HD McKay’s journey to Vanderbilt has taken a winding and distinctly transdisciplinary path. She started her career as a business and patent librarian working with technology commercialization and entrepreneurship initiatives on the North Carolina State University campus. Next, she returned to her native Toronto for a unique role at the MaRS Discovery District, a not-for-profit corporation and North America’s largest urban innovation hub. As a market intelligence analyst cross-appointed from the University of Toronto Health Sciences Library, McKay supported commercialization officers reviewing disclosures from some of the top academic and research hospitals and organizations, as well as tech startups, across Southwestern Ontario.
This experience evolved into a 10-year sabbatical in industry, where she took on a variety of non-librarian roles including UX designer, qualitative research practice lead, program manager and innovation strategy consultant. She considers her arrival at Vanderbilt a return to her “first love”—academic librarianship—armed with a new curiosity about how best to apply the breadth of her skills as the Walker Management Library’s librarian for business and a lecturer at the Owen Graduate School of Management.
Is there anything people don’t understand about your current role that you wish they did?
Many people’s experiences with libraries are as a “quiet study space” or “books.” To me, modern libraries are a successful 20th-century social innovation that has scaled across society to a degree that it became almost taken for granted—at least until the broad adoption of the internet.
The innovation was this: a community resource with public (or broad constituent) benefit that served to preserve access to past knowledge and promote new knowledge creation through independent, barrier-free inquiry, learning and enjoyment. Traditionally, this took the form of “quiet spaces” and “books.” Today, there are so many more options of how it could and should serve this purpose.
Some in the LIS profession have suggested that librarianship is more a design profession, and I couldn’t agree more. Librarians design experiences through their spaces, services, interactions and programming—all in service of preserving access to past knowledge while supporting the creation of new knowledge through that same independent, barrier-free inquiry, learning and enjoyment. In the 21st century, librarians have an amazing palette of options at our disposal to fulfill this mission, from new kinds of technology-mediated interactions to creatively facilitated gatherings that tap into a fuller range of past wisdom for future generations. The only thing holding us back is our aspiration—and maybe funders who share those greater aspirations with us.
When does doing your job not feel like work?
Everyday? When I said academic librarianship is my first love, I meant it! I love being a business librarian, and I love being one at Vanderbilt. It feeds my intellectual curiosity. I get to work with very generous, kind and smart colleagues. My gift to the world is to empower others by sharing my knowledge and supporting their intellectual pursuits and, hopefully, make a difference to important, real-world problems. I realized some time ago that “holy cow, I spend a lot of time at work—so I better find work that doesn’t feel like it.” Fortunately, I find myself here in 2024.
Away from the university, what is your favorite creative outlet?
I love the arts, broadly defined: visual, sculpture, poetry, dance, music—as witness to them and being inspired to try some of my own creations. The Frist Art Museum membership is one of my favorite things about Nashville—the best deal in town as far as I’m concerned! I love going there with my two young boys every chance we get.
But one of the things I love about Vanderbilt is how the arts permeate throughout campus. Whether concerts at Blair School of Music, an international film screening at Sarratt Cinema, a Vanderbilt Museum of Art exhibit, a guest speaker at the Curb Center, the poetry room at Central Library—I don’t have to be away from the university. In fact, a small group of faculty and staff have recently started an informal “Creatives at Owen” meetup where we can take a moment to find joy through the arts. I’m also looking for programming and funding partners to develop intercultural skills for 21st-century leaders (in business and beyond) through the arts. Get in touch if that sounds exciting to you!