned from her Garifuna maternal grandmother, Meruca “Mary” Lambey. Smith-Cruz comes to Barnard Library after five years as an Associate Dean at NYU Libraries, nine years at the CUNY Graduate Center, ending as Head of Reference, and service as a librarian and archivist at Storycorps, Brooklyn Public Library, the Lesbian Herstory Archives, and other spaces too. With more than 20 years of librarianship, archiving, and administration, Smith-Cruz has arrived at Barnard as a natural extension of the College’s commitment to putting scholarship in practice.
“The Barnard Library connects our community with collections and resources for discovery — enabling our students to engage purposefully with the full scope of their education,” she said. On June 12, Smith-Cruz presented her recently published paper, “Ancestral Calls: What If Learning Is Bearing Witness? And Other Derivatives of June Beer,” at the Critical Pedagogy Symposium — an international symposium on critical pedagogies for library practitioners — co-sponsored by Barnard Library.
What drew you to Barnard and its library?
Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz: I’m particularly drawn to the way academic libraries build collections, connections, and conversations. I’m learning how we, at Barnard, wear our particular brand of “academic library.” In just two months, I’ve learned that the Barnard Library looks like an exhibit that lines the first floor of the Milstein Center for Teaching and Learning and replicates itself with curated book collections nestled beside the BIPOC alumnae and faculty publications permanent displays. Our library includes the institutional Archives and Special Collections that inhabit the hands of student workers. It’s only at the Barnard Library that you can find an installation like the recent Trigger Planting 2.0 by Kadambari Baxi, the newly named faculty director of the Movement Lab, or the recent acquisition of the Quandra Prettyman Cookbook Collection — an occurrence that will become a wonder in the field of food studies.
Though all academic libraries purchase collections and support teaching and learning, at Barnard, this looks as specific as offering each incoming student a personal librarian. This individualizes the student research experience by ritualizing their academic practice as junior scholars. The Barnard Library is a gift, its function enhanced by its relationship with Columbia, allowing for an access services model that is otherwise unparalleled for a college of its size. If nothing else, the library is open, and its services are met with a smile and an open hand.
What are some challenges in libraries today?
Reconciliation with national standards at a time when academic librarianship cannot be the same in every state. The American Library Association accredits all library school programs, relying upon a professoriate to train the librarians of tomorrow. When academic libraries employ credentialed librarians, this generates a symbiotically stronger learned class of students across all fields and disciplines. But today, librarians are struggling to understand the expectations of their work in relation to shifting standards or policies. When standards are clarified, it benefits us all.
Some standards are a no-brainer. For example, in many fields of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), we agree that applying active learning strategies in the classroom elicits greater outcomes than lecture-based learning. Collection development practices may be a point of contention when labor, budgets, and shelf space are finite. Advancing curricular-driven collections as a standard for what gets collected has become a challenge as the book-ban movement moves into the academic sphere. Now, what sits on the shelves may become the business of many stakeholders, including politicians and community members instead of reliance upon librarian expertise driven by nationally recognized standard collection development practices that already incorporate dialogue with faculty and curricular needs.
What are you excited to share with Barnard?
I’m interested in learning how Barnard Library can continue to champion faculty research. Libraries support faculty not only in their teaching and learning but also in their research and scholarly publishing. Librarians work alongside scholars to demystify use rights in contracts, self-archiving, repository uploads, open access options, metrics tracking, scholarly profiles, and, generally speaking, ways to connect their research to their teaching and expand their reach on a global scale — not solely for institutional use. I’m excited to uplift projects that will live in the world via the ethos of “open knowledge,” which aims to put knowledge in the context of a global conversation.
In the past two months, what has been your favorite thing about Barnard?
Being among professionals who value the contributions of women. If I had to pinpoint it, I’d say it happens in sustained eye contact, prolonged conversations — even in passing — from the CARES staff that sit in front of any entrance, or students exploring the stacks. There is genuine interest in each other. At Barnard, the staff, faculty, and students reach out to say hello, and then they wait for the reply. If I had to pick a favorite thing, it is being invited and welcomed into deep conversations — be it outside on Futter Field or at a building entryway. All of it preorients my journey around Harlem for what feels like the first time.