Press Release
Kristin McDonough Named Director of The New York Public Library's Science,
Industry and Business Library
August 7, 1996, New York City -- Kristin McDonough, Chief Librarian
at Baruch College for the past eight years, has been named the Director
of The New York Public Library's new Science, Industry and Business Library
(SIBL). SIBL, located in the former B. Altman Building at Madison Avenue
and 34th Street, is the world's largest public library devoted to science,
technology, economics and business, and offers patrons a sophisticated
electronic network that connects them to information resources here and
abroad. Ms. McDonough will assume the position on August 15.
"Many of us at The New York Public Library came to know Kristin
McDonough as a wonderful colleague when she served as an adviser for SIBL
program development," said William Walker, the Andrew W. Mellon Director
of The Research Libraries in announcing her appointment. "I am delighted
that now she is bringing her vision and experience to the directorship
of SIBL."
For the last 25 years Ms. McDonough has been part of the City University
of New York, both as a librarian and an administrator. As Chief Librarian
at CUNY's Baruch College, the largest business school in the world, she
worked with a diverse population, from neighborhood high school students
and employees of mid-sized companies to foreign executives and minority
entrepreneurs. SIBL's targeted services -- Science Education Program, Small
Business Information Network, and International Trade Resources Services
-- were created with these same individuals in mind.
Ms. McDonough also has considerable experience in designing programs,
including developing library research courses for students, from the remedial
to the doctoral level, and organizing a business bookclub focusing on novels
and plays set in the corporate world. This expertise will become extremely
important as the Library begins to tailor SIBL's services to better serve
its patrons.
With experience of running a library "at a time of diminishing
budgets and increasing user expectations," Ms. McDonough will be a
valuable asset to SIBL. While at Baruch, she found ways to use costly technology
to cut costs. She canceled expensive reference books and subscriptions
that could be accessed online, and shared electronic resources with other
libraries, which allowed her to divert the saved funds into acquisitions.
Baruch has a fee-based document delivery service and offers space rentals
to corporate trainers, as does SIBL. "There will be many opportunities
at SIBL," Ms. McDonough observed, envisioning the likes of "business
seminars planned around our incomparable patents collection."
Her involvement with SIBL began in 1991, when Baruch was also planning
a new library. Ms. McDonough was responsible for moving the college's library
into a new networked facility that opened to the public in 1994. "It
was a time of great excitement and great stress," she said in a recent
interview. Having gone through this experience, she was especially impressed
to hear from Baruch students who used SIBL soon after it opened in May,
"how helpful the staff were under what must have been very trying
circumstances."
Ms. McDonough and her husband, a professor of English, are "confirmed
New Yorkers," and live in the city where they have raised two daughters.
They especially like to take part in the cultural life of the city. "And
now," she said recently, "I will be joining one of New York's
greatest cultural institutions. I'm looking forward to working with a world-class
collection in a library that is expected to become an economic engine for
the city. I hope to play a role in helping the staff realize that goal."
Resources as SIBL As Director of SIBL, Ms. McDonough will be responsible
for a massive collection of print and electronic resources. The stacks
hold 1.2 million books and more than 110,000 periodical titles, which,
together with a comprehensive collection of patents and approximately one
million items on microform, constitute the research collections. In addition,
a 50,000-volume circulating collection lines the block-long wall of shelves
in the Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Circulating Library and Reading Room.
These vast collections are enlarged and enhanced by an electronic network
that connect SIBL's users, both inside and outside its walls to information
resources worldwide. Seating for 500 readers includes wiring for readers
to plug in their laptop computers to networked connections that give them
access to the online catalogs of The New York Public Library -- both circulating
and research -- and to the World Wide Web. Users without their own laptops
can access the same resources on eight online terminals in the Cullman
Reading Room, or at one of the 70 workstations in the Electronic Information
Center. People unfamiliar with new technologies may sign up for free hands-on
instruction given by trained staff in the Harrison S. Kravis Electronic
Training Center.
The New York Public Library operates 84 branches and four research centers
in the Bronx, Manhattan and Staten Island.
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