A native of Bowling Green, Sue Lynn McDaniel completed a master’s degree in history at Western Kentucky University, focusing her research on nineteenth-century social and cultural history.  Her thesis topic, “Expressions of Grief in South Central Kentucky, 1870-1910,” allowed her to delve into resources and a region largely neglected by previous historians.  After two years as archivist at Cumberland University in Lebanon, Tennessee, McDaniel earned a master’s degree in library and information science at the University of Kentucky.

For five years, she served on the Western Kentucky University faculty as Manuscripts Librarian at the Kentucky Building.  While living in east Tennessee for the next four years, McDaniel continued her work with archives at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and Carson-Newman College. Returning to Bowling Green, she served ten years as University Archivist for prior to accepting her current role as Special Collections Librarian for WKU Library Special Collections.  She regained her faculty status as an Associate Professor on July 1, 2005 and was promoted to Professor on July 1, 2017.

McDaniel first became interested in etiquette and reality while studying cultural history at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.  There she recognized that her early training in family expectations relevant to courtship and funeral customs is deeply rooted in a Southern Victorian tradition.   She has published articles on late nineteenth-century Kentucky etiquette and Leap Year in The Ephemera Journal, The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society and the Filson Club History Quarterly.  Other publications include a discussion of collection management strategies for American Libraries, a World War II fighter pilot’s career for The Journal of East Tennessee History and an article on Annie Fellows Johnston and The Little Colonel books for The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society.