bio

About Robert H. McDonald

Robert H. McDonald is the Dean of University Libraries and Senior Vice-Provost of Online Education and Professor of Library Administration at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he is responsible for the information needs of the faculty, staff and students on the Boulder campus. He also leads the new CU Boulder Online initiatives for online learning.

His expertise and interests include teaching and learning technologies that enable libraries to better support researchers at all levels, open source software development, scholarly communications, and new model publishing. Robert has also been an active proponent of diversity initiatives in libraries throughout his career and is committed to creating library spaces that are welcoming, diverse and inclusive for all of our Library users.

He frequently presents and writes on a variety of topics, and was editor of the E-Content column for EDUCAUSE Review in 2016 – 2017. In recent years, his research has been centered on digital libraries and large-scale humanities cyberinfrastructure, encompassing large data analysis, storage, and preservation through grant-funded and collaborative projects such as the HathiTrust Research Center. Additional research interests include integration of learning eco-systems, lean and agile frameworks in technology management, data preservation, data cyberinfrastructure, and big data analytics.

He is active professionally with a number of national and international organizations and conferences, where he currently serves on the Board of Governors for the HathiTrust and the Board of Directors for the Association of Research Libraries and the Board of Directors for the Colorado Alliance of Research Libraries. McDonald is also currently a member of the ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries Steering Committee.

Prior to joining the CU Boulder Libraries in 2018, Robert held positions at Indiana University Bloomington, the San Diego Supercomputer Center, Florida State University, and Auburn University. He earned his Master of Library & Information Science degree at the University of South Carolina, and holds a Master of Music degree from the University of Georgia.

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My Personal Website

This is my main web presence for items related to my professional responsibilities. If you are interested in my hobbies or other news, please check me out on robert.ly.

My Researcher Persistent Identifiers (PID)