Our Director of Libraries, Research and Learning Resources, Caroline Williams, is set to leave the University for Australia at the end of February 2019. She will take on the role of University Librarian at the University of Queensland in the spring.

Queensland is a founding member of the research-intensive Group of Eight universities in Australia, and has over 52,000 students. The University Librarian role’s focus is to enhance the student experience of the library, developing partnerships and collaborative ways of working, and building support for research – including open access.

Caroline joined the University of Nottingham in 2011 – when Libraries was still part of the Information Services department. She became Director of Libraries, Research and Learning Resources when the department separated out from IS in 2013.

During her time at Nottingham, Caroline has developed and led a student-focused transformation strategy that saw Nottingham’s position in terms of student satisfaction with library services rise from 16th to fifth in the Russell Group.

She has also overseen the Libraries transformation, the George Green Library redevelopment and other strategic cross-departmental projects – including research data management (RDM), Project Transform integrations with library and learning technologies including Moodle, and the Integrated Scholarly Information project.

Caroline said: “Our continued rise in student satisfaction is testament to the very real difference the team in Libraries make, and we know from the recent Academic Engagement research just how important the library is to our academic community.

“This is a big decision for me – the University of Nottingham is close to my heart. The breadth of what has been achieved by the team in Libraries and beyond over the past seven years really is inspiring.”

Dr Paul Greatrix, Registrar, said: “Caroline has been an outstanding Director of Libraries, Research and Learning Resources over her seven years at the University of Nottingham. Her achievements in working with her colleagues across the department have transformed library and learning resource provision at the University for our students and staff.

“I know we will all miss her enormously – she has been a great colleague and an outstanding senior leader and it has been a privilege to work with her. I am sure we all want to wish her the very best of luck (and plenty of sunshine) in her new role at the University of Queensland.”

Caroline began her career in university libraries at the University of London, then moved to Manchester Metropolitan, Nottingham Trent and the Open University, before moving away from libraries to lead grant funded national online projects at Mimas, the then national data centre based at the University of Manchester.

Work has already begun to find a new Director of Libraries.