LTS Welcomes Dr. Grafe, new CLIR Fellow

For the third time, LTS is participating in the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) Postdoctoral Fellowship Program in Academic Libraries for Humanists. The new Fellow, Melissa Grafe, received her Ph.D. in the history of medicine from Johns Hopkins in 2009. During her two year stint in Library and Technology Services she will be working in three areas.

First, in collaboration with the Environmental Initiative and Special Collections, she will explore means of incorporating aspects of environmental history chronicled in scientific and literary works held by the library into the curriculum. In addition she will investigate the needs of Lehigh scholars for the serving and archiving of unpublished research materials in the social sciences and the humanities, with possible extension to the sciences. Finally, she will participate in the TRAC Writing Fellows program, seeking to enhance and leverage the integration of writing, library research, and instructional technology.

Dr. Grafe was a participant in Harvard University’s prestigious International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World this past summer. Her dissertation entitled, Making ‘Medical Hall’: Dr. John Archer, Medical Practice, and Apprenticeship in Early America, 1769-1820 examined the shape and texture of late eighteenth century medical practices. Her research and teaching interests include early American and nineteenth century history of medicine, history, and material culture.

Dr. Grafe worked in special collections at the Rare Book Room of the Institute of the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins for six years prior to coming to Lehigh as a CLIR fellow. She has also worked in museums and historic sites in both Pennsylvania and North Dakota, and has interned for the Smithsonian. Previous CLIR Fellows at Lehigh were Dr. Megan Norcia (2005-06) and Dr. Lauren Coats (2007-08).

The CLIR program offers recent Ph.D. recipients in the humanities opportunities to develop as scholars and teachers while learning about modern librarianship, digital resources, e-publishing, archives, and collection development both digital and analog. Institutions currently hosting CLIR Fellows include Bryn Mawr, Occidental, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, McMaster University, University of California Los Angeles, Johns Hopkins University, and the Claremont University Consortium.

--Susan A. Cady
  LTS Director for Administrative and Planning Services

Article posted August 27, 2009

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