News from
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
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Princeton, New Jersey 08544
Tel 609/258-3600; Fax 609/258-1301
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: January 25, 1996
Contact: Justin Harmon (609) 258-5732
Karin Trainer to Lead Princeton University Libraries
PRINCETON, NJ. - Karin Trainer, associate university librarian at Yale, will become university librarian at Princeton, effective July 1.
"I'm delighted that Karin Trainer has accepted our offer," said University Provost Jeremiah Ostriker. "She is extraordinarily able and very knowledgeable about libraries - about what they have been and what they can become. We will be facing revolutionary changes in the technology of providing information to students and faculty. While maintaining the traditional quality of our collections, we must continue to move the library forward into the electronic age. She seems uniquely qualified in this area. In addition, she knows Princeton, having been here for six years, and she will work well with this community of teachers and scholars."
Trainer her career as a descriptive cataloguer at the Libraries of Princeton University in 1972. She served as the catalogue maintenance librarian from 1974 to 1978, during which time she helped steer the effort to automate the library cataloguing system. In 1978, she became director of technical and automated services at the New York University Libraries, and in 1983, she assumed her present position at Yale.
At Yale, Trainer has been particularly concerned with guiding the library's efforts to assess and meet the needs of students, faculty and visiting scholars and with directing renovation and construction projects, including that currently underway at Sterling Memorial Library. She has served as a fellow and freshman adviser at Ezra Stiles College, as well as on the campus advisory committee on investor responsibility and on the board that administers funds for gay and lesbian studies. An early proponent and developer of on-line catalogs for academic libraries, Trainer has worked with the Research Libraries Group on a number of electronic applications for scholarship and served for six years as review editor' for the principal automation journal for librarians, Information Technolgy and Libraries.
"Members of the search committee agreed she seemed remarkably thoughtful," said Dean of the Graduate School John Wilson, who, with Professor of Economics, Emeritus, Richard Quandt, chaired the committee. "She brings a broad view of challenges and problems now facing research libraries. The staff of the library similarly expressed great confidence in her ability to provide strong leadership of the very fine library system at Princeton as it moves into the next century."
Trainer holds a 1970 bachelor's degree in English from Douglass College of Rutgers University. After a year's graduate work in English at Bryn Mawr College, she earned a master's in library and information science at Drexel University in 1972 and a master's degree in liberal studies at New York University in 1983.
"I am pleased and proud to be returning to Princeton," said Trainer. "I look forward to assuming stewardship of the library's internationally known collections and its rapidly expanding network of electronic information services. I am even more excited by the prospect of working closely with Princeton's wonderful faculty and students, with its talented library staff, with my fellow administrators, and, last but not least, with Princeton's loyal alumni."
As university librarian, Trainer will be responsible for the development, care, and safekeeping of Princeton's collections of books and manuscripts, as well as electronic library resources. The Libraries of Princeton University consist of the Firestone Library and 18 branch libraries, and storage facilities both on and off the main campus. The libraries have a staff of 345 and a collection of over 5 million printed works, 35,000 linear feet of manuscripts, and substantial serial, microform, and special collections.