Samuel Demas

Sam Demas, College Librarian and Senior Lecturer at Carleton College, and his colleagues at Carleton are experimenting with the development of the liberal arts college library as both a virtual space and a vibrant place of student research, community building and cultural events. Carleton is currently involved in implementing a shared institutional repository for liberal arts colleges, the Liberal Arts Scholarly Repository (LASR), and working with colleagues at Carleton and St. Olaf Colleges on cooperative collection development and other joint projects within the framework of the Bridge Consortium.

Prior to Carleton, Sam worked at Cornell University for 20 years in a variety of positions and libraries. He was Head of Collection Development and Preservation at the A.R. Mann Library of Cornell University from 1985 to 1998, and Associate Director of Mann Library for three years before that. His research interests at Cornell were in selection for preservation, national preservation planning, and in adapting the principles and practices of collection development to the challenge of developing the electronic library. As an administrator in a dynamic electronic library environment, he specialized in management strategies for developing staff skills, adapting policies, and re-engineering procedures to mainstream the selection and delivery of electronic information. As a collection administrator he has developed models for systematic selection of electronic resources. As a preservation administrator, he helped to develop a national preservation plan for agricultural sciences literature. He was also active in promoting the use of a disciplinary approach to setting priorities for preservation and for constructing an intellectual framework for cooperative preservation efforts.