(Ann Arbor, MI—March XX, 2012) — HathiTrust is announcing the composition of its newly elected 12-member Board of Governors, which will lead the library collaborative into its next phase. The board, which replaces the Executive Committee that was established by the founding members in 2008, will oversee HathiTrust’s 10-million volume digital preservation repository, research center, and other initiatives. The decision to create the board was made during the HathiTrust Constitutional Convention held in October 2011, which was convened to chart its governance structure and priorities going forward.
Members of the Board elected at-large from the participating institutions are:
Five year terms:
Betsy Wilson (University of Washington)
Robert Wolven (Columbia University)
Four year terms:
Richard Clement (Utah State University)
Patricia Steele (University of Maryland)
Three year terms:
Carol Mandel (New York University)
Sarah Michalak (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill)
They will join six other members appointed by the founding institutions, each of whom will serve a term of five years:
Carol Diedrichs (Ohio State University)
Wendy Lougee (University of Minnesota)
Bradley Wheeler (Indiana University)
Laine Farley (California Digital Library)
Brian Schottlaender (UC San Diego)
Paul Courant (University of Michigan)
“The caliber of all the nominees was outstanding, and it speaks well for the future of HathiTrust to have this group of wonderfully qualified, enthusiastic leaders installed as our new board,” said John Wilkin, Executive Director of HathiTrust.
The board officially begins work on April 16, 2012. Among its first priorities will be to implement the remaining proposals passed during the constitutional convention. These initiatives call for the establishment of a distributed archive of print monographs corresponding to the digital copies held in HathiTrust; the creation of an approval process for proposed new initiatives, a fee-for-service model for content deposit, and a mechanism for allowing non-partners to contribute content to the repository; and a coordinated effort to expand access to digitized U.S. federal government documents.
HathiTrust is a collaboration of major research institutions and libraries working to ensure that the cultural record is preserved and accessible long into the future. There are more than sixty partners in HathiTrust, and membership is open to institutions worldwide. The HathiTrust Digital Library brings together the digitized collections of some of the world’s largest libraries, making them discoverable and accessible today and for generations to come. More information about HathiTrust can be found at HathiTrust.org.
Contact: Lynne Raughley (raughley@umich.edu)