Born in Chicago and raised in Southern California, Susan attended Los Angeles City College and UCLA. As a student, she assisted at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Library, where she was able to participate in a wide variety of library functions working effectively together in microcosm. The working atmosphere of the LACMA library and the mentoring she received there caused the "library light bulb" to go off in her head and she enrolled at the UCLA Library School to pursue professional library work.
During her first years after library school she served as the Beverly Hills Public Library's first art librarian and worked at the UCLA Art Library in public service and acquisitions. Susan held positions in the Sacramento Public and Sacramento State University libraries before returning to Los Angeles in 1979 to take a position with the Getty Museum, where she would stay for the next 13 years. At first, Susan was the Serials Librarian for the Getty Library, where she oversaw the expansion of subscriptions from 200 to 5,000 titles and of holdings from 20,000 volumes to over 500,000. During this same period the staff grew from 7 to 50 and the first computerized catalogue was implemented. Later, she managed the move of the library from its original basement location at the Malibu site to its second home in Santa Monica. In her last years at the Getty she was asked to take over as head of the Getty Conservation Institute's library in Marina del Rey, a collection that supports both the art and conservation science communities served by the Institute. From Marina del Rey, she also helped to plan the Conservation Library facilities at the new Getty Center overlooking Brentwood.
In 1992 Susan left the Getty to accept leadership of the Spencer Art Reference Library at the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum in Kansas City, Missouri. During her eight-year tenure at the Nelson she guided the transformation of the collection from an inward-turned curatorial preserve to a genuine community resource, modernizing the physical plant and expanding stack space through the addition of compact shelving, as well as entering into consortial relationships with other institutions (such as the joint development of an OPAC with the nearby Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering and Technology) and developing a higher and more positive public profile. Family and California roots drew her back to the West Coast, however, and we at the Arts Library are very excited by the energy for improvement and new challenges that Susan has brought to us.
- Temmo Korisheli