W. Lee Hisle was appointed Vice President for Information Services and Librarian of the College in January 2000. As CIO, he oversees all libraries, instructional technology, administrative systems, networks, and telecommunications. Prior to his appointment in 2000, he served as Associate Vice President of Learning Resources Services and Faculty Development for the Austin Community College District, a large multi-campus college in Austin, Texas. He also was Interim Executive Vice President for Instructional Affairs at ACC in 1999.
Active in professional associations, he is past-Chair of the Board of Trustees of LYRASIS, the nation’s largest regional membership organization serving libraries and information professionals in some 37 states. He is a past President of the Association of College and Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association, and was the Chair of the Tenth ACRL National Conference. More recently, he chaired the ACRL Focus on the Future Task Force, the Legislative Issues Task Force, the ACRL Government Relations Committee, and is a past-Chair of the ALA Nominating Committee that nominated the first Hispanic president of the ALA. He has served on the North East Regional Computing Program (NERCOMP) Board of Directors and was Chair of the 2003 NERCOMP Annual Conference. He is past-chair of the NELINET Board of Directors, a cooperative of over 500 libraries in New England. He currently serves on the Board of Trustees for The Williams School in New London, and has recently completed six-year terms on the boards of Pine Point School, an independent school in Stonington, CT, and the Mystic-Noank Public Library.
His research interests include effective management of merged information services organizations, the library-as-place, and the future of higher education and libraries, especially as related to the impact of technology and digital resources on the academy. He has made recent presentations at the Charleston Conference on Library Acquisitions, the Oberlin Group of Liberal Arts College Libraries, EDUCAUSE, NERCOMP, the Consortium of Liberal Arts Colleges conference, and the Electronic Resources in Libraries Conference.
Lee received his B.A. from Berea College in Kentucky, his M.S.L.S. from the University of Kentucky, and his Ph.D. in Educational Administration from the University of Texas at Austin.
The Vice President for Information Services and Librarian of the College
The Vice President for Information Services and Librarian of the College is the chief information officer of the College and is responsible for managing the College’s information resources and information technology infrastructure and services. The Vice President for Information Services and Librarian of the College is appointed by the President and is a member of the senior administrative team. The Vice President for Information Services and Librarian of the College is a participating member of the faculty.
The Vice President for Information Services and Librarian of the College leads and manages the Information Services department at Connecticut College, which has become a national model for the management of information resources in higher education. The libraries and technology-related areas of the College combined in 1995 to form Information Services, which includes traditional library services, administrative computing, telecommunications, networks, desktop computer support, Web services, digital scholarship, special collections and archives, and instructional technology. IS manages and supports open-access computing labs, departmental computer labs, the Digital Curriculum and Scholarship Center, media services, and technology-rich classrooms. Information Services acquires, leases or otherwise makes available the resources necessary for students and faculty members to achieve their research and scholarship goals. Information Services provides research support services and teaches the skills needed to find and use information resources ethically and effectively.
The Vice President for Information Services and Librarian of the College oversees the planning, maintenance and security of the campus technology infrastructure, and management of software systems including Ellucian (formerly SunGard Higher Education) Banner, the College public Web site and CamelWeb, numerous other administrative systems, and Google Suite for Education, including e-mail. In addition, Information Services offers technology and information security instruction for faculty, students and staff. The Vice President for Information Services and Librarian of the College directs departmental staff in a continuing effort to increase effective research skills among students and others in the Connecticut College community.
Connecticut College is a member of the CTW (Connecticut College-Trinity College-Wesleyan University) Consortium, which shares a library catalog of over two million items, both print and electronic, and numerous database licenses. The Vice President for Information Services and Librarian of the College is responsible for strengthening this and other important partnerships including those with the Consortium of Liberal Arts Colleges (CLAC), the Council on Library and Information Resources CIO Group, NERCOMP, EDUCAUSE, and the Oberlin Group of Liberal Arts College Libraries.