16 November 2006

Dr Sarah Thomas, Carl A Kroch University Librarian at Cornell University, USA, has been appointed Bodley’s Librarian. She is the first woman and first non-British person to fill the most senior library post in the University of Oxford, and will succeed Dr Reg Carr following his retirement.

In her new role, Dr Thomas will be the executive head of the Oxford University Library Services (OULS), which hold more than 11 million printed volumes in nearly 40 libraries including the Bodleian Library.

Dr Thomas has been Adjunct Professor of German and Carl A Kroch University Librarian at Cornell University since 1996, where she has been overseeing Cornell University’s 20 libraries, she has been overseeing Cornell University's 20 libraries, which received the ACRL Excellence in Academic Libraries award in 2002.

From 1992 to 1996 Dr Thomas worked at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC, latterly as Acting Director of the Public Service Collections. Prior to that she held cataloguing appointments at the Widener Library, Harvard, and Johns Hopkins University. Dr Thomas has also managed library co-ordination at the Research Libraries Group in Stanford, California, and for eight years was Associate Director for Technical Services at the National Agricultural Library, Beltsville, Maryland.

The Vice-Chancellor, Dr John Hood, said: ‘I am delighted that we have been able to attract such a distinguished librarian to this post. Sarah Thomas’s enormous experience will be vital in taking forward the work of Reg Carr in leading the creation of the University’s integrated library service. My colleagues and I look forward very much to working with Dr Thomas over the coming years.’

Dr Thomas sees coming to Oxford as ‘the opportunity to lead one of the world’s most distinguished libraries at a time of such change in our educational institutions and society’. She said: ‘The challenge is to bring forward the best of traditions – which in Oxford’s case include the superb collections and the commitment to preserving the record of our civilisation for current and future scholars and students – while at the same time creatively reinterpreting these traditions for the digital age. My outstanding Oxford library colleagues have begun charting a path for the libraries that promises many innovations in service. I look forward to joining them in their dedication to facilitate the work of Oxford’s scholars, researchers, and students in both traditional and transformative ways.’

Dr Thomas will be a Fellow of Balliol College when she takes up her position on 19 February 2007.

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Notes for Editors:

• Dr Thomas was educated at the Graduate School of Library and Information Sciences, Simmons College, Boston, Massachusetts, and received a PhD from Johns Hopkins University for her thesis on the Austrian author Hugo von Hofmannsthal.
• The Oxford University Library Services (OULS) is the largest and most important university system in the United Kingdom. It includes the Bodleian Library as well as the other major research libraries in the humanities (Sackler and Taylor), the sciences (Radcliffe Science Library) and the social sciences (Law and Social Science Library). Faculty and departmental libraries also provide significant services as part of OULS.