Dr.
Patricia Senn Breivik continues her professional work through Nehemiah
Communications where she has been Vice President since August of 2005.
Previously she served as the Dean of the University Library at San Jose State
University where, in collaboration with the San Jose Public Library, a merged
library opened in August 2003. An innovative model serving as the Silicon
Valley's 21stcentury information hub, the library won the Gale
Publishing/Library Journal Library of the Year award for 2004.
Formerly, she was the Library Dean at Wayne State University for four years,
where she served as the chief administrative officer in charge of five
University Libraries, Media Services, the University Press, the Library and
Information Science Program, the Office for Teaching and Learning, and UGE1000.
In the early 1990s, she served as Associate Vice President for Information
Resources at the Towson State University campus of the University of Maryland
System for five years. At Towson, she was responsible for organizing,
developing and managing units including the library, academic computing
services, telecommunications, office automation, satellite systems, telephone
and fax systems, and for campus-wide networking. Previously she served for over
ten years as Director of library and telecommunications services which
supported three academic institutions on the Auraria campus in Denver. During
most of this period, she also served as part-time special assistant to the
President of the University of Colorado. Earlier positions were as Dean of
Library Services at Sangamon State University in Springfield, Illinois, and as
Assistant Dean of Pratt Institute, Graduate School of Library and Information
Science, Brooklyn, New York.
Breivik has held numerous leadership
positions at the state and national levels within both librarianship and higher
education. For example, she served as Chair of the National Forum on
Information Literacy, an umbrella group of over 90 national and international
organizations concerned with the need for people to be able to access and use
information effectively from its founding in 1989 until 2005. She is a past
President of the Association of College & Research Libraries.
She is also a frequent speaker and writer on
the topic of information literacy and resource-based learning. For example, she
co-authored the book, Information Literacy Revolution in the Library,
with now President of Vanderbilt University which won the 1990 G.K. Hall
Library Literature Award. Her second book with Gee, which will be published in
2006 is entitled Higher Education in the Internet Age.
Her awards and honors include: the Miriam
Dudley Instruction Librarian Award (1997), the Pratt Institute Alumni
Achievement Award (1995), the American Association of School Librarians
Executive Board recognition for special contributions to School Library Media
Programs (1992), the American Council on Education Fellows Program in Academic
Administration Service Award (1990), and the Columbia University School of
Library Service Distinguished Alumni Award (1989). Breivik holds a B.A. from
Brooklyn College, an M.L.S. from Pratt Institute, and a D.L.S. from Columbia
University.
