Board
The Board of the Massachusetts Center for the Book is composed of key decision makers from our supporting partner organizations and individuals committed to furthering the mission of the Center.
Rob Maier
Chair
Rob Maier has been the Director of the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners since October 2002. The MBLC is the agency of state government responsible for the maintenance and development of library services for all residents of the Commonwealth. Prior to becoming Director, Mr. Maier headed the Board’s Library Development Unit. A graduate of Union College in Schenectady, New York, Maier also holds a M.L.S. from the University of Rhode Island Graduate Library School.
Kristin O’Connell
Clerk
Kristin O’Connell, the daughter of two English teachers, grew up in a household of readers. She is now Assistant Director of the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, where she has major responsibility for the Clemente Course in Humanities and for Literature & Medicine: Humanities at the Heart of Health Care. She lives in Amherst with her husband, a professor at Amherst College, in a house that is running out of book space. They have two grown children.
James Wald
Treasurer
Jim Wald is Associate Professor and Director of the Center for the
Book at Hampshire College, where he teaches modern European cultural history and the history of the book. He is also the Treasurer and a member of the Executive Board of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing (SHARP).
John C. Brereton
John C. Brereton is Executive Director of the Calderwood Writing Initiative at the Boston Athenaeum. He holds a PhD from Rutgers University and has been a Professor of English at the City University of New York, the University of Massachusetts Boston, and Brandeis University. Among his books are The Origins of Composition Studies in the American College 1875-1925, A Documentary History and three editions of The Norton Reader. He has two sons and lives in Cambridge.
Michèle V. Cloonan
Michèle V. Cloonan is Dean of the Graduate School of Library and Information Sciences at Simmons College. Before joining Simmons, she held positions at UCLA, the Newberry Library (Chicago), Smith College, and Brown University. She has written widely in the areas of preservation, book trade history, and bibliography, and holds degrees from Bennington College (AB), the University of Chicago (AM), and the University of Illinois (MS, PhD).
David R. Godine
David R. Godine began his career working for Leonard Baskin, the renowned typographer and printmaker, and Harold McGrath, his master printer. In 1970, he established David R. Godine, Inc., a small independent publishing house located in Boston. Among the many awards the house has received are the Carey-Thomas Award for Excellence in Publishing (1976), the W. A. Dwiggins Award for excellence in book production (1984), the Boston Globe Literary Press Award (1987), the first New England Booksellers Annual Award (1989), and the Leipzig Internationalen Buchkunst-Austellung (1989). Mr. Godine holds degrees from Dartmouth and Harvard.
Bernard Margolis
The Board of Trustees of the Boston Public Library named Bernard A. Margolis Library President in March of 1997. As President, Mr. Margolis oversees the operation of the sixth largest library system in the country. Mr. Margolis earned a Master's degree in librarianship and a Bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Denver. He has served as an elected member of the Governing Council of the 55,000-member American Library Association. Mr. Margolis lives in West Roxbury with his wife, Amanda Batey.
Sharon Shaloo, ex officio
Jeffrey Herman