Today we share the news of the appointment of The New York Public Library’s Andrew W. Mellon Director of the Research Libraries—William P. Kelly.

The Library's Mellon Director leads the Library's four research centers and their 460 staff members—the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street; the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; the Science, Industry and Business Library; and the Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. As Mellon Director, Bill will be charged with preserving and expanding the use of the most democratically accessible of research collections, which includes approximately 45 million items and is growing by about 150,000 books per year. He will begin his tenure in January.

Bill is both an accomplished scholar and a true leader. Most recently, he was the interim chancellor of the City University of New York, after serving from 2005 to 2013 as president of the CUNY Graduate Center. He is also currently chairman of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. At the CUNY Graduate Center, Bill has a well-earned reputation as an advocate for scholarly work, an institution builder, and a teacher and mentor.  

Given his wealth of experience from these and many additional roles he has undertaken in his career, Bill has much to contribute to The New York Public Library. He arrives to a very full plate of activity, including: recruiting a number of new curators and staff; completing the second story of underground storage underneath Bryant Park so that we can again have as many or more books as ever on site—and now well preserved; working to ensure a great outcome from the Schwarzman Building renovation, which will open up approximately 40 percent more of the building to researchers and the general public; overseeing a $20 million renovation of the Schomburg Center; and much more. For more details, please see the news release about Bill's appointment.

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