Brigitte Weinsteiger was recently appointed the Vice Provost and Director of Penn Libraries.
Brigitte Weinsteiger will serve as the new H. Carton Rogers III Vice Provost and director of the Penn Libraries.
The announcement followed a national search and was made on June 1 by Provost John Jackson Jr., who called Weinsteiger a “a visionary and dynamic leader of the Penn Libraries for more than 16 years.” He added that she has placed “a high priority on engaging our campus and our community, advancing diversity and inclusion across our collections, and promoting open communications both internally and externally.”
Weinsteiger has been a part of Penn Libraries since 2008, and her tenure has included overseeing the 11 departmental libraries across campus, including the Fisher Fine Arts Library and the Holman Biotech Commons, and establishing various initiatives like Diversity in the Stacks and the Center for Global Collections to advance the Penn Libraries’ diversity and promotion of global understanding.
Most recently, she has served as the inaugural Gershwind and Bennett Family Senior Associate Vice Provost for Collections and Scholarly Communications since September 2022. In this role, Weinsteiger was responsible for the Penn Libraries’ $27 million collections budget, 8.5 million print and electronic books, and other digital resources.
Throughout her time at the University, she has represented Penn on committees such as the Ivy Plus Libraries Confederation, Pennsylvania Academic Library Consortium, Inc., the Center for Research Libraries, and more. Weinsteiger has also served on publishing boards and councils including Project MUSE, JSTOR, EBSCO Books, and Emerald.
In September 2023, Weinsteiger assumed the role of interim director of the Penn Libraries after Constantia Constantinou, who was appointed to this role in May 2018, resigned.
“I see my role as a library leader to connect vision, partners, resources, and strategy. Libraries are not just about books or buildings; they are also about people,” Weinsteiger said to Penn Today about her new position.
“A central aim of the Libraries will be to engage and partner with university and community stakeholders in furthering the University’s academic and societal mission, including effective communication and collaboration with partners, a pragmatic resolve to inspire a culture focused on practical outcomes and engagement, and an ethos of entrepreneurship to find opportunities across campus and beyond.”
Weinsteiger has a master‘s of science in library and information science from Drexel University, a master‘s of arts in liberal arts focused on medieval studies from Penn, and two bachelor of arts degrees from the Pennsylvania State University in medieval studies and integrative arts.
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