Hwa-Wei Lee appointed Chief, Asian Division, Library of Congress

[Allen W Thrasher]

The following is the announcement by Carolyn Brown, Acting Director,
Area Studies Collections, Library of Congress, of Dr. Lee's
appointment.

Allen Thrasher
Senior Reference Librarian
Southern Asia Section


ANNOUNCEMENT

I am pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Hwa-Wei Lee, Dean
Emeritus, University Libraries, Ohio University, as the new chief of the
Asian Division, effective February 10, 2003.

Dr. Lee graduated from National Taiwan Normal University, and received
a Masters of Education from the University of Pittsburgh, a Masters in
Library Science from the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon
University, and a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh.  For forty
years he has held professional library positions at Pittsburgh,
Duquesne, Edinboro (Pennsylvania), Colorado State, as well as Ohio
University, where he was dean of the libraries for twenty-one years.
Between 1968 and 1975, he served in the Library and Information Center
of the Asian Institute of Technology and at Chulalongkorn University,
both in Bangkok, Thailand.

At Ohio University, Dr. Lee transformed a modest library into a library
that achieved membership in the Association of Research Libraries.  He
also developed international collections for Southeast Asian Studies as
well as for other parts of the world.  He was a founding member and
advisor to OhioLINK, a statewide system pooling materials of all major
academic libraries into one unified entity.  In 1979, he initiated a
highly successful internship program that brought librarians from
Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Central America to the university.
To date, over 175 librarians have participated in the program.  He is
known as an extremely effective fund raiser.  Under his leadership, the
endowments of the Ohio University libraries grew to over $8 million and
other grants reached an excess of $2.5 million.

Dr. Lee is well-known in international librarianship.  He has served as
a library consultant and lecturer in countries throughout Asia,
including China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Papua New Guinea, the
Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand, under sponsorship from
numerous organizations that include the Asia Foundation, the Food and
Agricultural Organization of the UN, the Japan Foundation for Global
Partnership, UNESCO, OCLC, and others.  Dr. Lee has organized numerous
international conferences both in the United States and abroad and has
given service on international councils and committees.  He is the
author of three books and some sixty articles, conference papers, and
consultant reports, as well as having edited conference proceedings.

Throughout his career he has received awards and recognitions,
including multiple year listings in various Who's Who publications.
Upon his retirement many organizations presented him with awards for
distinguished service, including the American Library Association,
Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association, Chinese American
Librarians Association, the Library Association of China (Taiwan),
OhioLINK, Ohionet, and others.  In 1999, Ohio University named the first
floor of the Vernon R. Alden Library (the main library) the Hwa-Wei Lee
Center for International Collections, and by resolution of the Board of
Trustees of the University a new library building was named the Hwa-Wei
Lee Library Annex.