Posted 01 October 2009
New University Librarian for UCD
Dr John Brooks Howard has been appointed as the new University Librarian for University College Dublin. Dr Howard has a long and distinguished career in libraries in the United States and a professional background in music. He studied music theory, history and performance (double bass) at Connecticut College receiving his BA in 1974. This was followed by the MA (1976) and PhD (1983) in historical musicology at Bryn Mawr College.
He held various positions at Harvard University from 1979 through 1998, including Keeper of the Isham Memorial Library, Richard F. French Music Librarian, and Senior Lecturer in Music. Since 1998 Dr Howard’s work has focused on broad issues of computation and data, information and knowledge management. He has held positions at Harvard College (1998-2001) and Harvard Medical School (2001-2004) with a focus on technology administration, research computing, and bioinformatics.
From 2004 to 2009 he served as Associate Dean of Libraries and Professor of Informatics in the School of Computing and Informatics at Arizona State University. He continues to serve as Professor of Informatics (adjunct) in Arizona State University’s School of Human Evolution and Social Change.
As Associate Dean/Associate University Librarian in Arizona State University, Dr Howard’s portfolio included: planning and administration of the University Libraries system as deputy of the University Librarian, Archives and Special Collections, Bibliographic and Metadata Services, the Labriola National American Indian Data Center, Informatics and Cyberinfrastructure Services
Ongoing research activities include development of cyberinfrastructure services for archaeology (Digital Antiquity; Transatlantic Archaeological Gateway, a joint project of Digital Antiquity and the UK Archaeological Data Service), collaboration with The Embryo Project (a multi-institutional effort that explores social dynamics in the conduct of science), and collaboration with several projects that explore the complex dynamics of the social and natural worlds using data from multiple research domains.
