James King

As the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Library's Information Architect, James has spent the last 4 years blending his IT background with librarianship to enhance services and meet the changing needs of the largest medical research agency in the world. James leads the Custom Information Services effort, which is focused on building partnerships to meet the information needs of researchers through the application of information tools. Recent efforts have included digitization of a thousand volumes for public access (http://archive.org/details/nihlibrary), consulting support to deploy a NIH-wide researcher profiling system (virtual CV's) to encourage collaboration, development of Drupal-based project web sites including one focused on historic pandemic influenza research (http://bit.ly/12c8qVx), and consulting/development of disease space portfolio analyses.

Previously, James spent 18 years at the Naval Research Laboratory's (NRL) Research Library and was fortunate to be a part of a forward-thinking digital library team during the birth of the internet and web era. James assisted with and later managed one of the first and largest government digitization and Web-based efforts in federal libraries. Ultimately rising to the rank of Chief Librarian, James continued to reshape the library to address the changing needs of researchers and engineers in the 21st century.

James is very active in the Special Libraries Association (SLA), serving as 2010 DC/SLA President, convener of the Information Futurist Caucus, chair of the SLA Nominating Committee (2012), a member of two national conference planning councils, and is currently a candidate for the SLA Board. James speaks regularly on future opportunities in libraries, the role of libraries in researcher metrics, and the role of innovation in creating a new future in government libraries. James has a Master in Library & Information Science from Catholic University (2002) and a Bachelors of Computer Graphics from Salem International University (1989). James has served on several industry library advisory boards and has received several recognitions including SLA Fellow (2011), SLA Innovations in Technology Award (2006), and ALA's Federal and Armed Forces Libraries Round Table Achievement (2006) and Distinguished Service (2003) Awards. In his 'free' time, he and his wife Carla spoil their daughter Sarah.