From BU Today: New University Librarian Aims to Create the Library of the Future, With the Community’s Help
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.
Read the rest of the article on BU Today.