FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

February 4, 2000

Fairbanks, Alaska — University of Alaska Fairbanks Provost Paul Reichardt has appointed Professor of Library Science Susan Grigg, head of the Alaska and Polar Regions Collection, as acting director of libraries and information technology for the Rasmuson Library. Grigg is also a professor in the UAF Northern Studies Program.

She replaces David Bantz, who begins a new position this week with the University of Alaska's Statewide Administration, focusing on systemwide information resources, electronic commerce and technology infrastructure. Bantz has been Rasmuson Library director since July 1998.

Grigg came to UAF's Rasmuson Library in 1996 to lead the development, preservation and accessibility of the Alaska and Polar Region Department's extensive archival holdings. With hundreds of thousands of books, newspapers, archives, manuscripts, oral histories, maps, films and photographs, the department remains the single most important resource for research on Alaska's history and culture.

Grigg will now oversee the operations of UAF's Rasmuson Library– ranked as one of the major libraries in the Pacific Northwest. With more than 1.5 million book volumes and 20,000 serial and periodical titles, the Rasmuson Library ranks second only to Russia as the world's largest collection of books relating to Alaska, the Circumpolar North and the South Pole.

Prior to working at UAF, Grigg served as a museum librarian and archivist for the Strawbery Banke Museum in New Hampshire. Earlier she was in charge of the Sophia Smith women's history archive at Smith College in Massachusetts and was archivist at Yale University, and the Immigration History Collection at the University of Minnesota.

She has taught and written widely about history and archives, has chaired the editorial board of the Society of American Archivists, and served as an associate editor of the "American National Biography" series from Oxford University Press.

Grigg received her doctorate in American history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she also received her master's degree. In 1993, she received a second master’s degree in library and information science from Simmons College.

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