The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) honors the life and legacy of Clifford Lynch, who passed away last week at his home. Clifford was the executive director of the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), an organization ARL established in partnership with EDUCAUSE in 1990. Clifford served as CNI executive director from 1997 until his death, and had planned to retire this summer. CNI announced Clifford’s passing this week.
The community celebrated Clifford at his retirement party following the Spring CNI Membership Meeting in Milwaukee on April 8. Attending via videoconference, Clifford heard, along with attendees, of the announcement of a forthcoming festschrift in his honor—a special open-access issue of portal: Libraries and the Academy to be published in July. CNI Associate Executive Director Emerita Joan Lippincott read excerpts from the entries, celebrating Clifford’s generosity, curiosity, depth and breadth of knowledge, unmatched ability to synthesize information and convey its implications, modesty, and genius.
The CNI staff prepared a video montage of retirement well-wishes from the CNI and ARL communities. Karen Estlund, dean of libraries at Colorado State University, contributed a photograph of more than a dozen women in information technology, noting that Clifford and CNI had helped support them and launch their careers. Tributes from women in IT poured in over the weekend echoing that sentiment.
With its twice yearly Membership Meetings, insights shared on its CNI-ANNOUNCE email list, and its annual Executive Roundtables, CNI under Clifford’s leadership was a true learning platform. Bridging libraries, archives, information technology, publishing, and policy, the community convened in person and virtually to incubate and workshop new projects, build stronger networks, and scale practices across the sector. Throughout those activities was Clifford—curating the programs, guiding our attention, and providing intellectual frameworks to make sense of the last few decades of digital transformation. Working, teaching, publishing, and building relationships in Washington, DC; at UC Berkeley; and around the world, Clifford was an ambassador—connecting people and projects to strengthen the cultural heritage sector. His partnership and collaborations with ARL were invaluable in strengthening the library’s role in the research enterprise.
In a final act of generosity, Clifford spoke via Zoom to the crowd gathered in Milwaukee to celebrate him and instructed us to celebrate one another and the community, noting that we now have proof that CNI can go on without him. Not without missing him terribly, and with eternal appreciation for the foundations and structures he left behind.
