Christy Roysdon, who has served as director of Library Collections & Scholarly Communications for Library and Technology Services (LTS) since 1997, has announced that she is retiring from Lehigh University on June 30, 2018.
Christy began her career nearly 40 years ago, beginning as an assistant reference librarian, and has been a dedicated champion for Lehigh Libraries and scholarly research ever since. As director, Christy oversaw a collection of nearly 1M volumes, electronic books, and journal subscriptions, and managed the university’s software licensing, the Lehigh Preserve Digital repository, several digitization projects, and Lehigh’s Special Collections. She was responsible for planning Lehigh’s conversions from print to electronic journals and the purchase of new electronic resources across the disciplines and their integration into the curriculum.
Over the years, she played an integral part in securing numerous grants that enhanced the university’s collections from a variety of sources, the Mellon Foundation and the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Libraries among them. She initiated the development of the libraries’ digital projects team, the creation of the Lehigh Preserve, and the development of various incarnations of library web pages and service offerings. She also played a major role in the early evolution of the Lehigh Campus Portal through coordinating the development of a unique MyLibrary portal environment to deliver library content to clients based on their role at the university.
Christy has played a lead role in the Friends of the Lehigh Libraries for years and through her efforts, Lehigh and local communities have enjoyed talks by major authors, a popular speaker series, an annual reception to celebrate faculty authors, and other special events.
Christy also represented the Lehigh Libraries in different capacities in the broader library community. She was instrumental in securing several consortial subscription agreements for the LVAIC Libraries and the PALCI Consortium Libraries. She managed Lehigh’s CLIR fellows program. In addition, she has authored publications on electronic library services and served a term as President of the Pennsylvania Library Association. She has presented at many conferences, seminars, and other educational meetings, and organized professional library events both regionally and nationally. Christy is a graduate of the University of Arizona and earned her master’s in library science from Syracuse University.
We wish Christy well in her retirement and thank her for her service to Lehigh and to students, faculty, and staff whose academic, research, and library experiences were enriched by her dedication and expertise.
An on-campus reception will be held on Wednesday, May 16th, from 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. in the Linderman Library Rotunda. We hope you will be able to join us as we celebrate Christy’s many contributions to scholarly research and devoted service to the Lehigh Libraries.
Sincerely,
Bruce M. Taggart, Ph.D.
Vice Provost Library and Technology Services