About Dean Lim
Dr. Adriene Lim is the Dean of Libraries at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she provides administrative leadership and vision for the campus’s large library organization. Lim also initiated and serves as co-leader of UMD PACT, a cross-campus group charged with advancing sustainable, equitable scholarly publishing, facilitating open research and scholarship, and promoting open education. She serves as the campus’s designated lead for the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) HELIOS (Higher Education Leadership Initiative for Open Scholarship) project.
Before joining the University of Maryland in August 2019, Dr. Lim was Dean of Libraries and Philip H. Knight Chair at the University of Oregon. She also was Dean of Libraries at Oakland University in Michigan and held a variety of leadership roles at Portland State University in Oregon, including Interim University Librarian. In her early career, Lim was Head of Digital Library Services at Wayne State University and the Systems Librarian/ Head of Database Management for the Detroit Area Library Network (DALNET).
In addition to being active in the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), Lim was elected to serve as American Library Association (ALA) Councilor-at-Large, 2022-2025, and is now Chair of the Center for Research Libraries’ board, a member of the board for the Academic Preservation Trust, and Chair of the University System of Maryland Affiliated Institutions (USMAI). She was recently appointed to serve on the U.S. Government Publishing Office’s Task Force on an All-Digital Federal Depository Library Program.
Lim earned her Ph.D. in library and information science (LIS), specializing in managerial leadership, at Simmons University. A first-generation college student and native of Detroit, she holds a master’s degree in LIS and a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts, both summa cum laude, from Wayne State University. She has published numerous articles and book chapters, and given presentations about managerial leadership, technology, diversity, and other topics at the international, national, and state levels. Among her scholarly articles, Lim was the author of a paper on readability published in the Journal of Academic Librarianship, named among the “Top 20 Articles in 2010” by the Library Instruction Round Table of the American Library Association. Lim has received several community and collaborative awards over the years, including the Loleta D. Fyan Award for creative library service from the Michigan Library Association, the Butler Award for excellence in faculty service at Portland State, and a full, competitive scholarship for her doctoral program at Simmons University. Lim was named Distinguished Alumna of the School of Information Science at Wayne State University in 2018.