Beginning in 1976, Courtney was head of the Art Library at the University of Maryland, a post she held for 20 years. She became a textile/art historian. Her doctoral dissertation was titled "The Rise of the Artist/Weaver: Tapestry Weaving in the U.S. 1930-1990." She conducted an eight-week course in Tapestry for the Smithsonian Institution and lectured there on Tapestries and Furnishings in the Medieval Castle. Ms. Shaw lectured and wrote periodical articles on tapestry weavers and other artists for the Fiber Arts Study Group (Washington, D.C.), the Harper's Ferry Textile Study Group, the Art Libraries Society of North America, and the International Tapestry Network. She also offered a lecture each semester in the Textiles and Consumer Economics Department at the University of Maryland.
In 1993, Ms. Shaw taught a semester course on the History of Textiles for the University of Maryland's University College.
In 1989, she was guest curator for "American Tapestry Weaving and Its European Roots," an exhibition and symposium held at the University of Maryland, College Park. She wrote several articles on tapestry for Macmillan Publishing that were included in the 1992 "Dictionary of Art." She was a series editor for Oryx Press for "Art and Craft," of which one volume, "Embroidery and Needlepoint," was published. She was on the advisory board of the International Tapestry Network and Bethea Associates, and was editor of "Tapestry Topics of the American Tapestry Alliance." She wrote "Tapestry: A Guide to Information Sources at the Gloria F. Ross Center for Tapestry Studies and the Smithsonian Institution" and has begun "Tapestries: A Guide to Art Reproductions in Books." Ms. Shaw has also written an extensive bibliography called "Researching Festivals."
Dr. Shaw studied tapestry techniques in Provence with Daniel Drouin and took numerous studio courses, especially in drawing and watercolor.
In 1995, Dr. Shaw became Life Sciences reference librarian at the University of Maryland, covering Agriculture, Health and Medicine, and Life Sciences for four years while monitoring the work of three employees from the National Agricultural Library. She created library guides in each subject area.
Dr. Shaw took the Medical Librarianship course at UM under Winifred Sewell, with a special interest in cancer-related subjects. She also took many MLA and SLA sessions on Drugs, Chemicals, Environmental, and other related information sources. (Many of Courtney's family members—her father, mother, brother, and nephew—are in the medical profession, so she was now able to speak their language.) While at the University of Maryland, Courtney took Andreas Baxenvanis's Biotechnology Workshop at CLIS, then made a full display for the UMCP Libraries, Biotechnology, and Its Ethical Issues, with a PowerPoint program presented with Sylvia O'Brien and Dr. Kathy Nepote for the faculty and graduate students.
She reads Spanish (having studied it during high school and college) and speaks some. It was refreshed as a result of a journey to Panama to visit the Smithsonian's Tropical Research Institute there. She can read several other languages fairly well because of her extensive background in art history.
1998-2011
Beginning in May 1998, Dr. Shaw was a Vertebrate Zoology librarian at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History. In that capacity, she oversaw four libraries: Amphibians and Reptiles, Fish, Birds, and Mammals. She created the Reptiles' homepage for the Division of Amphibians and Reptiles. The job entailed acquisitions of new materials, entering records for gifts and exchanges and monitoring serials, ordering all equipment and supplies for these libraries, and answering all reference queries by appointment, in-house, via email, and by telephone. She worked mainly with the systematists/curators, so the quality of reference needed was high. Dr. Shaw handled all medical-related questions. She gave numerous lectures at the annual meetings of the Medical Library Association, Special Libraries Association, and the Art Library Society of North America (ARLIS). She also spoke before the International Association of Marine Science Libraries and Information Centers on ITIS, or the Integrated Taxonomic Information System. In Rome, she gave a poster session on the Biologia-Centrali Americana Project. She created an index of place names, filled in bibliographic information for the Index Animalium Project MAC/MLA, the local medical library group, and attended Medical Library Association conferences.
One of Dr. Shaw's strengths became teaching training courses, often in PowerPoint. She was a lecturer for both the NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) database and for PubMed at the National Museum of Natural History, having completed numerous courses at the National Library of Medicine, Museum Support Center, Vertebrate Zoology, and Anthropology staff. She also had extensive teaching experience, from "Methodology and Bibliography" to the "History of Art" and the "History of Textiles" for the Excel Program at University College, University of Maryland in College Park, by evaluating adult-learner portfolios and assigning them credit toward degrees in such fields as Library Science, Textiles, and Interior Design.
Dr. Shaw headed a task force to create the "Facts About…" orientation page of the Smithsonian's Natural and Physical Sciences Department, which included creating floor plans of the various libraries within the vast building.
For the 100th anniversary of the Natural Museum of Natural History, Dr. Shaw flew to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to interview famed scientist Alan Cheetham. Before retiring in 2011, she completed a project with Diane Pitassy titled Spotlight on Amateur Naturalists.
2011-2014
Since her retirement in 2011, Dr. Shaw, an avid stamp collector, has volunteered at the National Postal Museum Library-Smithsonian Institution one Saturday a month to provide service to philatelists. She recently received the Washington Stamp Collectors Club Appreciation Award.
Finally, Courtney also volunteers at the Kent Island Federation of Arts as a docent.
