Administration

Penn State librarian named executive director of HathiTrust

During his tenure at Penn State, Furlough oversaw advances related to digital publishing, research data curation and e-records management

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- Mike Furlough, associate dean for research and scholarly communications in the University Libraries, has been named executive director of HathiTrust, an international partnership of more than 90 academic and research institutions that owns and operates a digital repository containing more than 11 million public domain and in-copyright volumes, digitized from partnering institution libraries and other sources.

Furlough, who will leave Penn State in April, noted, “HathiTrust has dramatically increased access to the published record, and created a membership structure that governs a shared, distributed infrastructure for preservation and innovative use. We're poised now to build upon those achievements and to transform the ways that research libraries collaborate to produce knowledge.”

During Furlough’s eight-year tenure at Penn State, he has overseen the development of a number of important initiatives related to digital publishing, research data curation and e-records management. This included the creation of ScholarSphere, a research repository service offered by the Libraries and Information Technology Services. He has also played an integral role in the libraries’ strategic planning process.

“I am grateful for his many contributions and glad that he will be at the helm of a very important initiative for Penn State and libraries in general. We look forward to working with him in this new and critically important capacity,” said Barbara Dewey, dean of the University Libraries and scholarly communications.

Mike Furlough has been named executive director of HathiTrust, an international partnership of more than 90 academic and research institutions that owns and operates a digital repository containing more than 11 million public domain and in-copyright volumes, digitized from partnering institution libraries and other sources. Credit: Wilson Hutton, Public Relations and Marketing, University Libraries / Penn StateCreative Commons

Last Updated January 10, 2015