Melissa Gasparotto Named Associate Vice Provost for Operations, Access Services and Strategic Partnerships

The University of Pennsylvania Libraries is pleased to announce that Melissa Gasparotto has been named Associate Vice Provost for Operations, Access Services, and Strategic Partnerships, effective October 31, 2022.  

In this role she will provide leadership in developing and implementing effective strategies in the areas of access services and resource sharing, technical services, facilities, operations, and the Penn Libraries Research Annex (LIBRA). Gasparotto will contribute to capital planning, and she will take the lead in developing and managing high-level partnerships with local, national, and international organizations. 

"Melissa is a creative and collaborative leader with a strong vision for user-based library services,” says Constantia Constantinou, H. Carton Rogers III, Vice Provost and Director of Libraries. “She will make significant contributions to our future success as we transform library spaces and programs to meet evolving needs at Penn and strengthen our engagement with partners regionally, nationally and internationally." 

Gasparotto is currently Associate Director of Research Services and Institutional Partnerships for the New York Public Library’s Research Libraries. As such she provides leadership in establishing a consistent user experience across all the research libraries’ strategic services and collection initiatives. She also works to develop and sustain institutional partnerships around collections services, including the ReCAP Shared Collection and MaRLI. In addition she serves as the research libraries’ liaison to the City University of New York.  

Previously Gasparotto was Head of the Learning & Engagement Department at Rutgers University Libraries, New Brunswick, where she also worked as Area Studies Librarian and Latin American Studies Liaison. Gasparotto received a Chancellor’s grant to develop the Rutgers Inclusion and Diversity Research Portal, which has grown to contain nearly 800 open access research works produced by Rutgers faculty and doctoral students.  

She has been Reference Librarian, Hunter College Library; Assistant Librarian for Latin American Studies, New York University Libraries; and Visiting Assistant Professor in the School of Information, Pratt Institute. She has published and presented on a wide range of topics, from sustainable open access models and equitable discovery to human rights education, critical information literacy, and digital linguistic justice. 

As the Penn Libraries’ Associate Vice Provost for Operations, Access Services and Strategic Partnerships, Gasparotto will coordinate system-wide planning, policy development, resource allocation, and personnel management in all user operations, access services, and strategic partnerships. She will lead the evolution of library spaces to learner-centered hubs for the exploration, creation and transformation of knowledge. She will also work closely with the division of Impact Assessment and Organizational Analysis to guide and develop the Libraries’ overall assessment program and shape operations and services to meet evolving user needs.  

“I have long admired the values-centered approach fostered by the Penn Libraries, whether through diversity in collecting, a commitment to broad access, or innovative community partnerships,” says Gasparotto. “I am thrilled to be joining a vibrant, expert team putting these values into practice by cultivating collaborations for the equitable advancement of knowledge and ensuring that all of the Libraries’ spaces and services support and inspire the transformative teaching, research, and learning happening at Penn.”  

Gasparotto holds a B.A. in Spanish and Latin American Literatures and Cultures, and an M.A. in Latin American and Caribbean Studies, from New York University. She received an M.S. in Library and Information Science from Long Island University. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Communication, Information and Media at Rutgers University.