2022: Risë Smith

Professor Risë Smith started at the Karl Mundt Library in 1984 during DSU's mission change from a teacher's school to a regional computer and technology college. Prof. Smith immediately embraced this mission and made teaching information literacy in the computer era her career focus. She became nationally recognized for her paper, Philosophical shift: Teaching the faculty to teach information literacy, presented at the Association of College and Research Libraries 1997 conference. This article is still taught and discussed widely in library science programs across the United States. In her position in the library, Prof. Smith aided countless students and faculty members through the research process. In addition to her scholarly contributions, Prof. Smith, along with former library director Ethelle Bean, were instrumental in creating the South Dakota Library Network. As a time when most library catalogs were limited to their local materials, this network would connect the catalogs of public and academic libraries, making their materials available to anyone across the state through their local library.