Quinlan

Catherine Quinlan was appointed dean of the USC Libraries on August 1, 2007. She is responsible for guiding the university’s efforts to establish the model for the 21st-century library at USC; building world-class scholarly research collections; and creating partnerships with arts, culture, and library institutions throughout Southern California and around the world. Catherine Quinlan came to USC after a decade at the University of British Columbia, where she headed a library system encompassing more than 300 full-time staff members distributed over more than 21 sites. Beginning in 2004, she also served as managing director of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, a $74 million facility located on the UBC campus that is a prototype for academic information management and dissemination. Prior to joining UBC, she spent seven years as director of libraries and chief librarian at the University of Western Ontario, and as an adjunct professor in the university’s Graduate School of Library and Information Science. Previously, Quinlan oversaw the health sciences library at Memorial University of Newfoundland and was a member of the adjunct business administration faculty. Quinlan has published extensively on the importance of information literacy and has lectured at educational institutions around the world. She has written recently on topics in library administration, change management and strategic planning, and the information-seeking behavior of students in physical and virtual library spaces. She is a Fellow of the Annenberg School, a member of the Urban Land Institute Think Tank and has served on the board of directors of numerous professional organizations, including the Canadian Association of Research Libraries and the Pacific Rim Digital Library Alliance.