David Ferriero

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David S. Ferriero is a librarian, library administrator, and a prominent figure in American and international library associations.

He has been the Andrew W. Mellon Director and Chief Executive of the Research Libraries at the New York Public Library (NYPL) since 2004.[1] Prior to his appointment, Ferriero was the University Librarian and Vice Provost for Library Affairs at Duke University.[2]

Contents

[edit] NYPL Research Libraries

Ferriero is responsible for the operations and overall management of NYLP's Research Libraries, including public service, cataloging, conservation, automation, and collection development. The Research Libraries, which annually serve 1.7 million people on-site and millions more through the web, comprise four centers with combined collections containing 43 million items, including 15 million books. The research centers are located at four separate sites:

  • The Humanities and Social Sciences Library at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue is one of the world's great scholarly resources
  • The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, located in Harlem, is one of the most widely used research facilities in the world devoted to preserving materials documenting the African diaspora
  • The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, located within the Lincoln Center complex, is a preeminent collection chronicling the history of dance, theatre, and music
  • The Science, Industry and Business Library, at Madison Avenue and 34th Street, is one of the largest public information research centers focusing on science and business in the United States.[2]

[edit] Evolution in cataloging

Ferriero is the NYPL's Partner Representative[3] in OCLC (Online Computer Library Center), which is a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world's information and reducing information costs. OCLC and its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat—the OCLC Online Union Catalog.[4]

In some ways, Ferriera just happened to be the right man at the right time.[5] When Ferriero first came to NYPL, he confronted a complicated classification system used by no other library -- the unique "Billings classification system," named after John Shaw Billings, the former NYPL librian who devised and introduced it in the 19th century.[6] Ferriero initiated a slow conversion to the Library of Congress’s classification system while working with patrons and staff who'd become accustomed to the NYPL way of doing things.[7]

[edit] NYPL-Google digitization partnership

Ferriero was ultimately responsible for NYPL's participation in the Google Books Library Project, which involves a series of agreements between Google and major international libraries through which a collection of its public domain books will be scanned in their entirety and made available for free to the public online.[8] The negotiations between the two partners called for each to project guesses about ways that libraries are likely to expand in the future.[9] According to the terms of the agreement, the data cannot be crawled or harvested by any other search engine; no downloading or redistribution is allowed. The partners and a wider community of research libraries can share the content.[10]

[edit] Personal touch

Ferriero has engineered systemic change at NYPL, but he has also remembered to focus on people -- not forgetting to pay close attention to the varied needs of the library patron's whose stories occasionally appear in the pages of the New York Times.[11] His role in the library enjoys a little reflected shine when stories about the staff of the Research Libraries are featured in the New York Times.[12] Ferriero has sometimes been the voice of the library, directing attention towards those whose contributors to the NYPL collections were unique.[13]

A sense of humor is hard to document, but something is revealed in one anecdote. When a too-clever journalist was trying to contrive a year-end feature story about something unique which a parvenu New Yorker could purchase for $10-million, others like the Metropolitan Opera Company demurred, but Ferriero "said you could take out their copy of the Gutenberg bible, one of 48 extant, to read in bed. Mr. Ferriero and his security staff would have to accompany the bible, to insure its safety, and be paid for their services."[14] In this context, Ferriero demonstrates his view that his position requires him to ever alert for any and all kinds of fundraising and publicity opportunities; and in his line of work, all evidence of an open sense of humor becomes noteowrthy.

[edit] Duke University Library

Ferriero was the Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway University Librarian and Vice Provost for Library Affairs at Duke University from 1996 through 2004.[15]

"...The New York Public Library's gain is truly Duke's loss .... [Ferriero] brought Duke libraries into the electronic age and helped all of us understand technology's challenging issues and opportunities, while successfully leading a major fund-raising program to expand and modernize Perkins Library. And he has done all this with charm, wit and great sensitivity to the multicultural nature of our university."
-- Nannerl O. Keohane, President, Duke University[15]

[edit] MIT Libraries

Ferriero was Associate Director of Public Services at MIT Libraries.[16] His MIT libraries career spanned 31 years.[17]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Van Gelder, Lawrence. "Arts briefing; Highlights -- Literary Lion." New York Times. April 26, 2004.
  2. ^ a b "David S. Ferriero Named Andrew W. Mellon Director and Chief Executive of The Research Libraries at The New York Public Library" (press release). April 26, 2004.
  3. ^ Partner Representatives, OCLC web site
  4. ^ OCLC described, OCLS web site
  5. ^ Wyatt, Edward. Public Library to Expand Hours and Services, and Restructure Branches." New York Times. November 18, 2004.
  6. ^ "NYPL gives up Billings," BiblioTech Web. August 22, 2006.
  7. ^ Chan, Sewell. "With a New Classification System, the New York Public Library Makes a Change for the Clearer," New York Times. August 17, 2006.
  8. ^ New York Public Library + Google
  9. ^ Rothstein, Edward. "If Books Are on Google, Who Gains and Who Loses?" New York Times. November 14, 2005.
  10. ^ Library and Information Technology Association, "Contracting for Content in a Digital World"
  11. ^ Koppel, Lily. "Offering Enlightenment, or Just a Little Peace," New York Times. December 27, 2007; Kilgannon, Corey. "A Low-Tech Writer With a High-Tech Appetite," New York Times. November 26, 2007.
  12. ^ Roberts, Sam. "The Library’s Helpful Sage of the Stacks," New York Times. December 31, 2007.
  13. ^ Berger, Joseph. "My Letters From the War." New York Times. June 11, 2005; Shattuck, Kathryn. "Bringing One Woman's Holocaust Experience to Life," New York Times. March 11, 2006.
  14. ^ Hamilton, William L. "Ideas & Trends: A Big Fat Bonus, but Not Carte Blanche," New York Times. December 31, 2006.
  15. ^ a b "Duke Librarian David Ferriero to Join New York Public Library: Robert Byrd, director of the Rare Book, Manuscript and Special Collections Library, will serve as Duke's acting university librarian after Ferriero's departure." Duke press release (2004).
  16. ^ Ferriero resignation, MIT Libraries Annual Report 1997-1997.
  17. ^ Northeastern University Alumni Affairs web site

[edit] Sources

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