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Salwa Ismail

Associate University Librarian for Discovery and Access
Harvard Library

Dr. Salwa Ismail is the Associate University Librarian for Discovery and Access for the Harvard Library, reporting to the Vice President for the Harvard Library and serving as a member of the Library’s senior leadership team. In this role, she provides system-wide leadership for discovery and access, as well as administration of Access Services, Information and Technical Services, Imaging Services, User Experience and Discovery Services, and the HBCU Digital Library Trust.  Her programmatic responsibilities include providing leadership in the continual evolution of services that enable people and machines to discover and access library content, whether in digital or tangible formats, purchased or licensed, created in the library, or available through open-access channels. She also provides strategic, collaborative leadership for services that enable people and systems to discover and access Harvard’s vast collections, and she oversees senior units responsible for content acquisition, digitization, description, access services, and user experience research.

Prior to Harvard, Dr. Ismail served as the Associate University Librarian for Digital Initiatives and Information Technology and Associate CIO at UC Berkeley Library, where she led a broad portfolio of digital and technology programs and services, including the university’s Google Books Partnership and the UC North Regional Library Facility. Earlier in her career, she held leadership roles at Georgetown University Library and Florida Atlantic University Libraries.

Her research explores the use of computational social science and agent-based modeling to understand leadership, educational learning, and pedagogy in complex adaptive systems. She earned her B.S. in Computer Engineering and MBA from Florida Atlantic University, her MSLIS from Florida State University, and her Ph.D. in Computational Social Science from George Mason University. She has served on the boards and committees of various library and information organizations. She has been recognized as a Library Journal Mover & Shaker and as one of eCampus News’s “11 Leaders Shaping the Future of Higher Education.” She has held national and international leadership roles in digital infrastructure and library technology initiatives.