If you had the opportunity to build a science library from scratch for a new generation of researchers and students, what would it look like and how would it operate?

We will show you the vision and reality of the new King Abdullah University of Science and Technology  (KAUST) Library that won the 2011 ALA/AIA Library Architecture award and that for the last three years has been providing a high level of information services to top level international scientists and graduate students. 

We will describe the major characteristics in contemporary science research, education, and information management that guided the design of our library facility, technical infrastructure, and services. We will give concrete examples and evaluations of our implementation of new information services and tools. And we will end with the challenges still before us, most notably the effective integration of science knowledge management into the workflow of scientific research and enterprise information technology organization.

Joseph Branin
Joseph Branin King Abdullah University of Science and Technology Library

Joseph Branin is the Founding Library Director at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology. Since 2009, he has led the start-up of this international research library in Saudi Arabia. He has held library positions of increasing responsibility at Kent State and the Universities of Georgia and Minnesota. For two decades now he has been a library director, first at Stony Brook University in New York, and from 2000 to 2009 at the Ohio State University where he led the development of one of the first digital repository programs in higher education, the OSU Knowledge Bank, and he completed a major building transformation of the central library. He has written twenty-five articles and books on library collection development, knowledge management, and technological change in libraries. Two of his articles have received awards as the best in their field. Since 2008, he has been the editor of College & Research Libraries.

Yi Yu
Yi Yu King Abdullah University of Science and Technology Library

As the first systems librarian of KAUST Library, Yi Yu has been working in establishing the library systems from scratch. Before joining KAUST, Yi Yu had worked in the Library of University of Alaska Fairbanks and had held the posts of systems librarian, digital projects librarian/assistant professor and also served as one of the leaders of the Library IT Department. Yi Yu has professional and education background both in science and humanities. During the recent decade, Yi Yu has been consistently working to bring her updated high tech knowledge and hands-on computer skills into her library career. In adding to working on Integrated Library Systems, she has been studying and researching in depth in the area of data retrieval, distribution and access. Yi Yu got her bachelor degree in engineering and master degrees in computer science, library science, and journalism.

Dr. Rashed S. Alzahrani
Dr. Rashed S. Alzahrani King Abdullah University of Science and Technology Library

Dr. Rashed S. Alzahrani has been working in libraries since 1989. He has started his carrier working in the Institute of Public Administration in Riyadh. During his working time at the IPA, he was able to get his Masters degree from North Carolina Central University in 1993, and his PH.D in Information Studies from Florida State University. He worked as a professional trainer and managed some departments and the library was one of them.