Larry Alford
University Chief Librarian
University of Toronto
Larry Alford has been University Chief Librarian at the University of Toronto since August 2011. The University of Toronto Library System is the largest university research library in Canada. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the University of Toronto Press. Prior to joining the University of Toronto he was Dean of University Libraries at Temple University. The Temple University Press also reported to him. Prior to joining Temple, he worked at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for more than 30 years in a variety of positions including Deputy University Librarian and Interim University Librarian.
Larry has been extensively involved in a variety of cooperative activities over his career. He served as a board member and chair of the Southeastern Library Network and as a member and President of the OCLC Members Council. He also served as a trustee of OCLC from 2002 – 2014 and as its board chair from 2007 – 2012.
Larry is an active member of the American Library Association (ALA), the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), and the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL), serving as a member of CARL’s Board of Directors from 2018 - 2020. He served on the ARL Board from 2013 – 2017 and as president of ARL in 2016. He has also served a member of the Board of Directors of Canadiana.org, a Canadian non-profit which provided digital access to Canadian heritage collections, as well as on the board of the Canadian Research Knowledge Network which licenses resources for libraries across Canada.
Larry holds a B.A. and M.L.S. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he serves on the Board of Visitors of the School of Information and Library Science (SILS). He received the Distinguished Alumni Award from SILS in May 2005. He was recipient of the Hugh Atkinson Memorial Award from the American Library Association in 2018 and of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries Award for Distinguished Service to Research Librarianship 2021. In 2022, he received the Ron MacDonald Distinguished Service Award from the Canadian Research Knowledge Network.
Presenting at the following sessions
October 05, 2023
10:30am
Canadian libraries have a long history of collaborating to achieve effective control over both costs and terms in licenses with large commercial publishers, and more recently have been expanding open access options for researchers at no additional charge within read and publish agreements. Simultaneously, researchers continue to pay Article Processing Charges (APCs) to publish in other journals while having no ability to exert their collective power to negotiate those costs. This panel will explore if now is the time to collaborate with research offices and funding agencies to harness their collective influence and leverage CRKN’s negotiation expertise to bring cost control to the APC market in Canada.
Coast Coal Harbour – Coal A and B
