Timothy D. Pyatt will begin his appointment as the Dorothy Foehr Huck Chair and head of The Eberly Family Special Collections Library in the University Libraries on June 1. Pyatt comes to Penn State from Duke University where, since 2002, he has been the university archivist in the Perkins Library and, from 2006 to 2010, he served as associate director of the Rare Book, Manuscript and Special Collections Library.
"Tim Pyatt, with his strong leadership and experience, is an exceptional addition to our Libraries," said Barbara I. Dewey, dean of University Libraries and Scholarly Communications at Penn State.
During his tenure at Duke, he increased the public programming of their archives, expanded access to the university’s history and ventured into the new world of electronic records, making Duke's archives a model for other universities. Pyatt offered leadership for Duke's special collections library during a time of change and successfully nurtured a new jazz archive program and the gift and processing of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation records. Instrumental in Duke's born digital program, he started and coordinated the library's institutional repository DukeSpace that provides access to electronically submitted Duke dissertations, theses and honors papers as well as selected born-digital university records and faculty scholarship.
Prior to coming to Duke University, Pyatt was director of the Southern Historical Collection and curator of manuscripts at the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill. He also served as curator of rare books at both the University Maryland and the University of Oregon. From 1998 to 2007, he taught archival administration at UNC in their School of Information and Library Science.
Pyatt has held several elected offices for the Society of American Archivists (SAA), is a past-president of the Society of North Carolina Archivists and was appointed by the governor to serve on the North Carolina State Historical Records Advisory Board from 2000 to 2005. He currently chairs SAA's Committee on Ethics and Professional Contact and regularly leads electronic records workshops for the society.
Pyatt holds a bachelor of arts degree in history from Duke University and a master's of library science from North Carolina Central University.
"I look forward to working with the talented Penn State library faculty and staff during this era of evolutionary change for libraries and their service models," Pyatt said. "I plan to build on the strong special collections legacy left by previous Huck Chairs Charley Mann and William Joyce."
For more information, contact The Special Collections Library at 814-865-1793.