Lisa K. Speer, director of special collections and archives at Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau, Mo., is the new director of the Arkansas History Commission and state historian.
Ray Granade of Arkadelphia, the commission chairman, announced Speer’s appointment in a news release Monday afternoon. The seven-member commission voted unanimously to hire Speer on April 8, said Richard Davies, director of the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism.
Speer, who is to begin her duties June 3, replaces Wendy Richter, who resigned in December. She will draw an annual salary of $87,000, Davies said.
A kerfuffle broke out on an e-mail list focusing on Arkansas history in the days leading up to Monday’s announcement, mostly centering on complaints that Speer wasn’t an Arkansas historian and hailed from Missouri.
“We have a wealth of highly professional, highly motivated, experienced Arkansas historians with institutional knowledge of our state,” said one e-mail posted on the list. “Did any one of those people apply, or were any recruited?”
Davies said he was aware of the discussion, adding, “I think a lot of people don’t know what they’re talking about.”
Speer is an Arkansas native, born in Fayetteville and raised near Malvern, according to the news release. She is a graduate of Glen Rose High School and received her undergraduate degree in history in 1988 from Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia.
Speer went on to receive a master’s degree and doctorate in American history from the University of Mississippi in Oxford, where she served as curator of the Mississippi Collection at the university’s archives and special collections. She later earned a master’s degree in library and information studies with archival certification from the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, where she worked as an archival technician. She has been at Southeast Missouri for about 12 years.
In a prepared statement, Speer touched on her Arkansas roots.
“As a native Arkansan, I’m also personally very happy to be returning home after being away some years,” she said. “There truly is no place like home.”
But Tom Dillard of Farmington, a historian and retired archivist, said the appointment has caused “great angst” in the Arkansas history community and goes deeper than whether Speer is an Arkansas native.
“She is from Arkansas, but so what?” he said. “So are 3 million other people. The fact is, she has not done any work in the field of Arkansas history. She is totally unknown in Arkansas history.
“We have any number of great Arkansas historians who would have been great for that job, most of whom weren’t even interviewed.”
Twenty people applied for the post. Nine were found to meet the minimum qualifications, Davies said. A commission search committee interviewed the three top candidates. The full commission interviewed three others, according to Davies. Speer was one of the three top candidates.
“Speer has the education, experience and personality to lead not only the archives, but will be a capable and effective advocate for Arkansas history,” Davies said.
Granade, who is a history professor and library-services director at Ouachita Baptist, said Speer was the perfect choice.
“The Commission searched for a rare combination of historian and archivist to be state historian and Arkansas History Commission director,” he said in a prepared statement. “We needed someone with background in and connections with all three of the archives, library, and history worlds.
“Dr. Speer was not only the best qualified applicant from a professional standpoint, she also interacts well with a wide variety of the public. She is someone who obviously wants to serve the people of Arkansas and whose priority is to serve the best interests of all Arkansans.”
Speer has published a half-dozen articles in scholarly journals and in the archival, library and historical realms, authored at least 40 book reviews, and produced essaysfor a forthcoming Mississippi Encyclopedia, according to the news release. An experienced presenter to academic and scholarly audiences, Speer is described as equally skilled in communicating to local historical, preservationist and genealogical societies. She is an active member of the Society of American Archivists, serving on its membership committee, and is a reviewer for Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries and American Reference Books Annual.
“The Arkansas History Commission has so many wonderful initiatives under way, like the ‘Documenting Arkansas’ digital project and the Arkansas Records catalog, begun by my esteemed predecessor Dr. Wendy Richter,” Speer said in the news release. “I look forward to continuing these initiatives and working with the talented and dedicated staff of the Arkansas History Commission to further the outreach and expansion of the AHC in Arkansas and beyond!”
The commission has a staff of nine and, according to Davies, an annual operating budget of about $1.6 million.
The concern in the history community shouldn’t be judged as a “tempest in a teapot,” Dillard said, saying its problems run deep.
The commission has been around for more than 100 years, he said, but “it is still struggling along in the same condition it was many years ago.
“The history commission has been surpassed by the Butler Center, the University of Arkansas, by a variety of institutions that are doing more and better work. You have to ask yourself, ‘Why.
?’”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 04/23/2013