Library Initiatives Team

Library Initiatives Team

As the Library Initiatives team, we aim to create capacities for our libraries, rather than deliver products. We are coordinators, facilitators, moderators, and hosts. Our focus is on connecting, convening, leading, planning, communicating, and celebrating as we work to build and maintain a “center” that can hold the highest ideals of collective action and interdependence that live within our library community.

 

 

Library Initiatives Staff

Maurice York, Director of Library Initiatives

Maurice is responsible for coordinating collective action at scale amongst the research libraries of the BTAA toward their commitment to realizing an interdependent, networked future. He works closely with the Library Deans/University Librarians of the Big Ten Academic Alliance to help shape strategies that the consortium pursues, oversee execution of those strategies, and continually work to build pathways to interdependence and coherence across member universities.

 


Marian Leon, Assistant Director for the BIG Collection

Marian provides primary programmatic leadership for BIG Collection initiatives. She provides strategic guidance for the BIG Collection and directly oversees its portfolio of programs, projects, and initiatives. Marian also plays an important role in developing the rich network of the library community and tending the maturation of the BIG Collection initiative as a whole.

 

Susanne Garrison, Community Coordinator

Susanne provides key logistical and practical support for coordinating, implementing, and administering the projects of the Big Collection initiative. Susanne is actively focused on our strongest asset–our community–by supporting and assisting in fostering the engagement of BTAA library collaborative groups with their peers and with the projects of the Big Collection.

Visiting Program Officers

Kate McCready, Visiting Program Officer for Academy-Owned Scholarly Publishing

As VPO for Academy-Owned Scholarly publishing, Kate provides leadership in the acquisition, publishing, and archiving of open access scholarly content, with a specific emphasis on investigating direction and strategy for developing shared publishing infrastructure and services at scale. Kate studies and facilitates policy, method, and infrastructure alignment among the libraries and presses of the Big Ten Academic Alliance in order to strengthen the Big Ten’s collective publishing capacity and discovery environment, while also coordinating attention to and investment in open publishing models.

 

Karla Strieb, Visiting Program Officer for Shared Collections

As VPO for Shared Collections, Karla provides leadership in developing and proposing models for collaborative collection development and co-investment toward the ideal of uniting the individual collections of the Big Ten through joint stewardship. Through her appointment, Karla engages and partners with key stakeholders across institutions to develop recommendations for shared policy and agreements to govern the “Big Ten Shared Collection.”

Consultants and Contractors

Jane Lorand - Strategic Futuring and Community Engagement

Scott Rosencrans - Philanthropic Relations Coordinator

Jeffery Spies - Data & Analytics 

Shared Collection analytics:

  Sara Amato - Gold Rush Analytics for Shared Collections

  Jeff Kosokoff - Shared Print Collections