Palfrey Appointed Headmaster of Phillips Academy (Updated)

John G. Palfrey Jr., Henry N. Ess III Professor of Law and Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources at Harvard Law School, has been named the 15th Head of School of Phillips Academy. According to the press release, he will begin his new appointment in July 2012. See also the HLS announcement and coverage in the Boston Globe.

Update: From a recent post to the dpla-discussion list

We wanted to let you know about a change in John Palfrey's professional life that you may read about.  John is becoming the head of school at Phillips Academy in Andover, MA.  His agreement with Andover includes a written commitment to continuing to chair the DPLA's steering committee and supporting the work of our initiative through the Berkman Center's secretariat.  DPLA will be adding a further sensibility toward K-12 issues to the project through John’s change in day-job, which will take effect next summer (July, 2012).  Please feel free to contact either of us if you have any questions.

We look forward to continuing to work with all of you toward this important public-spirited goal.  (And we look forward to seeing some of you in LA for the public librarians' gathering about digitization efforts, too.)

Best,

Doron Weber, Vice Chair
John Palfrey, Chair
of the DPLA Steering Committee

Granted, the DPLA is one very "big picture" initiative that has presented many diverse and critical opinions that need to be addressed. However, John has also been very actively involved in academic law library issues in the 21st century by utilizing the public perception of HLS ' standing in the legal academy. In a very short time our adopted son in our profession has been a major player on this stage. John has left very big shoes to fill at HLS and academic law librarianship generally. Some of HLS library's collection development policies borrowed heavily from previously enacted academic law library policies that did not garner the attention they deserved because they did not come for Harvard.

While I congratulate and wish John well on his new gig, I wonder about who will replace him at HLS and also wonder if his replacement will be up to the task of being an opinion leader like John has been.  [JH]