Dear Members of the Brown Community,

I write to announce that Joukowsky Family University Librarian Harriette Hemmasi has been named Dean of the Library at Georgetown University. Please join me in congratulating Harriette on this appointment, and wishing her every success in this new role. She will conclude her service at Brown on August 1, 2018. I’m grateful that Deputy Provost Joseph Meisel has agreed to serve as Interim University Librarian, and will work closely with Harriette to ensure continuity and effective and efficient operations in the coming months.

Harriette joined the Brown community in 2005, and has been a highly valued academic leader, making a large number of transformational changes that have positioned the Library – one of the nation’s oldest and most distinguished research libraries – to support and advance the University’s mission of teaching and research exceptionally well. She has been committed to ensuring that the Library provides welcoming spaces, comprehensive and personalized services, and relevant and robust collections to meet the evolving scholarly needs of faculty and students. She has also championed the use of technology to meet the ever-changing demands of the 21st century academic landscape.

Under Harriette’s direction, the University has invested in critical infrastructure, dramatically improving public spaces throughout the library buildings on campus, and providing students and faculty with more comfortable, functional areas for study, teaching, and collaboration. She has also enlivened the Library as a hub of vibrant intellectual activity through compelling, user-focused services, events and activities. 

Together with library staff, over the last few years Harriette has championed supporting cutting-edge, collaborative, interdisciplinary faculty and student projects, and has been instrumental in shaping the University’s online education strategy and offerings. Harriette has led her staff in implementing the Brown Digital Repository, providing support for electronic theses and dissertations, developing Researchers@Brown in collaboration with CIS and other administrative offices, and advocating for open access to research and teaching materials.

Harriette has been highly effective in securing external support for collections and other library initiatives. She has also responded to the escalating costs of scholarly resources by identifying creative and cost-effective ways to meet the needs of faculty and students while ensuring a sustainable budget. On a personal note, I have appreciated working closely with Harriette over the last several years, and am grateful for her dedication to scholarship at Brown.    

I am grateful that Joseph Meisel will work with Harriette and library staff to ensure that uninterrupted progress continues. He is well-positioned to continue the critical work taking place in the library, including strategic planning and community building efforts that are underway. As Deputy Provost since 2010, Joe has contributed to a wide range of projects that have strengthened academic excellence at the University. In recent years, he was instrumental in developing the Operational Plan for Building on Distinction, and the plans for the Brown Arts Initiative, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative, the Annenberg Institute, and the Department of Music, of which he served as Interim Chair during 2017-18.  He organized and led Brown’s 10-year reaccreditation process that is now concluding, and was the principal author of the University’s self-study. He also works closely with Brown’s financial leadership on the integration of academic and budget planning.

Please join me in thanking Harriette for the substantial contributions that she has made to the Library and to Brown over the last 13 years. We will have an opportunity later this summer to celebrate her many accomplishments.  
 
Sincerely, 

Richard M. Locke
Provost
Schreiber Family Professor of Political Science
and International and Public Affairs