We partnered with HathiTrust Digital Library on the search for an inaugural Associate Director. HathiTrust is a nonprofit collaborative of academic and research libraries preserving 17+ million digitized items. HathiTrust offers reading access to the fullest extent allowable by U.S. copyright law, computational access to the entire corpus for scholarly research, and other emerging services based on the combined collection. HathiTrust members steward the collection — the largest set of digitized books managed by academic and research libraries — under the aims of scholarly, not corporate, interests.

Our work resulted in the recruitment of Jennifer Vinopal to the role.

When she joins in March 2023, Vinopal will assume a key leadership role at a pivotal moment in HathiTrust’s 15th year with responsibility for day-to-day activities and integrated development of HathiTrust’s programs and services. Reporting to Executive Director, Mike Furlough, she will lead the expansion of critical operations activity to align resources and strategic priorities.

Vinopal previously served as Associate Dean for Distinctive Collections and Digital Programs at The Ohio State University, where she provided direction for University Libraries special collections, area studies, and exhibitions. She has also supported the development of various commercial and open-source IT projects, digital preservation, web development, content management and discovery services, and information security.

Prior to joining Ohio State, Vinopal worked at New York University where she developed services to support digital scholarship and digital library initiatives. Her library background includes humanities scholarship, library collection development, digital library and digital scholarship initiatives, and library public service.

Vinopal has been co-chair of the Big Ten Academic Alliance Digital Strategies and Information Technology Services working group and a member of the Board of Directors of the Educopia Institute.

Vinopal holds a BA in French Language and Literature from Tufts University. She received her Master of Philosophy in French Language and Literature from New York University. She earned her Master of Library and Information Science from Rutgers University.