Challinor will serve as chair until President Bush appoints new members to NCLIS and designates one of them as her successor. The committee currently has only five members, with 12 vacancies.
“Joan’s experience as vice chair of the commission and her leadership of the commission’s international committee make her a fine successor to the chairmanship,” noted Gould. “The past few years have been a time of intensive reexamination of the role of the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science. The designation of a new chairman and the efforts of the White House to fill vacant positions on the commission indicate to me that the administration recognizes the ongoing and important role that NCLIS can play in developing policy proposals for our information age.”
Challinor is a member of the Library Council of Harvard University’s Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America and a former director of Knight Ridder, a newspaper and electronic publisher.
Challinor’s first official act as chair was to designate Jack Hightower vice chair of the commission. Hightower, a former U. S. representative and former justice of the Texas Supreme Court, was appointed to NCLIS by President Clinton in 1999.
Posted July 28, 2003.