Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies News

Mullins named Esther Ellis Norton Professor of Library Science

December 17th, 2011

The Purdue University Board of Trustees ratified James Mullins as the Esther Ellis Norton Professor of Library Science on Dec. 17.

Mullins has been dean of Libraries and professor of library science at Purdue since 2004. Before that he was associate director for administration at MIT Libraries, and prior to MIT was university librarian at Villanova University. He also held administrative positions at Indiana University while serving as a part-time faculty member in the Indiana University School of Library and Information Science.

At Purdue, Mullins has helped create a vision for the Purdue Libraries to meet the challenge of the 21st century by redefining the role of Libraries and its faculty (librarians), integrating them more into the university’s instruction and discovery efforts. He was instrumental in creating the Distributed Data Curation Center at Purdue, which has secured grants to study data management.

Mullins just completed an elected term on the board of directors of the Association of Research Libraries and is currently on the board of directors of the Center for Research Libraries. He also serves on the Science and Technology Section of the International Federation of Library Associations and as a member of the board of directors of the International Association of Scientific and Technological University Libraries. He is on the editorial board of College and Research Libraries, the official scholarly publication of the Association of College and Research Libraries. He has contributed to professional literature through his research and has given numerous national and international presentations.

He received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Iowa and his doctorate from Indiana University.

Writer: Greg McClure, 765-496-9711, gmcclure@purdue.edu