The Library is pleased to announce the appointment of Niamh McGuigan as the inaugural Director of the University Library’s new Center for Library Exploration and Research (CLEAR). Niamh’s first day at Brown was January 10, 2022. She reports to the Deputy University Librarian and will work closely with the University Librarian and Associate University Librarian for Special Collections on CLEAR’s strategic development. 

As CLEAR’s inaugural director, Niamh will have the opportunity to refine CLEAR’s vision and implement its programming. An unprecedented new venture at the Library, CLEAR’s mission is to build and nurture academic community through collaboration with stakeholders and organizations within Brown and the Library and through partnership with community organizations, including Providence Public Schools and other local academic and cultural entities. Funded through generous donor support, CLEAR will position the Library as a key partner in teaching and learning, and bring greater focus, coordination, and accessibility to library activities that advance student and instructor research capabilities in three domains: core tools and methods, data, and primary sources.

Niamh comes to Brown from the University Libraries at Loyola University Chicago where she served as the Head of Research and Learning Services and as the subject specialist for English. During her time at Loyola, Niamh established an information literacy program that provides instruction in library and research skills, in collaboration with the writing program. For over a decade, the instruction program has ensured that all undergraduate students in the University participate in multiple course-integrated library instruction classes in their first year. Niamh coordinated the team of subject specialist librarians at Loyola, and had been actively engaged in re-envisioning the University Libraries’ approach to collection development and management, as well as developing and integrating library discovery tools in alignment with the needs of students and researchers.  

Niamh is also the Associate Director of Modernist Networks, an online federation of digital projects on modernist literature and culture, and served on the advisory board and the graduate committee for the Center for Textual Studies and Digital Humanities at Loyola University Chicago.   

Prior to joining Loyola in 2007, Niamh was a Reference Librarian at Meredith College, where she coordinated a curriculum integrated information literacy program. Niamh earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Earlham College, and her Masters in Library Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She also holds a Master of Arts in Digital Humanities from Loyola University Chicago.