The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has selected Claire Stewart as the next Juanita J. and Robert E. Simpson Dean of Libraries and University Librarian Designate beginning May 16, 2023, pending approval by the Board of Trustees.
Since 2019, Stewart has served as the dean of libraries for the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, where she chairs the University of Nebraska Consortium of Libraries Executive Committee. Her tenure at Nebraska has been marked by a number of important milestones for the library. Under her leadership, Nebraska completed a major renovation of the library’s second-largest facility. She rejuvenated the library’s philanthropic support program by reengaging existing donors and building new connections for future private support. She initiated a university-wide effort to develop a comprehensive research-data strategy. And she developed new collaborative relationships with colleges and units that resulted in major new research partnerships in disciplines that ranged from agriculture to the digital humanities.
Stewart went to Nebraska from the University of Minnesota, where she served as associate university librarian for research and learning. Prior to Minnesota, Stewart held several positions at Northwestern University over a 21-year period, including director of the Center for Scholarly Communication and Digital Curation and head of Digital Collections. She holds a bachelor of arts in English literature with a minor in humanistic studies from St. Mary’s College and a master of library and information science from Dominican University.
Stewart has been active in the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), chairing the Advocacy and Public Policy Committee in 2021–2022 and the Association Meeting Program Planning Task Force in 2020–2021. She also served on the Code of Conduct Committee in 2022, the Consultative Group to Association Meeting Program Planning Task Force in 2022, the ARL/CARL Joint Task Force on Research Data Services in 2020, and the Advocacy and Public Policy Committee in 2019–2021. Stewart was an ARL Leadership Fellow in 2016–2017.
At the University of Illinois, Stewart will succeed John Wilkin, who stepped down in November 2022, after leading the University of Illinois Library since 2013. Christopher Prom has been serving as interim dean since December 2022.
For more information about Stewart and her appointment, see the University of Illinois news release, “Campus Announces New University Librarian Designate.”
