Collections Strategies and Discovery

Associate Dean: Kerry Creelman

The CSD portfolio uses flexible, user-centered and data-informed strategies to get students, faculty and scholars the information they need as quickly and easily as possible.

Highlights from the 2024–2025 academic year:

• Implemented LibKey, a suite of services that improves access to academic resources through enhanced linking and browsing options.
• Piloted an article-on-demand service that allows faculty to request select articles not included in Libraries’ journal subscriptions, reducing subscription costs and avoiding interlibrary loan services.
• Started implementing a new course reading service to amplify library holdings in alignment with course syllabi, helping faculty build more robust reading lists.
• Wrapped up the planning phase of a print collections inventory to ensure our catalog accurately reflects our physical collections.

Organizational Development, Learning and Talent

Associate Dean: Santi Thompson

The ODLT portfolio is responsible for recruiting, retaining and enhancing UH Libraries talent. Our units support professional development by connecting our library colleagues with ongoing learning opportunities.

Highlights from the 2024–2025 academic year:

• Collaborated with UH Libraries departments to recruit nine new employees, all of whom will be essential to serving the organization’s mission and vision moving forward.
• Engaged our UH Libraries colleagues in professional development opportunities. These included training sessions on building leadership skills, learning new facilitation strategies and techniques, and a variety of academic library workflows and best practices.

Research and Student Engagement

Interim Associate Dean: Ariana Santiago

The RASE portfolio supports the learning and research needs of both students and faculty. Our units collaborate to integrate information literacy education in curricular and co-curricular learning experiences, engage interdisciplinary research communities in the production of new knowledge, expand access to learning materials through open education, and support the needs of health professions programs.

Highlights from the 2024–2025 academic year:

• Piloted a peer mentor program in which undergraduate student leaders expand the reach of UH Libraries’ information literacy education efforts through peer-to-peer learning. Read more about the program.
• Launched new partnerships with the digital media program and the Center for Public History, providing internships that engage student researchers in digital humanities. Read more about how UH Libraries supports digital humanities.
• Supported six courses in adopting open educational resources, giving more than 400 students free access to course learning materials, and launched a new OER professional development incentive in which 16 faculty earned a certificate. Read more about the advances in open education.
• Increased student engagement events and activities to enhance awareness of library spaces, resources and services at the Health Sciences Library and the Medical Library.

Special Libraries and Preservation

Associate Dean: Lauren Gottlieb-Miller

The SLP portfolio is dedicated to the stewardship of distinctive and material-intensive collections, including rare books, archives, manuscripts and other unique or fragile materials that require specialized care, handling and expertise. The portfolio engages distinctive collections to support scholarly and creative work and faculty and student excellence.

Highlights from the 2024–2025 academic year:

• Processed and made thousands of archival items discoverable by updated finding aids and digital platforms, significantly enhancing access for researchers and students. Newly processed collections now open for research include the UH College of Nursing Records and the Student Government Association Records.
• Digitized 40 years of issues of The Daily Cougar student newspaper to make this valuable historical resource available to the public ahead of the UH Centennial. More than 500 issues are now available online, and new issues will be added every week.
• Acquired several high-impact collections — including the records of Tommy Tune, the photographic archive of Suzanne Paul and an important photography archive documenting queer life in Houston in the 1970s — to benefit our research audiences. Read more about the Tommy Tune collection.