Faust Names New Library Board

University President Drew G. Faust named eleven professors and administrators last Friday to serve as members of the first Harvard Library Board—an overseeing body that will name an executive director of the newly designed, centralized library structure as its first order of business.

The creation of the board is the first step in an over a year long process to centralize the University libraries to increase coordination between the formally autonomous organizations and boost accessibility to resources.

These appointments come after the Task Force on University Libraries advised the University to make these administrative changes in a Nov. 2009 report, which Provost Steven E. Hyman approved Dec. 1 after a slow decision process.

Chair of the Harvard Library Implementation Work Group David C. Lamberth, a Divinity School professor, said that this administrative change will allow for more centralized redesigning of the IT structure of the library, boosting accessibility to University resources.

The board has the immediate responsibility of naming of an executive director, who will then integrate the library resources from the schools’ discrete collections across the University, Lamberth said in a Dec. 1 interview.

Hyman will serve as chair of the board, which will include five other permanent members, including the Carl H. Pforzheimer University professor and deans or designees from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard Business School, Harvard Law School, and Harvard Medical School.

The other five members will rotate, serving staggered three-year terms. Two members will represent two of the six other schools in the University and the Radcliffe Institute.

The other three members will be at-large faculty members.

—Staff writer Gautam S. Kumar can be reached at gkumar@college.harvard.edu.  —Staff writer Sirui Li can be reached at sli@college.harvard.edu.