Stewart Plein, Curator, Rare Books and Printed Resources at the West Virginia & Regional History Center (WVRHC), will retire August 30 after 13 years of service as a librarian to WVU Libraries.
Plein began her passionate work with books and printed materials in the local books trade in 1995. In 2004, she joined WVU Libraries as a volunteer in the Rare Book Room. This experience changed her life’s direction, inspiring her to earn a Master's of Library and Information Science (MLIS). She began her professional career as a special collections librarian in 2011 at the WVU Law Library and has been a member of the faculty at the WVRHC since 2014.
As curator, colleague and instructor, Plein’s infectious passion for books and historic West Virginia newspapers is unmistakable, particularly when sharing lessons and discoveries possible with such materials. Throughout her career, she inspired students, library patrons, colleagues and collection donors. Unsurprisingly, words used to describe her include collaborative, expert, passionate and dedicated.
Plein has greatly advanced the stewardship and development of the West Virginia Books and Serials Collection, the Appalachian Collection and the Rare Book Collection at the WVRHC. She ensured those collections grew reflecting current scholarship and creative writing from the region. Plein also built and maintained excellent relationships with donors, some of whom provided resources to support the Rare Book Collection. In this role she added collections such as the Presgraves Appalachian collection, the Ebersole gardening and cookbook collections and the Lowell and Susan Thing Margaret Armstrong Collection. Plein showcased Armstrong’s beautiful book cover designs in an extensive exhibition. She curated the Isaac Asimov Collection and helped to create the Asimov Symposium series with the WVU President’s office.
Since 2014, Plein has served as principal investigator and managing director for five of six West Virginia National Digital Newspaper Project (NDNP) grants. Supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities in partnership with the Library of Congress, this work has resulted in the digitization of approximately 150 historic West Virginia newspapers from WVU’s collection and their addition to the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America website allowing for free online access worldwide. To promote the newspaper project, Plein represented WVU at NDNP and other conferences, led instruction sessions and published articles and blog posts. In addition, her research on Black newspapers in West Virginia uncovered over 50 newspapers and their publication history.
Plein taught hundreds of rare book, Appalachian studies and primary source instruction sessions for WVU courses. The instruction sessions she taught span a myriad of disciplines beyond English and History – Art History, Mathematics, Nutrition and Sociology, among others. She mentored numerous interns and student workers, as well as provided experiential learning opportunities working with rare materials and on the newspaper project. She was extremely generous with her time and commitment to students as they learned hands-on from these experiences.
Plein’s scholarship includes articles, book chapters, blog posts and essays and annual updates to the West Virginia History Journal’s West Virginia History Bibliography. In addition, Plein’s scholarship included the research and production of multiple exhibitions that highlighted items from the collections, featured stories about the Rare Book Collection and appeared in the Libraries’ Ex Libris as well as in WVU Magazine.
In addition to service to WVU Libraries, Plein has been a long-time active member of the Appalachian Studies Association, having served on the Board of Directors as Chair of the Special Collections Committee and as a member of the editorial board of the association’s Appalachian Curator newsletter. She also served as the West Virginia state representative for the Society of American Archivists’ Key Contact Program. Over her career she has received multiple awards, honors and scholarships. Plein will retire from WVU as University Librarian, emerita.