Susan Perry

Susan Perry has been an information services professional since 1966. During her career she has served as the Dean of Libraries and Media Services at The Evergreen State College, The Chief Librarian of the J. Henry Meyer Memorial Library at Stanford University, Director of the Departmental Systems Group at the Stanford University Data Center, CIO and College Librarian at Mount Holyoke College, Senior Advisor for liberal arts colleges at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Interim President of the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). She was one of the Deans for the Frye Leadership Institute and served on the EDUCOM, New Media Consortium, Seminars in Academic Computing Boards, the American Library Association (ALA) Council and the Steering Committee for the Coalition for Networked Information. She currently serves on the UNC SILS Board of Visitors, and was given the UNC SILS Distinguished Alumni Award in 2005.  In March of 2011, The American Council on Education (ACE) presented her with the Donna Shavlik Award in recognition of her lifelong commitment to advancing women's issues in higher education.

During the latter part of her career, her work with Mellon included helping to build AMICAL, a consortium to support information services and share Anglophone resources on 24 American-accredited colleges and universities across Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. Part of the joy of the work was that she got to visit and work with senior staff and informational professionals in almost all of the institutions, sometimes more than once. This year, she is working in Paris with the president of the American University of Paris on information resources issues for both AUP and AMICAL.
 
"This is an especially fruitful time to become an information professional," said Perry. "A degree from the UNC School of Information, coupled with lots of continuing education, was the beginning of a very interesting and satisfying career. I would heartily recommend it as a career path for others."
 

* Susan recently retired, but she is currently self-employed as a consultant, advising the American University of Paris on information services.