Elaine Justice: 404-727-0643, [log in to unmask]
 
EMORY NAMES NEW DIRECTOR OF UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES
 
Emory University has named Richard E. Luce vice provost and director of the university libraries. Luce, who currently is research library director at
Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, will assume the post Aug. 14.
 
"Without question Rick Luce is the perfect leader to steward the library during its next phase of development.  He has his eyes on the new technologies, but is very conversant with the historical role of the library as a place for the preservation and distribution of information. We are thrilled that he has decided to join the Emory University community," says Emory University Provost Earl Lewis of the appointment.
 
"Rick Luce is one of the most innovative and visionary library directors in the country," says Gray Crouse, professor of biology at Emory and head of the search committee. "The Emory Libraries are already very strong and Luce's appointment promises to build on that strength to make us one of the leaders in both preserving and disseminating knowledge in the service of teaching and research."
 
Linda Matthews, current vice provost and university library director, who is retiring in August, echoed Crouse's sentiments.  "He's going to be a great director, and he has a strong vision for libraries in the 21st century."  

"I am excited to join Emory during this transformative period initiated by the university's strategic plan" says Luce. He notes Emory's "strong research libraries, with outstanding collections in 20th century British and Irish literature and African American history and culture, which are internationally recognized." Luce says he looks forward to "growing and leveraging such collections, coupled with the challenge to do something extraordinary with them in the context of a digital age, while at the same time redefining the role for the 21st century research library."
 
"Emory has a relatively young research library for Rick Luce to help direct to new heights in both digital and printed materials," says Ron Schuchard, Goodrich C. White Professor of English. Schuchard says it was in 1979 when Emory received approximately $105 million from the Emily and Ernest Woodruff Fund that the library began to make great strides in the development of archival collections.
 
"Since then it has grown faster than many research libraries, and its growth has been meteoric and unrivaled in 20th-century literary collections," says
Schuchard. "As far as we have come, we feel that the Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Library is on the threshold of becoming much larger and even more distinctive."

University archivist Ginger Cain says that Luce "knows how to make the library a vital part of a research institution. He has the skills, experience, vision and energy to interpret the library's strengths and its role to a wide variety of audiences."
 
As research library director at Los Alamos since 1991, Luce has managed a world-class scientific research library with a $12.5 million budget that supports information delivery in a high technology environment serving 4,000 Ph.D.'s and 8,800 laboratory researchers. He has forged regional, national and international public information and communication technology collaborations and co-organized the Berlin and Brazilian Declarations on
Open Access.  He also was co-founder of the Open Archives Initiative to develop interoperable standards for author self-archiving systems.
 
Luce also serves as project leader for the Library Without Walls at Los Alamos, one of the world's most advanced large-scale digital library implementations and the only U.S. Department of Energy-approved library user-facility center in the nation, supporting 26 nationally prominent research organizations and 180,000 researchers.

From 1988 to1991 Luce served as executive director of the Southeast Florida Library Information Network, a research-sharing consortium with 13 institutions encompassing 89 libraries. From 1985 to1988, he was network director of IRVING Library Network Inc. in Boulder, Colo.

Luce has been the senior advisor to the Center for Information Management of the Max Planck Society from 2000 to 2006 and served from 1998 to 2004 on the executive board of the National Information Standards Organization. He is the recipient of the 2005 Fellows Prize for Leadership at Los Alamos
National Laboratory, the first ever awarded to a nonscientist.
 
Luce holds a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of San Diego, a master of public administration degree from San Diego State
University and master's in library and information science from the University of South Florida.
 
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Emory University is known for its demanding academics, outstanding undergraduate college of arts and sciences, highly ranked professional schools and state-of-the-art research facilities. For nearly two decades Emory has been named one of the country's top 25 national universities by U.S. News & World Report. In addition to its nine schools, the university encompasses The Carter Center, Yerkes National Primate Research Center and
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