Future of the Research Library Speaker Series

Presented by the University of Maryland Libraries, the lecture series explores the role of a modern research library in a rapidly changing environment.  Invited speakers will inform, provoke, and otherwise engage our thinking in different and innovative ways.  These free events are open to all members of the campus community and the general public.

Terps in Our Beds? - Building Meaningful (Library) Relationships in a Multi-Partnered World

Our research libraries cannot hope to build local collections that will meet all of our users’ needs, so we look to cooperative and consortial arrangements to fill the gap. However, we have not fully explored this landscape. Overlapping cooperative commitments, poorly defined assessment plans, uncertain business models, and fundamental questions concerning scope and adaptability all demand our attention. This presentation seeks to provoke discussion on these and related topics.

About the presenter:

Dan Hazen assumed his current post as Associate Librarian of Harvard College for Collection Development in January, 2005. He preceded this assignment with a term as Head of the Collection Development Department in Harvard's Widener Library; earlier still, he spent about fourteen years as Widener's Librarian for Latin America, Spain, and Portugal. Hazen holds a doctorate in Latin American History from Yale University and a Master's in Library Science from Simmons College. He previously served as Latin American bibliographer at Cornell University, and then at the University of California at Berkeley. He also served a two-year term as the (part time) Director of the "Global Resources Network," a cooperative initiative then co-sponsored by the Association of American Universities and the Association of Research Libraries. Dan has taught and/or conducted extended research in Latin America, and also served as library consultant to the Lampadia Foundation (now defunct) for its activities in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. He directs the Harvard-based, Mellon-funded "Program for Latin American Libraries and Archives," which to date has provided almost $3M in small grants to support tightly defined projects for preservation and access within the region.