Karla Strieb, The Ohio State University Libraries Associate Dean for Content and Access, has accepted a three-year assignment as the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA) Visiting Program Officer for Shared Collections. Strieb will continue as a University Libraries faculty member, but will report to Maurice York, Director of BTAA Library Initiatives, throughout her appointment which begins Jan. 3, 2023.
“This is an exciting opportunity that allows Karla to use the breadth of her professional experience to support the development of the BIG Collection initiative,” said Damon E. Jaggars, Dean and Vice Provost, The Ohio State University Libraries. “University Libraries has been fortunate to have her leadership over the past 11 years and will continue to benefit from her work with the BTAA team.”
In her new role, Strieb will focus on providing leadership in developing and proposing models for collaborative collection development and co-investment toward the objectives of the BIG Collection initiative. The project would provide greater access to an array of resources for students, faculty and researchers across BTAA institutions.
“Our goal is to provide ‘any content, from anywhere, to anyone across the Big Ten, now and into the future,’” said Maurice York. “Karla has been involved in reimagining how we collectively think about collections as our users’ need change and libraries evolve to better serve them. We are fortunate to have her experience and knowledge as we move this work forward.”
As Associate Dean for Content and Access at University Libraries, Strieb has supported students, faculty and researchers through strategic collection growth and advocacy for the transformation of scholarly publishing. That work encompassed several important projects including the addition of a new depository module, which is currently under construction, and her work to address the structural deficit in University Libraries materials budget.
Strieb has worked to improve access to University Libraries’ collections and address inequities within them through her co-sponsorship of the Advancing Social Justice and Collections initiative and the Digital Accessibility Coordinators program. Her work with the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), OCLC, OhioLINK, BTAA and Hathi Trust has been important in positioning University Libraries as a top research library among its peers.
Strieb earned her doctorate in Information Studies from the University of Maryland. She received her Master of Library Sciences from Syracuse University and her Master of Science in Evolutionary Biology from the University of Chicago. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts in Geology and Biology from Wittenberg University.
Strieb joined The Ohio State University Libraries in April 2011. Prior to that, she was a staff member with the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) where she was responsible for the development of ARL’s Transforming Research Libraries strategic directions, which focuses on new and expanding roles for ARL libraries. Strieb joined ARL in 2005 when she assumed leadership of their Office of Scholarly Communication. In April 2009, she shifted her programmatic leadership to transforming research library roles.
Prior to joining the ARL staff, Strieb was the Collection Management Team Leader for the University of Maryland Libraries. She worked previously at the Welch Medical Library, Johns Hopkins University, and at the University of Michigan Libraries.