Involvement Post Donation

After the donation of his collection, John MacKay Shaw remained involved in his community and the collection. Shaw was an active member of the St. Andrews Society, the Friends of the FSU Libraries, and the Presbyterian Church. He also started the FSU Libraries' Scottish Collection in 1975 with a donation of 100 books. Shaw became a volunteer curator at FSU and wrote several articles for scholarly journals and monographs. He also traveled around the United States to give talks to librarians and English teachers, and to read to children in local schools. Shaw received the Doctor of Humane Letters degree on May 24, 1972 from the FSU faculty of the Department of Child Development.  For the last twenty-five years of his life, Shaw visited Strozier Library daily to revisit his collection: studying, writing, and discussing his books. He was constantly adding to and improving his work, typing informative footnotes into his notebooks as he discovered new material. He spent the rest of his days working alongside his passions in the library; appropriately, his very last evening was spent with the Friends of the Library, an organization on campus that works to promote libraries’ work, valuing their vital role in learning, teaching, and research.