Biography

Sarah M. Pritchard has been the Dean of Libraries and the Charles Deering McCormick University Librarian at Northwestern University since 2006.  She administers the Main Library, Deering Library, Seeley G. Mudd Library, the Schaffner Library (Chicago), and the Oak Grove Library Center (Waukegan).  Pritchard also has oversight of the Northwestern University Press and manages shared services with the law, medical and NU-Qatar libraries.  Previously she was University Librarian at the University of California, Santa Barbara; Director of Libraries at Smith College; associate executive director at the Association of Research Libraries; and a specialist in reference and collection development at the Library of Congress.  She is widely published in the professional literature, and active on boards and committees of numerous external associations and consortia.  She represents Northwestern’s libraries in the Big Ten Academic Alliance, the Chicago Collections Consortium, the Association of Research Libraries, and others.  She has lectured and consulted internationally on library management, assessment, women's studies, digital systems, collection development and other professional issues.  Pritchard received her B.A. degree in French & Italian from the University of Maryland, and master’s degrees in French and in Library Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.