A staff member in the Caltech Library System since 1988, Douglas first served as head of reader services. She then served as director of the Sherman Fairchild Library of Engineering and Applied Science and as head of technical information services.
Douglas has long been involved in designing and implementing automated library services. She introduced desktop publishing to the Caltech libraries, initiating their online presence in the early 1990s, and provided leadership in the design and implementation of Caltech's document delivery service, TOC/DOC. She has also taken a leadership role in implementing digital collections at Caltech, beginning in 1999 with the campus discussion regarding Copyright in Scholarly Communication. Douglas was instrumental in the planning and execution of the Sherman Fairchild Library of Engineering and Applied Science that opened in 1997. She has published on a variety of topics, most recently on aspects of digital collections.
Douglas received her MS in library science from Long Island University in 1977. She subsequently held positions in scientific research libraries at the Bigelow Laboratory of Ocean Sciences in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, and at USC, where she headed the Hancock Library of Biology and Oceanography from 1982 to 1985 and the Science and Engineering Libraries from 1985 to 1988.
Douglas has served on the IEEE Library Advisory Committee and is currently a member of the Visiting Committee for the Goddard Space Flight Center Library. She has been active in Library and Information Technology Association Interest Groups by helping to found, chair, and develop programs for the Interest Group on Electronic Publishing.
Dan Meiron, associate provost for information and information technology at Caltech, said, "It gives me great pleasure to announce the appointment of Ms. Kim Douglas as University Librarian. . . . Kim brings to this appointment a deep appreciation of the traditional role of libraries coupled with an equally deep understanding of the enormous potential of the integration of new digital tools of scholarship."
Contact: Deborah Williams-Hedges (626) 395-3227 [email protected]
Visit the Caltech Media Relations Web site at: http://pr.caltech.edu/media
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