The following is a message to the York University community from President & Vice-Chancellor, Rhonda Lenton.
It is with mixed emotions that I announce the upcoming retirement of Joy Kirchner, dean of York University Libraries following an administrative leave.
Joy Kirchner
Ms. Kirchner joined York University as dean in 2015 and was renewed for a second term in 2020. She has been a tireless advocate for York University Libraries throughout her time at the University. Joy has remained committed to aligning the Library's expertise and services with the teaching, learning and research needs of students, faculty and researchers, especially throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and campus closures.
As a champion in providing innovative support to York's new Markham Campus and an instrumental member of the President's Advisory Council on Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), she has served on a committee dedicated to creating a comprehensive DEDI framework for the University. She was asked to serve on the University's Affirmative Action committee where all faculty appointments are reviewed from an equity and affirmative action lens.
Dean Kirchner has also been at the forefront of advancing recognition of the Libraries' primacy in providing accessible content to students with disabilities. She supported an Ontario Council of University Libraries' (OCUL) sponsored Accessibility Symposium and a special Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) national leadership meeting on the York campus, to advance leadership training and capacity building for open education initiatives throughout Canada.
Joy has significantly advanced the Libraries' contribution to York's research intensification priority and institutional aims to advance global recognition, which resulted in an increase of 12 per cent in the discoverability of York scholarship, an equivalent to three year's worth of campus publishing outputs. She initiated and co-chairs a joint Provost/VP Research Open Access Open Data Steering Committee that engages the campus on issues concerning authors' rights, publication agreements, sustainable publishing practices and research data management planning. This work led to a Senate-approved institutional open access policy in 2019 with the aim of providing greater supports for authors to engage in open-access publishing and infrastructure to enhance the visibility of their scholarship, a singular policy development in North America.
In the past year, she helped the committee advance a campus engagement process that uniquely identifies the Libraries' responsibility to conceptualize an inclusive research data management framework and support system that values the diversity and complexity of our research community. The work supports York's institutional Tri-council requirement to develop a research data management strategy by Spring 2023.
Her international leadership in scholarly communications led York to host the renowned international OpenCon conference at York University in 2018 - the first time the conference was hosted in Canada. Her own research and professional collaborations with colleagues in the U.S. and Canada have led to several exceptional collaborations, including the development of a 14-institution collaboration for a major shared library system, investigating new models of digital scholarship and initiating a robust slate of scholarly communications as well as open access campus outreach programs for institutions across North America.
Her work has contributed to broader explorations of these issues in both countries, where she was elected to serve on the prestigious international Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition advocacy body and invited to chair the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) flagship Advancing Research Committee. She was also elected chair of the Ontario Council of University Libraries, where she advanced a major governance review of the Council and is a North American leader in open scholarship, maintaining research and professional collaborations with colleagues across Canada and the United States.
On a personal note, I want to thank Dean Kirchner for her support and good humour. She will be missed. She will remain in her role until June 30, 2023 and a search for her successor has commenced.
Sincerely,
Rhonda L. Lenton
President & Vice Chancellor
This story was originally featured in YFile, York University's community newsletter.
