Member Update
The latest news and events from the OCLC cooperative
**
To the OCLC Membership,
As Chair of the OCLC Board of Trustees, it is my pleasure to introduce
to you today Jack Blount
<http://visit.oclc.org/t?r=896&c=3246301&l=80282&ctl=427C2AB:7D9A13F40F244FA994C3670FDEB91360646EBCBCC7604490&;>
as the next OCLC President and CEO.
Jack comes to OCLC most recently from Alpha Bay Corporation, a global
technologies and services provider based in Salt Lake City, Utah. He was
Founder, Chairman, President and CEO of Alpha Bay from 2005 through last
month. He has significant experience working with libraries and librarians.
June2012
*Jack Blount, OCLC's next President and CEO*
Some of you may have known Jack while he was President and CEO of Dynix
Corporation, a technology-based library services organization that was
acquired by Sirsi in 2005 to form SirsiDynix. While he led the
organization between 2002 and 2005, Dynix grew from serving 18,000
libraries to 26,000 libraries. He also oversaw a major systems
re-architecture and established a greater international presence with
new solutions and strategies.
He began his career in enterprise systems with IBM more than 35 years
ago. Since then, Jack has held numerous leadership positions with many
of technology’s most influential organizations, including IBM, Novell,
Borland and JD Edwards. While at Novell, he expanded international
operations, spending 80 percent of his time in Europe and Japan for
several years. He has combined his technical background with expertise
in management, operations, marketing and sales to deliver impressive
results throughout his career.
Our search for the next chief executive of OCLC produced several
outstanding candidates. Jack’s leadership and extensive management
experience, background and expertise in technology, global outlook and
demonstrated commitment to and appreciation of libraries will serve the
cooperative well as he assumes leadership of OCLC.
It is almost a year since Jay Jordan announced his intention to retire
at the end of June 2012. Jay has presided over a period of remarkable
growth and innovation during his 14 years at OCLC. As I have said many
times over the years, Jay has made enormous contributions to the OCLC
cooperative, to libraries and librarianship worldwide. We owe Jay a deep
debt of gratitude for his leadership, dedication and service.
By announcing his intention to retire a year in advance, Jay gave us the
opportunity to conduct a thorough search for his successor. Sandy Yee,
Dean of the Wayne State University Libraries and Library and Information
Science Program, and member of the OCLC Board of Trustees, served as
Chair of the Board’s Executive Search Committee. Sandy led a team
comprised of Board members, executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles,
and a Community Advisory Group made up of representatives from OCLC
member libraries, staff and other library leaders. I want to personally
thank Sandy for her tremendous leadership, and the members of the search
committee and the advisory group for their service and counsel. Their
contributions to the selection process were invaluable, and will have a
lasting impact on the cooperative for years to come.
Jack Blount will officially become the fifth President and CEO of OCLC
on July 1. He has already started work as President-elect to help ensure
a smooth transition. There is much to do. We continue to expand WorldCat
to represent libraries’ collective collection worldwide. We are
exploring new ways to make our data work harder for libraries and
library users. And we are collaboratively building the WorldShare
Platform and services to help transform the way libraries operate at
Webscale.
Jack is meeting with OCLC staff today. He will be attending the ALA
Annual Conference later this month, and his calendar is filling up
rapidly with opportunities to meet with the OCLC membership worldwide in
the weeks and months to come.
Please join me in welcoming Jack to the OCLC cooperative, and wishing
him well as the fifth OCLC President and CEO.
Larry Alford
Chair, OCLC Board of Trustees
Chief Librarian, University of Toronto Libraries
