UIC University Library announces new head of Special Collections and University Archives

Dear Faculty and Staff,

I am delighted to announce that Pamela Hackbart-Dean will join the UIC University Library as the head of Special Collections and University Archives and a tenured full professor as of August 16, 2019.

Prof. Hackbart-Dean comes to UIC from Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC) where she was the director of the Special Collections Research Center in the Morris Library since July 2006. She was hired as a tenured associate professor and promoted to full professor in 2012. As the Research Center Director, Prof. Hackbart-Dean supervised not only Special Collections, but also Records Management, the University Museum, and the Secretary of State’s Illinois Regional Archives Depository. For the past year, Prof. Hackbart-Dean has also served as interim head of Information Resource Management, and from May 2015-March 2017, she served as co-interim dean of the Library at SIUC.

Among her many accomplishments at SIUC, Prof. Hackbart-Dean continued to build world class collections; planned and implemented systems to manage collections, provided access to finding aids, MARC records, and digitized materials; developed a preservation lab for sound and film collections; and assisted with the design of a renovated Special Collections facility and oversaw the relocation of staff and operations to that new space. Prof. Hackbart-Dean also developed a community archives program for documenting the African American experience in Southern Illinois. She was an extraordinarily successful fundraiser, having secured almost $2.3 million in grants and individual gifts.

Prior to SIUC, Prof. Hackbart-Dean was head archivist at Georgia State University (2002-2006) and director of the Southern Labor Archives at Georgia State (2000-2006). She also worked for a decade in the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies at the University of Georgia as a processing archivist and then assistant department head.

Prof. Hackbart-Dean has been an active scholar throughout her career, co-authoring the foundational book in archives (How to Manage Processing in Archives and Special Collections (SAA, 2012)), along with numerous book chapters and articles. She writes and presents frequently on processing archival collections, managing collections, and donor relations. Prof. Hackbart-Dean has also developed the curriculum and been an active instructor in workshops vetted by the Society of American Archivists (SAA) offered throughout the country multiple times a year over the past decade. Prof. Hackbart-Dean has been deeply engaged with the SAA since 1988, serving as the chair of several sections and committees, and a member of the Council. In 2017, she was named a Distinguished Fellow of the Society of American Archivists.

Please join me in welcoming Pamela Hackbart-Dean in her new role at the UIC University Library. She can be reached at phdean@uic.edu.

Sincerely,

Mary M. Case
University Librarian and Dean of Libraries

For more information, please contact:
Andrea Smith
lib-comm@uic.edu