Rodney Phillips Named Director of The New York Public Library's Humanities and Social Sciences Library

Rodney Phillips has been appointed Director of The New York Public Library's Humanities and Social Sciences Library, the renowned research facility at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue. In his career of thirty years Phillips has held a wide range of positions at the Library, most recently working as Curator of the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, where he oversaw some of the Library's most important literary manuscripts and first editions. Phillips succeeds Jean Bowen, who retired at the close of 1999.

"As we make ongoing preparations for new programs and initiatives withinin Humanities and Social Sciences, it is reassuring to have someone of Rodney's experience and skill at the helm," said William D. Walker, Andrew W. Mellon Director of The Research Libraries. In 2001 the Library will open an orientation and electronic training center that will be housed in a three-story building currently under construction. The Library has also recently opened renovated and spacious new quarters for its Milstein Division of U. S. History, Local History and Geneology, and will soon move its Art and Architecture Division into a renovated room at the south end of the building's third floor. Other recent improvements include the renovated Rose Main Reading Room and the new Center for Scholars and Writers.

"I am thrilled that Bill Walker has named Rodney Phillips to be Jean Bowen's successor," said Library President Paul LeClerc. "It was Rodney who first suggested to me that we put the Dictionary Catalog on line; it was Rodney who negotiated for the acquisition of several stellar collections; and it was Rodney who curated some of the most brilliant recent exhibits at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library. I have enormous confidence in his ability to make that library even greater."
As Director of the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, Phillips will have responsibility for 21 service units and 185 staff members. "It is good to be back at the exact center of things, he commented recently. In recent years the Humanities and Social Sciences Library has been particularly active with critical projects. I wanted to be intensely involved during this important and exciting time."

Rodney Phillips' career at The New York Public Library began in 1969 with a summer internship while he was earning his Masters in Library Science at the University of Oregon. He returned to the Library on a full time basis in 1970 after finishing his degree. Since then he has held several important positions at the Library including Chief of the General Research Division and Associate Director, Humanities, Social Sciences and Special Collections.

As Curator of the Berg Collection Phillips was responsible for overseeing a distinguished collection of literary manuscripts, including works by such celebrated English-language authors as W. H. Auden, Samuel Clemens, T. S. Eliot, Washington Irving, James Joyce, Jack Kerouac, George Bernard Shaw, Virginia Woolf  and many others. In addition to some 115,000 manuscripts, the Berg Collection features 35,000 printed items including numerous first editions, periodicals, pamphlets, and other items.

Among the collections Phillips was instrumental in bringing to the Library is the monumental Nabokov Archive, which includes the majority of existing manuscripts of Vladimir Nabokov. It formed the basis for a well-received exhibition on the author curated by Phillips in 1999. Other popular exhibitions he organized as Curator of the Berg Collection focused on the underground publishing movement of the 1960s, Irish writer W. B. Yeats, and manuscripts of influential poets showcased in a two-part exhibit called Hand of the Poet.

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