Volume 22, Number 7-8
1998

Gracy to Head Preservation & Conservation Studies at U.T.

The Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) at The University of Texas at Austin is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. David B. Gracy II, the Governor Bill Daniel Professor in Archival Enterprise, as Interim Director of its Preservation and Conservation Studies Program (PCS) as of March 15, 1999. Dr. Gracy succeeds Karen Motylewski, Director of PCS from 1995 to 1999. Motylewski has left to join the Institute for Museum and Library Services in Washington, D.C.

Preservation and Conservation Studies is the leading degree program in the United States in its specialty. Its graduates are prepared to meet the challenge of maintaining long-term access to collections and documentary records in libraries and archives. Generously funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities since 1981, this program educates collections conservators and preservation managers to assure effective access to information across all technologies from historical documents through contemporary analog media to web-based digital resources. Graduates hold positions at the nation's most prestigious institutions, among them Harvard and Yale Universities, the Library of Congress, the National Archives, the National Agriculture Library, and many major public and state university libraries.

Gracy initiated the preservation curriculum at GSLIS in 1987, and taught preservation courses until PCS moved to Austin from Columbia University in 1992.

Future plans for the program include work on solving the challenges of long term access to information in digital form, with particular emphasis on the relationship between traditional and virtual collections, and on the archiving and economics of digital collections.

The search for a permanent director will be initiated upon completion of the current search for a permanent dean of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science.