Louise Kidder

University of Houston Libraries welcomes Louise Kidder as the new assistant head of Acquisitions and Resource Sharing.

Please describe your role. How does your work align with the student success and research productivity focus of the University?

I’m so pleased to be joining UH as the assistant head of Acquisitions and Resource Sharing (ARS). One of my primary tasks will be to collaborate with colleagues across the Collections Strategies and Discovery portfolio and the Libraries more broadly to efficiently acquire and provide access to the print and online resources that UH students and researchers need. In addition to that, I will also focus on assisting with stewardship of collections funds, communicating with vendors and other library partners, and supporting staff.

My contributions to ARS will align with the University’s strategic plan goals by enhancing the department’s role in assessing, building, and making available the holistic collections of resources that support students and researchers alike.

Please share a bit about your background and professional interests. How do these inspire and shape your approach as a librarian?

I graduated from Angelo State University (part of the Texas Tech University System) with a BS in Biology; I earned my MLIS from the University of North Texas. I have had professional experience working in public and academic health sciences libraries in both patron-facing and technical services positions. That experience included a wide variety of tasks, from running summer reading clubs for teenagers to troubleshooting e-resource access problems to negotiating license agreements, to name a few.

This broad scope of experience inspires me to take an inclusive approach to my work as a librarian. Intra- and inter-institutional collaboration, equitable access, and lifelong learning are all particularly important to me.

What are one or two things you’d like faculty, students, and scholars to know about the function of Acquisitions and Resource Sharing?

Acquisitions and Resource Sharing is a department that focuses on providing our UH colleagues and students with access to the wide variety of resources that they need — books, journals, databases, videos, even occasionally other tools like anatomy lab models. Sometimes that means buying or subscribing to resources (the “Acquisitions” part), and other times that means borrowing or lending items through interlibrary loan (the “Resource Sharing” part).

The ARS team consists of a group of specialist staff, student workers, and librarians who are diligently working together behind the scenes to make the processes that bring these resources to the University as practical and economical as possible.