Margaret is the lead research and instruction librarian, with responsibilities for the fields of Classics, Gender and Sexuality Studies, History, Political Science and selected Writing Program courses. She works with library colleagues to provide services for students, faculty, staff, and outside users. She meets with classes for hands-on sessions where students become familiar with the different levels of databases, tools, and research strategies specific to their discipline. Users can contact Margaret for one-on-one meetings to focus on particular questions they have as they move through the research process.
As a teen, Margaret got behind the scenes of her public library with a part-time job. In college and grad school she added to her understanding of libraries while doing research. But it wasn’t until library school that she began to realize what instruction could do for people as they planned a project, worked through the research, and drew conclusions. Instruction can provide a real element of empowerment in prompting people to take charge of the research process and view themselves as participants in a public dialog.
Learning by doing is an old truism, but it is a strategy that works. Margaret started an online index about medieval women and gender called Feminae which now has over 40, 000 records. By being a researcher with different kinds of questions to answer, she gets a better idea about the experiences of students and faculty.
PUBLICATIONS
Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index (formerly Medieval Feminist Index), 1996 to the present. Creator and editor of a Web database project covering journal articles, book reviews, essays in collections, translations, and images concerning women, gender, and sexuality. See Feminae image records.
Co-authored with Terry Snyder. "False Starts and Breakthroughs: Senior Thesis Research as a Critical Learning Process." portal: Libraries and the Academy Vol. 18, No. 2 (April 2018): 251-264.
Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia. Edited by Margaret Schaus. Routledge Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages, v. 14. New York and London: Routledge, 2006.
Co-authored with Susan Mosher Stuard. "Bibliography: Citizens of No Mean City: Medieval Women's History." Journal of Women's History Vol. 6, No. 3 (Fall 1994): 170-198. Earlier version of this essay published in Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries Vol. 30, No. 4 (Dec. 1992): 583-595.
Co-authored with John Spielman and Susan Stuard. "Introducing Undergraduates to Manuscript Research." Perspectives: American Historical Association Newsletter Vol. 29, No. 5 (May/June 1991): 16-18.
"Researching Medieval Women." Medieval Feminist Newsletter No. 10 (Fall 1990): 4-10.
"Hands-On History: Working with Historical Documents and Artifacts as an Alternative to the Library Research Paper." College & Research Library News Vol. 51, No. 9 (October 1990): 825-831.
EDUCATION
University of California, Berkeley. MLIS.
University of Toronto. MA, Medieval Studies.
University of Illinois. BA, Medieval Studies.