Spotlight: Bret McCandless

Tell us about you and your role at your library.

 As the Performing Arts Librarian, I work with students and faculty in music, theatre, dance, radio, television, film, and art to research and explore their artistic area. Research may not come immediately to mind in thinking about these disciplines, but students can use the library to find supporting materials for their classes, understand the histories of their disciplines, learn more about different artistic approaches and techniques, and explore repertoire, artworks, and media beyond what is assigned in the classroom. As a current musician, former high school actor, and researcher in musical theater history, I love research in the arts and love to share that passion with students. I must say I’m also very excited to work with students in Rowan’s future Master of Arts in Television Studies program, which will be the first of its kind in the nation.

What important news or projects are happening in your library?

 There are several exciting projects happening in the libraries in conjunction with the Libraries’ Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee, on which I serve. For the past year or so, the committee has led DEI-focused activities in each of our monthly all-staff meetings and a separate DEI Reading Group to build our staff’s cultural capacity. But also, behind the scenes, we have developed and implemented hiring recommendations for equitable searches and we are currently conducting an equity audit, which seeks to understand how the library’s services and collections do or do not support students, faculty, and staff of various backgrounds and identities.

What’s a recent book you read for fun or what are you binge watching?

I just finished reading Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell, which is beautifully written and imagines the relationship and family life of William Shakespeare and his wife Anne Hathaway. The novel provides perspective on an earlier pandemic, the plague that so often shut down the Elizabethan theater and rends this family apart in O’Farrell’s telling. Her tale closes with the healing power of a great work of art after a devastating tragedy, and I highly recommend it to all readers.