By Jonathan Smith, Editor in Chief
Carisse Berryhill loved her Bible comic book on Esther as a child. She remembers flipping through its pages many times.
“In fact, the one I had got worn out because I read it so much,” she said.
Now, almost 50 years later, Berryhill works to make sure none of her books ever wear out again. Except her books are not the ones on a shelf at her house. Her books contain the history of ACU and the Churches of Christ.
Berryhill works as the special services librarian in the Brown Library-a job she began only six months ago. She spends most of her days in the special sections portion of the library-a section that many students never see and contains anything from historic ACU documents and sermon manuscripts to books on West Texas railroading and anti-Communist pamphlets.
Her job entails preserving the original documents and pieces and finding ways to make them available for others to read in formats that will not deteriorate.
Dr. Mark Tucker, dean of library and information resources, said Berryhill’s work is not always noticeable to the average person.
“If you walked in there six months ago, it would look pretty much the same as it does now,” Tucker said. “However, she is putting pieces into place for substantial growth. Three years from now, that whole operation will look dramatically different.”
Whether she is preparing a piece for the Centennial Collection or for the special section of the library, Berryhill always thinks ahead.
“One of the things about archivists is you’ve got to think 300 years ahead,” she said. “You make choices about storage formats for things that will last for your lifetime and the lifetimes of others as well.”
Berryhill has always been interested in the history of the archives-an interest that has been around longer than her interest in being an archivist.
“The passion is not about being a great archivist,” Berryhill said. “That’s just the means to an end; that’s the means that preserves the material.”
Berryhill admits that, like archiving, she has backed into many passions in her life, where one interest would lead her in one direction that would eventually take her somewhere completely different.
Her high school science background led her to believe she would go to medical school after finishing college, where she had majored in biology and English.
“Given the two alternatives, I’ll try my best to take both just because I’m too stubborn to choose,” Berryhill said.
When her father, Wayne Mickey, was in car accident when she was 21, Berryhill finally did choose. Her father’s brain injuries left him simple-minded with many speech difficulties. After spending half a year in and out of hospitals with her father, she no longer desired to make her career working in one.
Her background in English led her to teaching, and she began doing that at Lubbock Christian University in 1975 at age 25.
But Berryhill’s passions still led her elsewhere. Because her father was a preacher, she grew up in the Church of Christ and around its traditions. She became fascinated with its history and anything that contained its history, which led her to one place-the library.
“I backed into librarianship because I was interested in primary sources and restoration history, and in order to do that kind of work, it seemed to me like a library would be a good place to do that,” Berryhill said.
Her first opportunity as a librarian placed her in Memphis, Tenn., at the Harding Graduate School of Religion working as the associate librarian in 1992. Eleven years later, ACU’s special services librarian position opened. Berryhill was hired, but stayed in Memphis another year while her son, David, finished high school. She began at ACU at the end of May.
Chad Longley, special services assistant in the library and a graduate student at the University of North Texas through online courses, works with Berryhill in the library. He remembers his feelings when she first arrived.
“She was known for being outside the box of librarians,” he said. “When they decided to hire her over the other two applicants, there were several in the library that were afraid she would want to come in and reject everything that had been done in the archives and special collections in the past and want to do her own thing.”
What he found, however, was a librarian not afraid to share her feelings. He recalled an embroidered pillow Berryhill keeps in her office that says, “I’m not bossy. I just have better ideas.”
“I never have to wonder what she’s thinking about what she’s doing or what I’m doing,” Longley said.
Marsha Harper, senior librarian, said Berryhill does not come off in rude manner, however.
“Her intellect is sharp; her tongue is not,” Harper said. “She has a warm and caring heart.”
Longley said Berryhill brings experience and knowledge to her position that many at ACU cannot.
“She didn’t come from inside ACU, and so she’s able to look at herself from the outside,” he said. “She’s able to look at her role like people outside ACU would see it, not just from people inside.”
Although Berryhill never lived in Abilene as a child, her mother’s parents did, so she remembers many trips to Abilene for Homecoming, Lectureship and other holidays. After spending most of her childhood in Texas, living anywhere else never seemed quite right.
“Tennessee doesn’t have my stories,” Berryhill said. “You drive through the landscape, and it’s beautiful, but it doesn’t have my stories in the landscape. But if I drive from here to Dallas, mother and I can tell stories the whole way about one time our car broke down there, and one time your dad preached a meeting there.”
For that reason, Berryhill can see herself working here the rest of her career.
“I think I’ll stay,” she said. “My mother is 80, and she has a sister who lives 30 miles from here. I have cousins all over town.”
Berryhill remembers her past and where she came from because that is what led her to where she is today. In her job, she hopes to foster that same kind of awareness for the university.
“If you don’t pay attention to the archives, you end up with institutional Alzheimer’s,” she said, “because you lose your sense of who you’ve been and where you were.”
