Director, Scholarly Connections

Summary The Drexel University Libraries is an innovative, nimble, and responsive organization that is transforming an academic library’s contribution to the mission of higher education. Its current Strategic Directions, refreshed for 2017-22, guides its efforts by strengthening Drexel’s connections to scholarship by improving discovery and availability of Drexel-generated research output, by containing the cost of higher education through cost-effective management of access to authoritative scholarly resources, and by inspiring life-long quest for learning through guidance, self-directed services, and designed information-based environments. Today it leverages 55 FTE staff across four physical locations and a highly active cyberspace. Located in Philadelphia, PA, Drexel University is a private, urban, R1 research university with nearly 25,000 students, over 200-degree programs, and 15 colleges and schools. Drexel is an academically comprehensive and globally engaged urban research university, dedicated to advancing knowledge and society and to providing every student with a valuable, rigorous, experiential, technology-infused education, enriched by one of the nation's oldest, largest, and best-known cooperative education programs. Key Responsibilities The Director, Scholarly Connections, provides administrative leadership in implementing a core strategic direction that extends the Libraries’ staff expertise in library and information science, archival and records management; and its professional knowledge networks and services to integrate academic experiences with Drexel’s strengthened connections to scholarship. Through the Libraries’ matrixed organizational management, the Director leads staff throughout the Libraries to extend the value of scholarly publications, sharable research data and archival collections.    The Director provides direct supervision to three managers who lead evolving programs for archives and digital assets repositories, scholarly communications, and data management advisory services. Reporting to the Dean of Libraries, the entrepreneurial administrator strategically leads collaborations among staff, vendors, faculty, administrators and researchers to design, acquire and continually improve effective systems, licenses, and responsive advisory service support to ensure access to authoritative scholarly resources. The Libraries’ responsibility for information access encompasses purchased, licensed and archived collections, emerging open scholarly communication venues, and Drexel-generated research output in support of teaching, learning and research. Leadership responsibilities for the Drexel University Libraries are shared broadly among the Libraries senior managers, who include three Directors and the Dean of Libraries comprising the Strategic Leadership Group, and an additional 14 program managers constituting the Managerial Leadership Group.  Together the SLG works as a collaborative team to shape and continually evolve the Libraries’ strategic directions and resource allocations to be a dynamic partner in the intellectual life of the University.  Each Director has a holistic understanding of the library organization, its mission, strategic priorities and practices, which permit any one of them to make decisions in the absence of the Dean about the daily management of the Libraries.   Each has a portfolio of unique administrative responsibilities for which s/he brings expertise, knowledge of current trends, professional contacts and a perspective responsive to the campus community’s needs. In addition to scholarly connections, the portfolios of unique administrative responsibilities include self-directed learning and information services for one director, and organizational infrastructure for the other.

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