Debbie Currie retires

After over 21 years as the Collections and Research Librarian for Agricultural and Environmental Services, Debbie Currie retired last month.

It’s almost easier to list the areas of the Libraries’ collections in which Currie hasn’t had an impact. Throughout her years here, Currie helped shape and support much more than the agriculture, life, and environmental sciences collections in her job title. She was also the primary selector and liaison for the collections in animal science, crop science, entomology, horticultural science, poultry science, and soil science, and worked with South Asia, philosophy, religion, political science, and international studies collections as well.

One of those connections helped lead to the Libraries’ involvement in the annual BugFest event, which has helped build a lasting relationship with its host, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

“One of the things that I'm hoping to continue organizing,” Currie says, “is what we do with the Natural Sciences Museum, helping them with their annual inventory. There are always so many fun pictures of our staff from it, and everybody who does it loves it. These kinds of activities are small things, but I think they add to the quality of our lives.”

For Currie, quality of life is about knowing and working with people. She says she’ll miss the people at the Libraries most of all, both for who they are and for the innovative and inspiring things they do in their work. She happily traded a spacious office with a view for a basement cubicle to be closer to her coworkers.

“The best thing that happened to me was when Collections Management moved from the west wing, where the Faculty Research Commons is now, down to the basement in around 2012,” she says. “We were all by ourselves over there. And I had a beautiful, big office, with a floor-to-ceiling window. But we were so isolated, and I didn't even really realize that.”

“We moved down to the basement, and all of a sudden I'm in a cubicle, and I can hear people talking and planning and organizing things. And I'm like a meerkat, I pop up: ‘Hey, can you tell me a little bit more about that, that sounds really cool. Collections should be involved in that!’ So the last six or seven years has been fabulous.”

We will still see plenty of Currie. She has officially become a librarian emerita and plans to stay involved in a variety of projects, including making scores of origami cicadas and butterflies at BugFest. In the meantime, she and her wife Judy, who retired last spring, have plans to lavish attention on their grandchildren in Pittsboro and Beaufort and to check off some places on their travel bucket list.

Currie’s professional accomplishments are numerous. She was the library liaison to three Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Program faculty clusters: Emerging Plant Disease and Global Food Security, Leadership in Public Science, and Sustainable Energy Systems and Policy. Just last year, Currie was honored with the United States Agricultural Information Network (USAIN) Service to the Profession award, accepting the award at the biennial USAIN Conference in Pullman, Washington in May. Given every other year, this is the highest award for agricultural information librarians and recognizes a career of achievement.

Currie’s leadership, expertise, and support of others—and her personal warmth and sincerity—will be missed. She leaves without regrets.

“I just see everything that I've been involved with over the years, and all the opportunities I've had, as if it all was exactly the way it was supposed to be, the way it was supposed to work out.”