The Library is pleased to announce the hire of Colleen Major as the Associate University Librarian for Scholarly Resources, a member of the Library’s senior leadership team. Colleen’s first day will be March 1. 

This key position at the Library has broad responsibility for ensuring that Brown’s educational mission, research priorities, and diverse campus community are supported at the highest level with academic materials. Colleen will assume responsibility for the Library’s overall collection strategy including creation and implementation of system-wide policies and procedures and management of the Library’s $13 million collection budget. As head of the Library’s Scholarly Resources department, Colleen will oversee the staff teams responsible for cataloging and metadata, electronic resources, and acquisitions, and provide direction for the ongoing implementation of BruKnow, the Library’s new catalog system.

Colleen will report to Nora Dimmock, the Deputy University Librarian, and will work directly with University Librarian Joseph Meisel on academic and budget strategy. As part of the Library’s senior leadership team, Colleen will contribute to the Library’s strategic planning, implementation, and assessment; the continued foregrounding of the principles of diversity, equity, inclusion, and community-building; and promoting efficient and collaborative workflows across departments, systems, and projects with a focus on meeting the challenges of the 21st century academic library at a leading research university. 

Colleen comes to Brown from Columbia University, where she served as the Libraries’ Head of Electronic Resources Management: Operations & Analysis, supporting numerous system libraries in the centralized management of the full life-cycle of electronic resources. Previously in her role at The University of Montana, she served as a subject specialist and liaison librarian for the Departments of Anthropology, Native American Studies, Linguistics, African-American Studies, Asian Studies, and Women’s Studies.

Colleen recently completed a Master of Science in Nonprofit Management from Columbia University and received a Master of Library Science from The State University of New York at Buffalo. She is excited by the opportunity to grow in this vital leadership role and to strengthen the Library’s essential support for education and research at Brown.