I am pleased to announce that David Atkins, currently Head of Branch Libraries and Collection Logistics at the UT Libraries, has been appointed as the next Dean of Libraries at East Tennessee State University. He will assume this role in January.

David has been a UT library faculty member for over 20 years. He formerly headed the UT Libraries’ unit for Resource Sharing and Document Delivery, as well as Access and Delivery Services. He recently led the project to renovate the public and staff areas in the Pendergrass Library, the first ever substantial renovation of that space. He has served on the UT Faculty Senate and done yeoman’s service on many library advisory groups.

David has led the way in storage and stacks management, including taking the lead on cooperative collection management initiatives such as UT’s participation in HathiTrust’s Shared Print Program. More recently, he has headed the project to describe, design, and help justify the need for an off-campus storage facility, which is now in the early stages of design at the campus level. David has been a leader on resource-sharing issues at the state and national levels as well. In 2012, Tenn-Share presented him with the Tennessee Resource Sharing Award for his leadership in establishing the library courier system that connects public and academic libraries across the state. For several years, he chaired an American Library Association resource-sharing section. He is an accomplished scholar, with a rich research record in qualitative methodologies as applied to libraries as well as more generally.

David has also represented UT internationally. He participated in library exchange programs with Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, and Southeast University in Nanjing, China, and served as a Visiting Scholar at the University of Tasmania in Australia.