Interview with Kate Nevins, November 12, 2016

Interview Summary

Kate Nevins was the Executive Director of SOLINET from 1991 to 2009 and Chief Executive Officer of LYRASIS from 2009 to 2015. In this interview she talks about becoming interested in librarianship as a profession during her undergraduate studies at UC Berkeley. She talks about her career path, from public libraries to academic libraries, and then to OCLC.

Nevins talks about the relationship between the regional organization SOLINET and the wider organization OCLC, which she says at first was one of cooperation. She discusses when and why the relationship changed to one of competition. She talks about their philosophical differences, and the decisions made by both groups to no longer partner with one another.

Nevins describes a typical ASERL meeting during the early days of the organization. She talks about when the organization began to change, beginning with hiring full-time staff. She talks about the relationships among the members of ASERL, and the support they provided one another. She talks about how the economic climate affected the focus of groups like ASERL. She discusses the process of the merger of PALINET and SOLINET into LYRASIS. She talks about the importance of communication during the process, the administrative aspects of the merger, the decisions made regarding the leadership of the organization, and their goals. She talks about how the merger of NELINET into the group affected the organization. Nevins talks about some of the projects that LYRASIS has been involved with, including ArchivesSpace and CollectionSpace, and discusses why they chose to work on open source software programs.

Nevins talks about the value of consortia and other library organizations. She gives advice on how libraries can prove their value and maintain their funding by showing that their services align with the goals of the groups they serve. She discusses what she believes are her greatest accomplishments, including the changes at SOLINET, the merger to form LYRASIS, the creation of the HBCU Library Alliance, and the recovery work done by SOLINET after Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita.

Interview Keyword

Hurricane damage. Library administrators.

Interview LC Subject

Library cooperation Consortia Library finance Libraries Library resources

Interview Rights

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Interview Usage

Interviews may only be reproduced with permission from Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History, University of Kentucky Libraries.