HathiTrust’s Heather Weltin Selected as New Collections Strategist

HathiTrust is pleased to announce that Heather Weltin has been appointed HathiTrust’s Collections Strategist, a re-conceived leadership role that will help us accomplish our strategic vision to increase access to and use of an expanded, diversified, and enhanced collection. Reporting to the Associate Director, Jennifer Vinopal, Weltin will be a key partner in developing and realizing a collecting strategy with member libraries, content providers, and other external stakeholders.

Weltin has been at HathiTrust for five years and is currently the Content and Data Management Lead and Shared Print Program Officer. Before that, she was the Director of Collection Management and Resource Sharing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She brings to this role an extensive background in organizational leadership, collection management, digital libraries, cross-institutional collaboration, and data analysis for strategic decision-making. She is also a national leader in the shared print space, supporting conversations focused on shifting the shared print landscape to embed it into the full collection lifecycle. 

“Heather is an exceptional leader and has the background and skills we need to expand the value of our collection,” says Vinopal.

More than 60 HathiTrust Member Libraries contribute, or have contributed, digitized content to the collection, which today contains 18+ million items. Building on the strategic vision, which focuses on stewardship and preservation of this collection, Heather will advance HathiTrust’s mission to “contribute to research, scholarship, and the common good by collaboratively collecting, organizing, preserving, communicating, and sharing the record of human knowledge.” 

“I am immensely excited to step into the role of Collections Strategist. This opportunity provides a unique opportunity to build on my shared print collaborative work and past collection management experience to help HathiTrust achieve its new strategic vision,” says Weltin. Heather will start in her new role at HathiTrust on November 4, 2024.