All of the foundations of what would become my life’s passions were built in childhood. By 2nd grade, I was walking to the public library after school and reading until my mom picked me up after work. Sometimes I would take the books across the street to the park and climb my favorite tree and read there. I also loved my grade school library and have a strong visual memory of the place. In junior high, I volunteered in the junior high/high school library (and one year the librarian took me to the Ice Capades!).
When I was 6, I rode my first horse when we were on vacation in Colorado. He was a black pony named Cabbage and they named him that because he was so thickly wooly in the winter when he was used as a pack horse in the mountains. After that, I got to ride horses every summer on vacation. Then, when I was 12 my mom offered for me to take riding lesson. Mostly, I think, because my dad wanted me to take airplane flying lessons and mom thought that was too dangerous. I did take a few flying lessons and it was really interesting, but horses were more important to me. Once I jumped out of a plane on a dare (sky diving), but that wasn’t for me, either.
Also when I was 12, I started practicing yoga and meditation, learning from books and from public television programs. And there we have the complete foundation of my life – libraries, horses (and other animals), and yoga followed later by martial arts.
Freshman year of college I started martial arts and continued to train for 36 years. I achieved a first degree black belt in Kajukenbo, a second degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do, and a 7th Dan rank in Japanese Swordmanship (Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu Iaido). Plus, I actively practiced yoga for 25 years. I stopped both martial arts and yoga when I became the SLIS director in 2016 because I just didn’t have time. But I have a lot of gym equipment in my house and I like to lift weights and exercise.
After high school I didn’t have a lot of interactions with animals, other than some cats, until my mid-30s when I started getting involved in dog rescue. I’ve fostered somewhere between 125 and 150 dogs over the years. Most recently, I’ve been fostering Great Pyrenees (and GP mix) dogs for a rescue out of North Texas. When I moved to Oklahoma for this job, I bought a farm and have had so many animals – sheep, goats, chickens, llamas, alpacas, cats, dogs, and many horses. I fostered for horse rescue for a while, but now I just have my own horses which are mostly retired rescues and minis. I do have one that I ride and we have a lot of fun.
This farm, or ranch, is of deep and enduring interest to me. I am always making plans, trying things out, continually working on maintaining stuff. I started working on rehabilitating my very poor pastures about ten years ago through cover crops, rotational grazing, and soil amendments. I’ve learned so very, very much but there is still more to learn than what I can fit into a lifetime. I started learning about, and trying, vegetable gardening during the pandemic and that’s been fun and rewarding, too.
As far as my professional life, it has unfolded like a path before me. At every crossroads someone has offered me an opportunity and I simply said yes. Immediately after graduating college, when I didn’t know what to do, I ran into a friend on campus who suggested I apply for a staff job at the university library. I was hired first as a clerk and later as a library technical assistant. My boss suggested I go to “library school” because she thought I had a knack for this profession, so I did. I couldn’t manage full-time work on top of grad school, so the library offered me a G.A. position to keep working on my same job, but 20 hours per week instead of 40. Then when I graduated, they offered me a librarian job. Later, I took another academic librarian job in another state. From there, I was offered federal grant support to pursue a Ph.D. (in Sociology with a doctoral minor in Library Science). Then, when I graduated with the Ph.D., that library school offered me a 3-year visiting professor position. When the 3-year position was nearly over, OU SLIS sent me a letter inviting me to apply for an assistant professor position, so I applied and they hired me. Then, I was invited to become acting, then interim, then regular director of SLIS. This is my 20th academic year at OU SLIS. Currently, I am Program Director of the Master of Arts in Museum Studies program that just moved into SLIS this year. It has been fun and challenging to work with this new program that is related to librarianship, but different.
Susan K. Burke, Associate Professor, Program Director: Master of Arts in Museum Studies
