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HathiTrust Members Elect 4 New Board Members and Unanimously Pass 2022 Budget

October 5, 2021

The members of HathiTrust have elected four new members to its Board of Governors. Elected to three year terms (2022-2024) are Theresa Byrd, University of San Diego, and Xuemao Wang, University of Cincinnati. Anne Houston, Lafayette College, and Beth Namachchivaya, University of Waterloo, were elected to two year terms (2022-2023). The proposed 2022 budget was also unanimously approved by participating members.

Holly Mercer of the University of Tennessee Knoxville and Chair of the HathiTrust Board of Governors, welcomes the new board members. “The energy and vision promised by these new board members is invigorating as we look forward to HathiTrust’s future.  We’ll benefit greatly from their leadership in their own organizations and in our member community. I am grateful for their willingness to serve and can’t wait to get started.”

Theresa Byrd, 2021 HathiTrust Board Elect 

Dr. Theresa Byrd, Dean of the University Library at the University of San Diego (HathiTrust member since 2020), was elected to a three-year term on the HathiTrust Board of Governors from 2022 through 2024. Byrd also currently serves on the OCLC Board of Trustees and the Global Council and the Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium Board (SCELC). “HathiTrust is the exemplar of the digital library,” she says. “The most urgent issues facing academic and research libraries are diversity, equity, and inclusion. [I am ] prepared to help in addressing structural racism in the HathiTrust organization through Board work.” Additional interests in HathiTrust include furthering the Shared Print Program, safeguarding the organization’s financial health, and ensuring that the membership is kept informed.

Anne Houston, 2021 HathiTrust Board Elect

 Anne Houston, Dean of Libraries at Lafayette College (HathiTrust member since 2011), recently completed a three-year term on the HathiTrust Program Steering Committee (PSC) and will now serve a two-year term (2022-2023) on the Board of Governors. “I believe the most pressing issue that the Board should address is the need for the HathiTrust corpus to be more inclusive. If HathiTrust is to truly represent the “record of human knowledge,” as our mission states, we will need to consider how to broaden the reach of our digital collecting.” She currently serves on the Lever Press Oversight Committee and JSTOR Library Advisory Board, and through 2021, the Board of Directors for the Oberlin Group of Liberal Arts College Libraries and HathiTrust Research Center Community Advisory Board.

Beth Namachchivaya, 2021 HathiTrust Board Elect

 Beth Sandore Namachchivaya, University Librarian at University of Waterloo (HathiTrust Member since 2020), was elected to serve a two-year term (2022-2023) on the HathiTrust Board of Governors.  “My interest in serving on the Board stems from my commitment to advancing scholarship,” says Namachchivaya. “At this important inflection point, HathiTrust is ideally positioned as a vital space for advancing digitally-resilient copyright perspectives, and supporting innovative and thoughtful use of the scholarly record in learning and research.” Namachchivaya is past chair of the board of the Ontario Council of University LIbraries consortium (OCUL), and member of the ACLS eBook Advisory Board. She also holds, or has held, numerous leadership roles in the Association for Research Libraries (ARL); Canadian Association for Research Libraries (CARL); Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), and other organizations. 

Xuemao Wang, 2021 HathiTrust Board Elect

 Xuemao Wang, Dean and University Librarian, and Vice Provost for Digital Scholarship, at the University of Cincinnati (HathiTrust member since 2018) will serve three terms on the HathiTrust Board of Governors (2022-2024). He supports a primary goal of the Board to “sharply focus on ‘strategic’ roles for the organization’s continuing evolving future.” He advocates for finding ways “to broaden multidisciplinary scholar engagement from disciplines beyond humanities and social sciences.” Wang’s 35+ year-career spans multi-library sectors from the academic, public, consortium, and international library worlds. He has served on several professional organizations’ governing boards, standing and advisory committees, task-forces and working groups, including IFLA, ALA, ARL, CRL, SPARC, and OhioLINK.

Kenning Arlistch, Montana State University, chair this year’s Nominating Committee, which also included Janet Bishop, The Claremont Colleges; Joe Lucia, Temple University; Virginia Steel, University of California, Los Angeles; and Wade Wyckoff, McMaster University.

Departing the Board at the end of 2021 will be Kenning Arlitsch, Montana State University; Mimi Calter, Stanford University; and Robert McDonald, University of Colorado Boulder. Yolanda Cooper, Emory University, departed this summer.  

The HathiTrust Board of Governors has ultimate responsibility for HathiTrust's activities, strategy, finances, and operations. It includes six at-large members elected by the membership and six members appointed by the founding institutions, which include Indiana University, the University of California, the University of Michigan, and the members of the Big Ten Academic Alliance. The current members of the Board and their terms follow: 

Kenning Arlitsch, Montana State University past chair, 2021 (term ends Dec. 2021)

Mimi Calter, Stanford University (term ends Dec. 2021)

Diane Dallis-Comentale, Indiana University (appointed)

Mike Furlough , HathiTrust ex officio

James Hilton , University of Michigan (appointed)

Robert McDonald, University of Colorado Boulder (term ends Dec. 2021)

Holly Mercer , University of Tennessee, Knoxville, chair, 2021-2022 (term ends Dec. 2023)

Virginia Steel, University of California Los Angeles (appointed)

Claire Stewart, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Chair-elect, 2021-2022 (appointed)

Karla Strieb, The Ohio State University ex officio, Program Steering Committee Chair

Günter Waibel, California Digital Library, (appointed)

Elaine Westbrooks, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (term ends Dec. 2022)

John Wilkin, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (appointed)

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