University librarian Henry leaving Rice

University librarian Henry leaving Rice

BY B.J. ALMOND
Rice News staff

Unlike books checked out of Fondren Library, Vice Provost and University Librarian Chuck Henry won’t be returning when he checks out of Fondren in mid-March.

After a decade of service to Rice, he has accepted an offer to become president of the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), an independent, nonprofit organization in Washington dedicated to improving the management of information for research, teaching and learning.

HENRY

”The time at Rice has been the most productive decade of my professional career, and I am deeply grateful for the support and latitude the university has extended to me,” Henry said.

Henry came to Rice in 1996 from Vassar College, where he had been director of the libraries.  As Rice’s vice provost and university librarian, he was responsible for the administration, strategy, policymaking and fundraising for the libraries, the Digital Library Initiative, the Electronic Resource Center (now the Digital Media Center) and, most recently, the Rice University Press. During

2000-04, he served also as vice president and chief information officer, taking on responsibility for administration, planning and policy for information technology services and data application centers and working with faculty and students in support of teaching and research.

”Chuck Henry’s leadership of Fondren Library has been characterized by exceptional and forward-looking vision, not only for the Rice campus library itself, but for university libraries and scholarship communication more broadly,” President David Leebron said.

Provost Eugene Levy added, ”Under the leadership of Chuck and his able colleagues in the library, Rice has successfully negotiated important transitions into an age increasingly dependent on digital and multimedia information while sustaining commitment to the bedrock of traditional library collection and stewardship. We have all benefited from Chuck’s time and accomplishments at Rice.”

Among the achievements Henry is most proud of is the recruitment and retention of the library’s exemplary staff. ”Fondren is one of the best-run and most innovative research libraries in the United States, despite the smaller scale of the university,” he said. ”Our community is welcoming and always focused on the needs of Rice students and faculty.”

The library building itself looks dramatically different from the facility that Henry headed when he joined the Fondren staff, thanks to a series of renovation plans that began eight years ago. ”The library now has a beautifully articulated information concourse that links the east and west quadrangles, many new collaborative spaces, much improved service points, and a dazzling sixth-floor reading area for Rice students,” he said. ”This renovation is the smartest and most intuitive of any other I am familiar with.”

Henry, who received several Fulbright awards during his career at Rice to do research abroad, also is proud of the Digital Library Initiative (DLI), which integrates many repositories of digital data, text, video, audio and images so the digital information can be shared for teaching and research. Since its creation six years ago, the program has evolved into a nationally recognized enterprise and attracts significant grant funding. Working closely with faculty across the campus, the DLI has sponsored national conferences and meetings and aligns closely with other major research efforts around the world.

Last year Henry revived the Rice University Press after a decade-long hiatus, taking advantage of technology to make it the first fully digital university press in the U.S. ”The response has been extraordinarily positive,” said Henry, the publisher. ”While we expect the press’s first phase to focus on original, rigorously peer-reviewed scholarship that has proven too expensive to publish by university presses that remain tied to the traditional models of printed books, the longer-term goal is to foster new kinds of narrative exposition, research methodologies and knowledge representation.”

Henry said he also was pleased with last year’s creation and development of the online Museum of the City of Houston, a digital storehouse of historic resources related to Houston’s rich and colorful past. ”In response to President Leebron’s enlightened desire to work more closely with the City of Houston, Fondren played a role in securing the grant that inaugurated this museum project,” he said. ”This should become the most important all-virtual museum in the U.S., and the invaluable involvement of Fondren’s librarians augurs well for its success.”

Henry’s final contribution to Rice will be serving as co-chair of De Lange Conference VI, the theme of which is ”Emerging Libraries.” Scheduled for March 5-7, the conference aims to describe how knowledge will be accessed, discovered and disseminated in the age of digital information.

Henry, who has a doctorate in comparative literature from Columbia University, recalled that during his first visit to Rice, the ”collegial, vigorous and open conversations” with the search committee made him realize that ”Rice was as exceptional and progressive as its reputation.”

He added, ”The 10 years on campus has been a rare gift.”