Elizabeth Myers

As Director of Special Collections, Beth provides leadership and oversight to a unit of up to 20 staff and is responsible for personnel, budget, developing internal and external funding streams, working with donors and developing strategic initiatives and planning. Beth is one of a five person leadership team within the Smith College Libraries. She participated in most aspects of the planning and logistics related to the new Neilson Library building, 2014-2021. She has also been the author and/or PI for several major special collections related grants, spearheaded the project Access to Collections Project, 2018-2021, Access to Collections II: Rare Materials Bibliographic Description Project, 2025-2027, and the adoption of Preservica digital content preservation system.

Beth served as Director of the Women and Leadership Archives at Loyola University Chicago from 2007-2012 and then as Director of the Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs at Wayne State University from 2012-2014. She participates actively in the Society of American Archivists, most recently as chair of the SAA - A*Census II working group (2021 - 2023) and served as Vice President of the Society of American Archivists Foundation Board. In 2022, she was named a Distinguished Fellow of the Society of American Archivists. She lives in Northampton, MA, with her kiddo Quinn and two rescue cats.

Committees

Library Leadership Team; Emergency Response Working Group; and Stewards + Committee. Campus services includes: Advisory Committee for Resource Allocation (ACRA) and Centers & Collections Committee.

Research Interests

Longtime research interests include women’s history, women’s archives, and feminist curation.

Publications & Presentations

Documenting Women in a Global Context. MSS With Tanya Zanish-Belcher, co-editor and author. Research in progress.  

Panelist, “Rightsizing collections and capacities: a symposium on the Total Cost of Stewardship,” RBMS, Yale University, 2025
Speaker, “The Cost of Stewardship: Tools and Tactics to Negotiate Financial Gifts to Special Collections” Academic Library Advancement and Development Network (ALADN), Bonita Springs, FL 2023

Co-Speaker, “Leveraging a Love of Libraries: The New Neilson Library,” Academic Library Advancement and Development Network (ALADN), Bonita Springs, FL 2023

Speaker, A*Census II Survey Project, Society of American Archivists, virtual conference 2021, Boston, MA 2022, and Washington, DC, 2023
Myers, Elizabeth and Jennifer Rajchel. “What does Feminist Curation Look Like?” in Digital Humanities in the Library / Of the Library: A dh+lib Special Issue, July 29, 2016.

Myers, Elizabeth. “‘I am My Sisters Keeper: Women’s Archives, A Reflection’ in Perspectives on Women’s Archives." Tanya Zanish-Belcher and Anke Voss, eds., Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2013.

Professional Affiliations

Society of American Archivists and International Council on Archives