OCLC Research is pleased to announce that Chela Scott Weber has joined the OCLC Research Library Partnership (RLP) as Senior Program Officer. In this role, Weber will help enact the OCLC research and learning agenda that she crafted in 2017 as she served as a practitioner researcher-in-residence.
Working with OCLC colleagues and the RLP network, she will shape learning and engagement programming that will move the community forward in this strategically important area for research libraries as well as serving as a liaison to broader special collections and archives communities.
Weber's appointment is a natural extension of her previous work as OCLC practitioner researcher-in-residence. For that project, she worked collaboratively with OCLC program officers and RLP member institutions to investigate and shape the OCLC research agenda, focusing on the areas of challenge and opportunity for special collections, archives, and distinctive collections with research and academic libraries.
Read more and download the position paper that resulted from this initiative.
Weber was most recently the Head of Library and Collections at the California Historical Society (CHS). Before CHS and serving as the OCLC researcher practitioner-in-residence, she was Head of Archival Collections Management for NYU Libraries, and previously served there as Associate Head and Acting Head of the Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. She also taught Archival Description in their Archives and Public History MA program. Prior to coming to NYU, she was the Director of Library & Archives at the Brooklyn Historical Society, and has previously held positions at the Microsoft Archives, New York Transit Museum and the Benson Ford Research Center at The Henry Ford.
She holds an MLIS and certificate of archival administration from Wayne State University, as well as a BFA from Cornish College of the Arts. Weber is a member of the Society of American Archivists.