John Meador John Meador has announced that he will be retiring in early 2020 after 50 years as a university librarian, 36 years as a dean — including five years as the inaugural dean of UAB Libraries.
UAB Libraries comprises The Mervyn H. Sterne Library, which supports teaching and research in the arts and humanities, business, education, engineering, natural sciences and mathematics plus social and behavioral sciences, and Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences, which provides services and resources for users in medicine, nursing, optometry, dentistry, public health, health professions and joint health sciences. Meador successfully merged the operations of the two libraries under his leadership as a dean.
“John has positioned the libraries to serve the future library needs of students, teachers, researchers, and the community as envisioned by UAB’s strategic plan Forging the Future,” Provost Pam Benoit said in announcing Meador’s decision. “We are very grateful for his service and wish him the very best in retirement.”
Under Meador’s leadership an aggressive renovation of public areas has been pursued. At its entrance, Sterne Library has an innovative, student-run “MakerSpace,” in which students can use emerging technology such as 3-D printing to pursue entrepreneurial and other creative ideas. Lister Hill Library has a Virtual Reality Studio that provides students, faculty and staff access to virtual reality and augmented reality technologies.
Lister Hill Library is a Resource Library for the Southeastern/Atlantic Region in the National Network of Libraries of Medicine. This network is a service of the National Library of Medicine under the National Institutes of Health; it provides U.S. health professionals with equal access to biomedical information and improves the public’s access to information to enable them to make informed decisions about their health.
