Michael Edward Holland, Special Collections, Archives & Rare Books (SCARaB), hails from Oklahoma City, OK. Michael has worked for MU Libraries for 13 years, before which he worked 8 years as University Archivist at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon. Before that he was the Assistant Director of the Local Records Division of the Texas State Archives & Library in Austin, Texas. Michael’s education includes: Classen High School, Oklahoma City; B.S. in Chemistry and Physiology, Oklahoma State University; MA in European History, Oklahoma State University, doctoral work in the History of Science at Johns Hopkins University; NEH fellowship in book conservation and preservation at Yale.
When asked about pets, Michael replied “Cats are the limbs of Satan and I have eschewed them since 1995.”
Michael spends his leisure time reading history and also crime thriller fiction and listening to Delta and Mid-West Blues.
The coolest place he’s ever visited? “Moscow, it has the brooding and somber spirit that allows one to feel the presence of Rurik Grand Dukes and Tsars such as Ivan the Terrible and the early Romanovs. A very different feel from St. Petersburg which is much more like a Western European City.”
We asked what actor (living or dead) should play Michael in a movie of his life. He replied, “I think a movie of my life would be an amazingly uninteresting and tedious film, but probably Charles Laughton.”
What else should we know about Michael? “In November my wife, Debbie, and I will have been married 29 years; we met while I was the high school chemistry teacher and she was the high school librarian.”