Diane Dallis-Comentale named Ruth Lilly Dean of University Libraries at Indiana University
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 23, 2022 - BLOOMINGTON, Ind. –
Diane Dallis-Comentale, who has served as Interim Dean of IU Libraries since July 1, 2021, has been named the new Ruth Lilly Dean of University Libraries at Indiana University effective April 15, subject to approval by the IU Board of Trustees.
Provost and Executive Vice President Rahul Shrivastav made the announcement Wednesday, March 23. Dallis-Comentale previously served as associate dean for planning and administration at IU Libraries. “I want to thank Diane Dallis-Comentale for her exemplary leadership during a period of transition—and particularly during a global pandemic—which required an innovative approach to supporting a student body that was largely online,” Shrivastav said. “I am impressed with her vision for the Libraries, which will play an important role in supporting growth in IU’s third century, and am looking forward to working with her on our next set of leading-edge innovations.”
Dallis-Comentale was named associate dean for administration and planning with IU Libraries in June 2018. Throughout her career she has overseen strategic planning and assessment, business and financial services, communications, and human resources. She has led the creation of transformative new services and renovations in the Wells Library, including the Learning Commons, the Moving Image Archive, the Scholars’ Commons, and the creation of the Grad Commons space for a new generation of researchers. Prior to this role, Dallis-Comentale served as Associate University Librarian for Research and Instruction at the University of Chicago Library for one year, where she directed new initiatives and services and created or strengthened partnerships with several major units across campus.
“It is an honor to lead the librarians and staff of this exceptional organization who have demonstrated a positive impact on the teaching and research mission of the university,” Dallis-Comentale said. “The IU Libraries, including the IU Press, have been national leaders of change and innovation, and we are ready to build upon our past successes with new integrative approaches to campus-wide scholarship, diverse collections, and educational enrichment. I’m proud to join a leadership team poised to advance the University’s position in higher education, and the Libraries will be integral to a stronger future for IU.”
IU Libraries is ranked 11th among public academic libraries in North America, and 4th in the Big Ten Academic Alliance, by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL). Its librarians are leaders in national conversations in areas such as Open Access, digital preservation and associated technologies, the changing role of area studies librarianship, and integrating information literacy and primary sources into the curriculum.
Across all of IU, the Enterprise Scholarly Systems partnership between IU Libraries, University Information Technology Services, and the IUPUI University Library provides digital repository services for a vast number of online collections. Known to modern scholars as “virtual stacks,” these repositories ingest, store, and provide access to IU content either born digitally, or digitized from historic primary sources in a variety of formats. Repository offerings include Media Collections Online, Digital Collections, and Archives Online. IU research output is shared globally through IUScholarWorks and IU DataCORE (partner repositories serve IUPUI in these two instances).
In Bloomington, IU Libraries now holds 11,532,115 items in its catalog, in 450 languages, and offers more than 6 million items electronically. Its Moving Image Archive contains more than 120,000 items. The Libraries’ partnership with University Information Technology Services (UITS) to complete the Media Digitization Preservation Initiative (MDPI) is the country’s most ambitious academic audio, video, and film digitization preservation project to date. IU Libraries is prolific in open access publishing, hosting over 40 open access journals, and the proud home to Indiana University Press, an academic press serving the world of scholarship and culture as a professional, not-for-profit publisher. On the Bloomington campus, the Herman B Wells Library, with its double towers of Indiana limestone, is the visual center of the multi-library system. Other major destinations include the Lilly Library, a preeminent rare book and manuscript library known around the world; the William and Gayle Cook Music Library, supporting the internationally renowned Jacobs School of Music; and Wylie House Museum, one of Bloomington’s oldest homes (1835), the residence of IU’s first President, which is open to the public through free guided tours.
