Kate Donovan arrives at Boston University with more than a decade of experience working in and leading university libraries. Photo by Brandon Sanchez Mejia

New Appointment

New University Librarian Aims to Create the Library of the Future, With the Community’s Help

Kate Donovan hopes to make BU’s libraries more accessible and reimagine them in the age of AI and Big Data

For Kate Donovan, all roads lead to the library.

As a child, Donovan would visit her local library and emerge carrying a stack of books as tall as she was. But she never imagined that years later, she would be working in libraries—let alone leading them.

This year, after more than a decade of working in higher education and academic libraries, Donovan joins Boston University as the institution’s university librarian. With a deep commitment to making academic libraries more accessible and inclusive for everyone, Donovan is excited to both reimagine and reestablish the role that libraries play in the lives of students, faculty, staff, and the community at a time when AI and the internet have made safe harbors of information more important than ever.

“There is an opportunity here that is fairly rare to partner with the entire BU community to create a reenergized, renewed library that really reflects our values, supports our students and scholars, and inspires discoveries and connections that we can’t even imagine yet,” Donovan says. “What does the library of the future look like? We get to find out together and build it together.”

Prior to arriving at BU, Donovan most recently served as director and associate university librarian for special collections at University of California Berkeley’s Bancroft Library. She also held a leadership position at Harvard University’s Houghton Library, and worked in special collection libraries at New York University and Emory University.

Donovan’s extensive experience with academic libraries and her passion for what they can bring to university communities primes her to “articulate and implement a future-oriented vision for BU Libraries as an essential academic and research infrastructure supporting student success, faculty scholarship, and global engagement,” Provost and Chief Academic Officer Colin Duckett wrote in a letter to BU faculty and staff earlier this month.

Donovan’s original career goal was to become a historian, which introduced her to the joys of digging through archives and led her to a mid-career pivot to archivist and library curator. Through her early work at Emory University’s library, she saw another side of what libraries can offer.

“I came to realize that while I had always loved historical manuscripts and rare books, archives and libraries are more fundamentally about people and stories,” Donovan says. “My role as an archivist and librarian was to help everyone, from students and faculty to the broader public, discover those stories. Viewing my work as connecting people to the information they seek became the propeller for the rest of my career.” 

This idea, that a library is a “convener,” a place to foster connections between people and knowledge, defines Donovan’s approach as a librarian. At each academic library she’s worked at, she has opened the doors to as many people as possible, including community members who live beyond the bounds of campus.

“Over the course of her career, she has sought to expand access to special collections and create more welcoming and inclusive library environments for students, faculty, staff, and visitors alike,” Duckett noted in his letter, adding that Donovan “arrives at a transformative moment for BU Libraries, as the University continues to fundraise and plan for the eventual renovation and reimagination of Mugar Library.”

At Berkeley, Donovan helmed a library where fourth graders could come to learn about California history and where middle schoolers could explore a collection of ancient Egyptian papyrus texts. 

“Libraries stand as stewards of trusted information, whether at a public or private institution,” Donovan says. “While our core mission is to support campus research, teaching, and learning, our work must also focus on engaging the broader public and serving our communities.”

Stepping into her new role, Donovan says the value a university library brings is more important than ever. Information literacy, the ability to sort through an ever-growing mountain of data–and the technology behind it–and then parse what is trustworthy and what is not, are increasingly necessary skills at a time when people have access to more information than ever before. This is nothing new for librarians. Donovan sees BU’s libraries leading the charge to foster literacy and critical thought around data and AI.

All the elements of Donovan’s vision for BU’s libraries, from community inclusivity to AI literacy, come back to the idea that a library is an information hub, the crossroads of people, ideas, and the stories that flow from both. It’s a particularly apt concept for BU and its increasing emphasis on convergent research that fuels innovation through interdisciplinary collaboration.

“This is our bread and butter, looking across the disciplines, thinking about how information and people connect, and being part of that connection ourselves in ways that support discovery,” Donovan says. “Discovery can be really joyful and fun.”