Carol A. Mandel, dean of the NYU Division of Libraries, has been elected president of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), an organization representing 124 of the largest research libraries in Canada and the United States. ARL members include the largest research university libraries, as well as institutions such as the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library.
Carol A. Mandel, dean of the NYU Division of Libraries, has been elected president of the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), an organization representing 124 of the largest research libraries in Canada and the United States. ARL members include the largest research university libraries, as well as institutions such as the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library.
Mandel began her term as President-Elect in October and will become president in October 2010. Her role is to help carry out the mission of the association, which is to influence the rapidly changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve.
“The role of providing access to scholarly information is changing very rapidly,” said Charles Lowry, Executive Director of ARL. “The centrality of research libraries in major research universities has been presumed, but we’re going to have to understand what centrality means in providing access to scholarly information in the future, particularly as we see the wholesale availability of information in digital form-not necessarily free, but a higher level of presence of electronic forms of the basic information needed to teach and conduct research.”
ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, facilitating the emergence of new roles for research libraries, and shaping a future information environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations.
“It’s an honor to have the opportunity to serve such an important and effective association, especially at a time of such profound transformation in the role of research libraries and the environment in which they function,” said Mandel.
The NYU Division of Libraries is a five-library system that also includes Media Services, University Archives and the NYU Press. Prior to her arrival at NYU as Dean of Libraries in 1999, Mandel was deputy university librarian at Columbia University and associate university librarian for technical and access services at the University of California, San Diego. She was also an ARL staff member, serving as the Association’s Associate Executive Director. Her professional interests include digital library development, scholarly publishing, preservation and information access. Her publications and presentations have explored changing modes of research and teaching, library and digital infrastructure for research support, transitions and new models in scholarly communication, and access to primary resources.
Mandel is past president of the Digital Library Federation and former chair of the ARL Steering Committee on Scholarly Communication. She is a member of the Research Libraries Group Program Council, the OCLC Board Committee of RLG, the Board of Directors of ArtStor, the National Digital Strategy Advisory Board of the Library of Congress, and the Portico Advisory Committee. She holds a BA in Art from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and masters degrees in Art History and in Library Service from Columbia University.