GPO Director Names New Members To The Depository Library Council

U.S. Government Publishing Office (GPO) Director Hugh Nathanial Halpern announces the appointment of five new members to the Depository Library Council (DLC). DLC members advise the GPO Director on policy matters relating to the Federal Depository Library Program (FDLP) and access to U.S. Government information.  In addition to experience working in various types of libraries, the new DLC members have experience with and knowledge of current developments in the fields of library science and U.S. Government information. These new members will help position the DLC and the FDLP for the GPO’s vision of an America Informed.

“GPO welcomes the expertise of these five new members of the DLC,” said Director Halpern. “Through their work every day, DLC council members help GPO realize its vision of an America Informed. I look forward to the advice of this council so together we can continue to ensure citizens nationwide have access to Government information.”

These five new DLC members will serve from June 1, 2023 – March 31, 2026.

Gwen Sinclair: Chair of the Government Documents & Maps Department, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Sinclair has 24 years of experience as a Government information librarian. She is an active member of the American Library Association’s Government Documents Round Table (GODORT) and the Hawai‘i Library Association. She is an adjunct faculty member in the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Library and Information Science Program and is the author of the open textbook Government Information: A Reference for Librarians in Hawai‘i.

Angela J.A. Kent: Head of History Research Centers (Special Collections), Houston Public Library. Kent formerly served as the Head of Reference and FDLP Co-Regional at the Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

Joshua Finnell: Professor and Head of Research & Instruction, University Libraries at Colgate University. Finnell leads research and instruction initiatives in the University Libraries at Colgate University. In collaboration with Will Cipolli, Associate Professor of Mathematics, Finnell co-founded the Colgate University Data Science Collaboratory. Prior to Colgate, Joshua worked as a data librarian at Los Alamos National Laboratory, a humanities librarian at Denison University, and a clinical outcomes research coordinator at the Washington University School of Medicine. His work has been published in SCRIPTed: A Journal of Law, Technology & Society, Digital Library Perspectives, Planetarian, and International Information & Library Review. Finnell has served on the programming committee for Digital Library Forum, the Web Archiving and Digital Libraries Workshop and Joint Conference on Digital Libraries, and the Research Data Access and Preservation (RDAP) Summit. He currently serves on the Advisory Board of The Data Discovery Collaboration.

Angela Bonnell: Head of Government Documents, Illinois State University’s Milner Library. Bonnell is an active member of the American Library Association’s Government Documents Round Table (GODORT), where she has served on a variety of committees, most recently as the Chair of the Rare and Endangered Government Publications (REGP) Committee. She is also a council member on the Illinois Government Depository Council (IGDC). Bonnell has published and presented on the use of Government information in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Government documents use studies, and civic engagement in academic libraries.

Sarah Erekson: Regional Government Documents Librarian, University of Florida’s George A. Smathers Libraries. Erekson oversees Government documents collections undergoing cataloging as part of the shared print repository for the state of Florida. She works to create accessible Government information collections within the Southeast National Collection Service Area, through collaborative agreements such as the ASERL Centers of Excellence, Preservation Stewardship, and Shared Regional Collections. Previously she was a Government Information and Municipal Reference Librarian at Chicago Public Library. Erekson is active in the American Library Association’s Government Documents Round Table (GODORT), the Florida Library Association, and the ASERL Collaborative Federal Depository Program Oversight Committee.