About our speaker at the Gala

David S. Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, will speak at the conference Gala on Thursday evening, August 18. As the presidentially appointed Archivist, he is head of the National Archives and Records Administration, which has about 3,000 employees in 36 facilities across the country. He maintains his own "Collector in Chief" blog on NARA's Web site. Mr. Ferriero was sworn in as the nation's 10th Archivist on November 13, 2009.

Previously, Mr. Ferriero served as the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the New York Public Libraries. In this position he was part of the leadership team responsible for integrating four research libraries and 87 branch libraries into one seamless service for users, creating the largest public library system in the United States and one of the largest research libraries in the world.

Before joining the NYPL in 2004, Mr. Ferriero served in top positions at two of the nation's major academic libraries, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., and Duke University in Durham, N.C. In those positions, he led major initiatives including the expansion of facilities, the adoption of digital technologies, and a reengineering of printing and publications. At Duke, he raised more than $50 million to expand and renovate the university's library, and was responsible for instructional technology initiatives.