Getting to Know Larissa Sullivant

1. Introduce yourself. 

My name is Larissa Sullivant. I am the Head of Collection Services and Adjunct Lecture in Law at the Ruth Lilly Law Library, Indiana University Robert McKinney School of Law.  I started my professional career as a Slavic cataloger at the University of Michigan Graduate Library, and for the last 20 years I have been a law librarian. 

2. Does your job title actually describe what you do? Why/why not?  

I think that my job title, Head of Collection Services, reflects my duties accurately, with responsibilities that include bibliographic and statistical analysis of the Library’s collection; collection promotion, bibliographic selection, and “weeding”; electronic resources management, acquisitions, cataloging, and serials control; supervision of the Technical Services staff. I also handle negotiation of contracts and vendor relations and assist our Library director in budgeting. I have regular hours at the Reference Desk, which during the pandemic means handling virtual reference. The last may not seem semantically connected to the job title, but it is an important part of being successful in my position: I need to know what our stakeholders read and research.

3. What are you reading right now?   

As a native Russian speaker, I am understandably drawn to that nation’s rich, literary traditions. I am currently re-reading Nikolai Gogol’s The Overcoat and Other Short Stories. Each of the stories is a parable of human tragedies and failings: vanity, pettiness, hypocrisy, self-absorption, cruelty towards others, etc. My favorites are The Nose and The Overcoat. The Nose has a decisive element of the absurd: a human-sized, disembodied nose of a privy counselor comes to life, parading around town and acting as a public official. The story is bitingly satirical, a critique of social hierarchies, which is a recurrent theme in Gogol’s work. The Overcoat concerns an impoverished clerk’s efforts to get a new and decent overcoat, so that his co-workers would stop berating him. In heartbreaking detail, it describes the clerk’s efforts in acquiring an overcoat, his various humiliations, and what happens after he finally gets his new coat. 

4. If you could work in any library (either a type of library or a specific one), what would it be? Why?

I am happy where I am: directing the Technical Services unit at the Ruth Lilly Law Library.  I enjoy every aspect of my duties and responsibilities.  My colleagues, both faculty and staff, are well-respected within the Library and the Law School communities and are wonderful and knowledgeable people. I truly enjoy working with all of them!

5. You suddenly have a free day at work, what project would you work on? 

I think slow days in most work environments are rare. If I suddenly had a free day, I would focus first on organization – getting the paper and information monster under control – since, as all librarians know, organization is the key to everything else.  After that, I would chip away at one of my current projects: a comprehensive inventory of our microform collection, reconciling the online catalog bibliographic data with the physical microfiche and microfilm holdings.