The Shuronda Gardner Smith Collection - Main Reading Room
The Shuronda Gardner Smith Collection is a multicultural resource collection that gathers works focusing on the intrinsic complexities of multicultural communities in the United States and throughout the world. These diverse fiction and nonfiction resources explore subjects related to socio-cultural constructs and celebrate the rich diversity of cultures represented at Agnes Scott College.
Most resources are held on the shelves in the Main Reading Room, but guides and links to additional sections in McCain Library that reflect and celebrate the history, culture, economics, and literature of multicultural groups are also available.
Shuronda Gardner Smith, in whose memory this collection started, was a leader among the first Black staff members working in upper-level managerial positions at the college.
Initially hired as the Director of Student Activities in 1997, Smith served as Assistant Dean of Students from 1999-2003, where her responsibilities included Multicultural Affairs, as well as Student Activities. She tragically passed away on January 16, 2003, after complications from childbirth on January 4. She was 31 years old. Smith's daughter, Maya Elena Smith survived her, along with Shuronda's spouse, W. Calvin Smith.
This collection started in the Alston Campus Center and came to McCain Library in 2019, to be better inventoried and cataloged, so that the campus would know of its contents more readily, and to foster justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. In 2020-21, McCain Library was awarded an ASC President’s Mini-Grant for Social Justice in the amount of $2,000 with the objective of expanding the Shuronda Gardner Smith Multicultural Resource Collection. Suggestions for further additions may be made here (requires an ASC email; alternatively, email library@cp55586.com).