On September 29, 2014, James Simon was named CRL Vice President of Collections and Services.
Simon is now responsible for CRL departments that build and care for CRL collections and that directly serve CRL members and constituencies: Access Services, Stack Management, Facilities, and Technical Services. Simon will also continue to be responsible for collection development and international resources.
James Simon has been instrumental in advancing CRL interests and visibility over the past twelve years by building and managing CRL relationships with important partners, including the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Library of Congress, Linda Hall Library, and the Law Library Microform Consortium. He brings to the position broad experience and a strong record of accomplishment in cooperative, international collection development, preservation and service. Simon served as Director of International Resources at CRL from 2002 to 2014, and from 1998 to 2002 as CRL’s Program Officer for Area Studies. Prior to his appointment at CRL Simon worked for the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX), as Program Officer for scholarly exchanges and cooperative partnerships with Russian and Slavic organizations.
Simon was responsible for the Global Resources Program after its transfer from the Association of Research Libraries to CRL in 2006, and led development of the World Newspaper Archive, a partnership between CRL and NewsBank Inc., which has digitized more than 2 million pages of foreign newspapers to date.
Simon also directed several CRL grant-funded projects, including development of an Open Web Repository of Civil Society Documentation (Carnegie Corporation of New York, 2014–16); GRN 2020: Toward a Data-centered Agenda for Preservation and Access (Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, 2014–15); Human Rights Electronic Evidence (John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, 2008–12); and Cataloging and Microfilming Foreign Newspapers in United States Repositories (National Endowment for the Humanities, 2004–06).
