Yale Bulletin and Calendar

April 6, 2001

Volume 29, Number 25

Alice Prochaska

British Library administrator
to be new Yale Librarian

Alice Prochaska, who has had a wide-ranging career in library administration in Great Britain, has been appointed as Yale University Librarian, President Richard C. Levin announced.

Prochaska has served since 1992 as director of Special Collections at the British Library, one of the largest and most renowned research libraries in the world. She will assume her new duties at Yale on August 1, succeeding Scott Bennett, who is retiring.

"Alice Prochaska brings an impressive wealth of experience and achievement to the crucial task of managing and expanding the Yale Library's massive collections and making them readily accessible to the University's faculty and students, as well as to scholars from around the world," said Levin in announcing her appointment.

In her current post in the British Library, which is the national library of the United Kingdom, Prochaska is responsible for the main "heritage," non-book, and Asian collections: the Manuscript Collections; the Map, Library and Music collections; the Oriental and India Office Collections; the National Sound Archive; the Philatelic Collections and the library's Archives. She is also a member of the library's policy-making Executive Committee and chairs the library's Digitization Policy Group.

From 1984-1992, Prochaska was secretary and librarian of the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London, where she was responsible for all of its programs and managed its staff and budget, serving an international membership of 3,500 individuals and 200 universities in Great Britain and abroad.

As assistant keeper in the Public Record Office from 1975 to 1984, she undertook a wide range of duties, including editing and describing records from the 18th century onwards, managing the Public Record Office Library and setting up educational services.

In addition to her association with the British Library, Prochaska is the chair of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Standing Committee of the International Federation of Library Associations, a member of the United Kingdom Interdepartmental Committee on Archives, and a Commissioner of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts. She serves as a governor of London Guildhall University and a trustee of the Sir Winston Churchill Archives Trust (based at Cambridge University). She is currently a member of the history panel for the UK Research Assessment Exercise. She is also, as the British Library's representative, a member of the Academic Council of Fathom.com, a large international web-based partnership of universities and corporations.

Prochaska is the author of the "History of the General Federation of Trade Unions" (1982) and "Irish History from 1700: A Guide to Sources in the Public Record Office" (1986). She has also authored numerous articles, reviews, and museum publications, including the articles "Archival Materials and Manuscripts in Great Britain Relevant to United States History" and "British Library and the Challenge of the Electronic Media."

Prochaska received her undergraduate degree from Somerville College, Oxford, in 1968 and her D.Phil. in modern history from Oxford in 1975.

In expressing the University's gratitude to Bennett upon his retirement after seven years as University Librarian, Levin said, "He accelerated the daunting task of retrospectively converting millions of records into the online catalog, created an off-site shelving facility for the library, and managed the exceptionally large and complicated renovation program in Sterling Memorial Library."

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