The Miami University Libraries is pleased to announce that Jacqueline Johnson will serve as the Interim Department Head for the Walter Havighurst Special Collections and University Archives during the Miami University Libraries’ search for a new department head. Johnson, a highly respected colleague and the University Archivist, will bring her years of experience and stellar reputation to the role and will keep the Special Collections and Archives department running smoothly.
Johnson arrived at Miami in 1991 as a minority resident librarian. She has dedicated most of her career to the university’s archival collections. From 2005-2015, she was archivist for the Western College Memorial Archives. In 2016, she became university archivist. Her responsibilities, which she describes as “an honor,” focus on developing, maintaining, supporting and promoting the use of the University Libraries’ archival collections, which includes collections from Miami University, Western College and Oxford College.
She has been invaluable in promoting the role of Western College for Women during Freedom Summer (1964). In addition to supporting faculty and student projects on the subject, she was integral in the development of the Mississippi Freedom Summer Digital Collection Metadata Project and website as well as in organizing a Freedom Summer oral history program. Johnson is the author of Finding Freedom: Memorializing the Voices of Freedom Summer (Miami University Press) and Western History (Arcadia Press). Her latest book chapter, “Citizenship, Social Justice, and Arts-based Dialogue through the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project of 1964” will appear in the monograph Engaging Youth Civic Participation: Critical Approaches to Teaching Digital Media in Art Classrooms and Communities (2022).
Johnson is a member of the National Civil Rights Conference Planning Committee and the Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society’s Commission on the 400th Commemoration of the First Documented Africans in British North America. She has served on committees for the Society of Ohio Archivists and is a member of Miami’s Celebrating Global Sisterhood Committees.
Her scholarly contributions include more than 19 successful grant applications and more than 40 presentations. She was awarded continuing contract in 2013 and promoted to Principal in 2018. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Limestone College and her master’s in library and information science from the University of South Carolina.
The Miami University Libraries looks forward to bringing a new Department Head onboard and is currently accepting applications for the role. We are also grateful for the work of the former Department Head, William Modrow, and thank him for his service to the Libraries.