Johns Hopkins University

Curator of 19th-21st Century Rare Books and Manuscripts & Liaison Librarian for History, Africana Studies, and Latin American Studies, The Sheridan Libraries

About

Hi! My name is Chella Vaidyanathan. I serve as the liaison librarian for the Department of History, Center for Africana Studies, and the Program in Latin American at the Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University. Moreover, I also work as the Curator of 19th-21st Century Rare Books and Manuscripts.

As a blended librarian, I enjoy my role as a Liaison Librarian and as the Curator of post-1800 historical collections. It gives me a great opportunity to promote print and e-resources as well as rare materials from special collections. I love working with rare books and teaching sessions using materials from special collections.

From February 2007- April 2010, I worked at the University of Miami as the subject liaison librarian for History, Political Science, and U.S. Govt. Information/ International Documents.

I very much enjoy teaching course-specific bibliographic instruction sessions. Particularly, I love integrating digital primary source materials, multi-media, and Web 2.0 tools like blogs, wikis, Flickr, YouTube, etc. in my classes. The availability of several online social networking sites offers us a lot of opportunities to promote our libraries’ print and digital collections to our users. I am also interested in the application of GIS to the discipline of humanities and in digital humanities in general.

Educational Background:I completed my MLS from the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) in December 2006. From August 2005-December 2006, I worked as the GIS Graduate Assistant in the Department of U.S. Gov. Information, Maps, & GIS Services at McKeldin Library at UMCP. My academic background is in History. I completed all my graduate course work in the Ph.D. program in History at Northern Arizona University (NAU). While I was working as the Reilly Summer Intern in the Department of Special Collections and Archives at Cline Library at NAU, I decided to pursue academic librarianship as my career and applied for the MLS program. I have a Master of Arts in Modern European history from Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville (SIUE). I worked as a Graduate Assistant both for the Department of Historical Studies and for the Library Instruction Services at Lovejoy Library at SIUE. I have always enjoyed working in public services. It has been a rewarding experience for me. Before I came to the United States in 2000, I completed my Master of Arts in History from Meenakshi College in Chennai in India with a main focus on Indian/South Asian history. I have also completed graduate level coursework in Modern European History, Modern American History, and in East & Southeast Asian History.

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