Katherine Furlong Is Elected VP of PA Interlibrary Delivery Service Board and Receives Leadership Scholarship

Katherine Furlong, associate director for access and administrative services at Skillman Library, has been elected vice president of the board of the Pennsylvania Interlibrary Delivery Service, an organization of libraries of all types (public, academic, museum, and special) that facilitates efficient resource sharing.

Katherine Furlong

Among other services, IDS negotiates the contract for a book and physical material delivery service held by UPS. The service is a public/private partnership jointly funded by Pennsylvania through a subsidy and by individual libraries through local dues.

She also has been awarded funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Liberal Arts College Scholarship Program to participate this June in the Frye Leadership Institute, a highly competitive, intensive opportunity for study and collaborative work with colleagues from across the country. It is sponsored by the Council on Library and Information Resources, EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit promoting the intelligent use of information technology in higher education, and Emory University.

In addition, Furlong will present a coauthored paper, “When Interdependence Becomes Codependence: Knowing When and How to Let Go of Legacy Services,” at the biennial conference of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) March 30-April 2 in Philadelphia. She also will speak on a panel, “Traveling Librarians – Building Campus, Community, and International Relationships through Support and Leadership of Off-Campus Programs.” A division of the American Library Association, a professional association of more than 12,000 academic librarians, ACRL is “dedicated to enhancing the ability of academic library and information professionals to serve the information needs of the higher education community and to improve learning, teaching, and research.”