Dean of Libraries

The University of Massachusetts Amherst (“UMass Amherst” or “UMass”), the state’s land-grant university and flagship campus of the University of Massachusetts System, seeks a collaborative, mission-oriented, and community-centered leader to serve as the next Dean of University Libraries. This is an opportunity to lead the largest state-supported academic library system in New England and to join a dynamic R1 university community with a deep commitment to social change and the creation of a better world. 

The next Dean will join UMass Amherst at a transformational moment. The University has recently welcomed a new Chancellor and Provost who join the vibrant community of dreamers, innovators, creators, and scholars. New leadership inspires new strategic direction, and a new strategic plan is being developed with the release set for Fall 2024, setting the stage for UMass Amherst to continue to lead the way into the future of public higher education. The new strategic plan has focused on five guiding principles: education; research, creative activity, translation, and knowledge transfer; engagement; inclusivity, wellbeing, and sustainability; and financial and operational viability. 

The next Dean of Libraries will champion the libraries as a place where students, staff, and faculty can pursue their intellectual passions; where resources for learning, teaching, and scholarship abound; where new modes of scholarly inquiry and discovery can be explored, supported, and shared; where community members can gather and exchange ideas; and where the University's ideals of openness, inclusivity, and societal betterment flourish. The Dean will have the opportunity to build upon the Libraries’ excellent reputation for data management and preservation, its on-going development of open educational resources and software in collaboration with UMass Amherst faculty, its pioneering work on transformative licensing agreements for scholarly resources, its active national role in open science, its contributions to the international development of the open-source library services platform FOLIO, and the continued growth of the Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center and the W. E. B. Du Bois Center. Reporting to the Provost, the Dean of Libraries will work collaboratively with senior leaders across campus and a passionate Libraries team, offering strategic partnership and tactical support. UMass Amherst seeks a seasoned professional with a commitment to transparency and clear communication, a servant-leadership mindset, and inherent enthusiasm for the role Libraries play in education and society more broadly. The Dean of Libraries must possess the professional experience and insight to grasp the strategic, administrative, structural, and financial requirements of a complex academic research library at a flagship land grant institution.

While the search will continue until an appointment is made, for optimal consideration, please submit materials by Friday, October 25. Confidential applications, inquiries, and nominations should be directed below. While the search will continue until an appointment is made, for optimal consideration please submit materials by Friday, October 25, 2024.

Sean Farrell is leading this search with Hannah Moore.