Third candidate for dean of KU Libraries to present Wednesday
LAWRENCE — The third of four candidates for the dean of KU Libraries position at the University of Kansas will make a public presentation during an upcoming campus visit.
Kevin L. Smith, director of Copyright and Scholarly Communication at Duke University, will deliver a talk at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 28, in Watson Library 3 West. The topic is Vision and Aspirations for the Role of Libraries in the Next Ten Years at a Flagship State University Such as KU.
The dean of libraries search committee — led by Director of the Spencer Museum of Art Saralyn Reece Hardy — invites students, faculty and staff to attend the presentation and provide feedback of their impressions.
As Duke University’s first director of the Copyright and Scholarly Communications Office, Smith’s principal role is to teach and advise faculty, administrators and students about copyright, intellectual property licensing and scholarly publishing. Smith began his academic career with graduate studies in theology at Yale University and the University of Chicago, and then moved into library work. He holds a master’s of library science from Kent State University and has worked as an academic librarian in both liberal arts colleges and specialized theological libraries. His strong interest in copyright law began in library school. He received a law degree from Capital University in 2005. Before moving to Duke in 2006, Smith served as the director of the Pilgrim Library at Defiance College in Ohio, where he also taught constitutional law. He is admitted to the bar in Ohio and North Carolina.
Smith serves on Duke’s Intellectual Property Board and convenes the Open Access Advisory Panel for Duke University Libraries. In addition, he was the chair from 2012 –-2013 of the Association of College and Research Libraries’ Research and Scholarly Environment Committee as well as a member of the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition steering committee. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Dryad data repository. He has written several articles on copyright issues in higher education and maintains a web log on scholarly communications that discusses copyright and publication in academia. He is a frequent speaker on those topics and is the author of Owning and Using Scholarship: An IP Handbook for Teachers and Researchers.
The university will release information about each candidate and his or her public presentation roughly 48 hours before his or her talk. Other candidates will be on campus:
- Candidate 4, Nov. 2-3
Other candidates are Paul Bracke, who presented Oct. 20, and Christine Avery, who presents today.
Candidate presentations will be recorded and available for viewing online after the final candidate has appeared on campus. Evaluations of all candidates can be submitted online until 4:30 p.m. Nov. 4.
KU Libraries is the largest library system in Kansas. KU Libraries offers more than 4.2 million print volumes in seven campus facilities, including a state-of-the-art offsite storage facility. The Libraries has extensive international holdings, including notable collections in Slavic, Latin America and East Asian studies. The Kenneth Spencer Research Library is recognized worldwide for its rare book, manuscript and archival holdings in history, literature and natural history. The Libraries employs 50 faculty, 100 staff and 175 student employees.
KU Libraries is a leader in the open access movement on campus, nationally and internationally. Open Access works to make scholarly research more accessible to researchers and the public by using the advantages provided by digital and electronic communication. The University of Kansas was the first public institution in the United States to adopt a faculty-led open access policy.