“It’s been a grand 45 years”

An exclusive interview with Charleston Conference founder Katina Strauch as she publishes her memoirs

If you have never been to Charleston, you need to go. 

A city that positively oozes history, its warm and humid air is bathed in a salty sea breeze; there are cobbled streets and fine buildings everywhere you look – all interlaced with the Low Country’s famous towering oak trees, draped in Spanish moss.

This is the stunning backdrop to the famous Charleston Conference, an annual gathering of librarians, publishers, electronic resource managers, consultants, and vendors of library materials. 

Founded by Katina Strauch in 1980, the event has grown from 20 participants at its first iteration to around 3,000 – both in-person and virtually – in its present form. A spirit of camaraderie and collaboration infuses the event – bringing together scholarly communication colleagues from across the world every November to share information, inspiration and intelligence.

Indeed, Scholarly Kitchen contributor Joseph Esposito noted that the event is “so well-established, really something of an institution in the library world, that it is difficult to imagine a time when it did not yet exist.”

Books in the blood

In retrospect, it seems almost pre-ordained that Katina would be responsible for an event that defines librarianship in the United States and beyond. Born in 1946 in Columbia, South Carolina to James and Helen Parthemos, she recalls that she always loved books and reading – and often worked in libraries when she was a student.

“I am a Southerner. My father was a researcher and intellectual – he inspired me to be a librarian, and had many women colleagues who were true inspirations to me. I got my Bachelor of Arts in economics in 1969 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and then joined the library school at the same institution and received a Masters in Library Science in 1973.”

After library school, Katina became a librarian in the Nursing School of Duke University, before joining the College of Charleston in 1979 as head of acquisitions for the Robert Scott Small Library. In 1980 she co-wrote Guide to Library Resources in Nursing, which was recognised as an outstanding reference book by the Association of College and Research Libraries’ Choice magazine.

She recalls: “The contrast between the huge Duke University and UNC-CH and the small College of Charleston was startling; empowering. Basically I was allowed to do my own thing – I loved it!”

“We needed to talk”

It was at this time, unable to afford to attend the American Library Association’s Annual conference, that Katina conceived her very own event. 

“I was a new librarian and trying to get tenure,” she says. “When the Antiquarian Book Fair began in Charleston I saw an opportunity. I had attended many meetings and conferences over the years, and often thought the participants were too self-absorbed; it struck me that there was far too much navel-gazing. I thought that we should talk together – and, as I was basically my own boss and didn’t have anyone looking over my shoulder, I was able to follow my instincts.”

Over the last 45 years, there have been massive changes in scholarly communication. The astonishing development of Charleston Conference has happened amid significant shifts in the industry – the advent of digital technologies and open access, and the emergence of consortia, to name a few. 

The event itself has faced its own challenges: the ill-timed arrival of Hurricane Hugo as it made landfall as a Category 4 storm in Charleston in September 1989, wreaking havoc in the coastal city and pushing boats as far as half a mile inland; and the advent of Covid in 2020 when events pivoted from in-person to virtual. In fact, the Conference saw a surge in attendance with an almost 150% increase from 2019, and remained a huge success despite the many challenges posed by the pandemic.

But facing these challenges only led to yet more success for Katina. In 1989 she launched the publication Against the Grain, a periodical on topics in librarianship: “I thought that we needed a way for Conference attendees to keep in touch more often than once a year.” She helped establish The Charleston Advisor in 1999, a quarterly publication that reviews web products for information professionals.

The November event remains the cornerstone of proceedings, however – something Katina ascribes to being surrounded by a great team: “I’ve worked with great staff and forward-gazing colleagues, and over the years there have been a lot of companies, people, colleagues, and individuals observing what was happening with the Conference. I’ve never met an idea I didn’t like, so together we built conferences, papers, and dialogs that received a lot of attention.”

Of course, the shifting sands of the scholarly communication industry, and librarianship in its wider form, continue to swirl – as they have done for the 45 years of the conference’s existence.

“The printed book has been replaced by the digital artifact; we’ve seen the advent of personal computers, laptops, cell phones and CDs – Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh,” says Katina. “Innovation has developed massively, and it continues to do so. Then we have Plan S, gadget software, artificial intelligence, and flexible and scalable information repositories. What will be next?”

Memories and memoirs

Katina sold the Charleston Conference and its associated Against the Grain publications imprint to the non-profit publisher Annual Reviews in 2023. This development soon saw the launch of the digital publication Katina, dedicated to and named after the visionary founder of the Charleston Conference – something she admits to being “incredibly flattered” by. 

Under the ownership of Annual Reviews, development of the Charleston brand continues apace: as well as the launch of Katina, plans are afoot for the inaugural Charleston Conference Asia – a three-day gathering in Bangkok, in January 2026.

For Katina herself, there is no time to rest. She is planning the launch of a new publishing company specialising in Southern Literature, and this year sees the publication of her memoir: Doing the Charleston – My Personal History of Scholarly Communication, written with Darrell Gunter and published April 2 by Against the Grain Press as a print and open access ebook. It promises to be a cracking read.

Katina refuses to be drawn into predictions for the future of librarianship, instead quoting the Netherlands author Corrie ten Boom: “Memories are the key not to the past, but to the future”, and Albert Einstein: “I never think of the future; it comes soon enough.”

But, she concludes: “It’s been a grand 45 years.”

Interview by Tim Gillett, with thanks to Darrell Gunter.

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