May 2, 2019 – The Canadian Association of Research Libraries honoured Martha Whitehead with its Award for Distinguished Service to Research Librarianship. This award is conferred annually to an individual at a CARL member institution who has made a substantial national or international contribution to research librarianship.
Ms. Whitehead has a long record of distinguished service to research librarianship. She began her career at University of British Columbia, before joining Queen’s University as Associate University Librarian. She was appointed Vice-Provost and University Librarian at Queen’s in 2011. As Vice-Provost, Ms. Whitehead laid the foundation for the university’s digital strategy. She also had the vision to create and staff library services focused on advancing research data management, scholarly communications and open education resources.
Beyond this, she is recognized nationally and internationally for her leadership in research library matters, having served on the Leadership Council for Digital Research Infrastructure (LCDRI), the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN), the National Heritage Digitization Strategy Steering Committee (NHDS), the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL), the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR), Research Data Canada (RDC), and others.
Ms. Whitehead has been a lynchpin in the formation and continuing success of the Portage Network, CARL’s national research data management initiative. She spearheaded the formation of a pilot project which forged a partnership among Canadian library and research organisations committed to research data management. As the President of CARL from 2014-2016, her vision for collaboration in this area led to the transformation of this pilot into Portage, which in turn has allowed libraries to become recognised as valued and significant players in this field. Through her involvement with the LCDRI, she helped shape two major reports on research data management that buttressed the Government’s decision to invest over $575 million dollars on digital research infrastructure in the 2018 Federal budget.
Michael Vandenburg, Associate University Librarian at Queen’s University, expressed that Ms. Whitehead “has a remarkable ability to coordinate work across the many groups she participates in. […] Martha has shown great leadership in her ability to both develop a shared vision for the future of research libraries with other library leaders and to translate that vision into action with the creation of infrastructure and services.”
In her nomination letter, Vivian Lewis, University Librarian at McMaster University, stated that “Martha is the University Librarian we all aspire to be. She is smart, determined and fearless. She is technologically savvy, but keenly attuned to the needs of the broad spectrum of users that cross our doorways, physically and virtually. She is deeply collaborative, always ready to pitch on a good idea if it will advance the collective needs of Canadian Scholars.”
Most recently Ms. Whitehead was appointed Vice President for the Harvard Library and University Librarian and the Roy E. Larsen Librarian for the Faculty of Arts and Science at Harvard University. Although this represents a great loss to Canadian librarianship and Ms. Whitehead will be greatly missed by the CARL team and members, we are confident that she will champion Canadian library values well in her new environment and we are pleased to have the opportunity to recognize her remarkable contributions with the 2019 CARL Award for Distinguished Service to Research Librarianship.
We thank ProQuest for their generous ongoing support to the CARL Award.
