R. CHAMPLIN SHERIDAN, A&S 1952, and his wife, DEBBIE SHERIDAN, played a unique and indispensable role in enabling the university to fulfill founding president Daniel Coit Gilman’s belief that “There is no such thing as a great university apart from a great library.” Mrs. Sheridan is a member of the Sheridan Libraries Advisory Board. Mr. Sheridan was university trustee and chaired the National Advisory Council from 1990 to 2001. He founded the Sheridan Group in 1967, now one of the nation’s leading scientific and medical publishers.
In 1994, the Sheridans made an extraordinary leadership gift to ensure the vitality of the libraries by increasing the endowment and supporting much-needed renovations. Mr. Sheridan remarked that the library, “the foundation of the university,” was a natural focus for their philanthropy because of his success in printing and publishing. To honor the exceptional generosity of Mr. and Mrs. Sheridan, the Eisenhower Library and its special collections at the John Work Garrett Library, the Albert D. Hutzler Reading Room, and the George Peabody Library were rededicated as the Sheridan Libraries in 1998. Upon opening in 2012, the Brody Learning Commons was added to the family of Sheridan Libraries. Mr. Sheridan died in 2013.
Held by Elisabeth M. Long
ELISABETH M. LONG is Sheridan Dean of University Libraries, Archives, and Museums at Johns Hopkins University. She oversees library services in the six Sheridan Libraries and coordinates library services provided by all schools of the university through the University Library Directors Council, which she chairs. She also oversees the university’s historic house museums, Homewood Museum and Evergreen Museum & Library. She chairs the campus Scholarly Communications Steering Committee and is a member of the DSAI Computational Infrastructure Facilities Committee. Nationally she has served on the Association of Research Libraries-CNI Task Force on Scenario Planning for AI and Machine-Learning Futures and is a member of the Higher Education Learning Initiative Open Scholarship (HELIOS) Advisory Council.
Prior to becoming dean at Johns Hopkins, Long served as associate university librarian for information technology and digital scholarship at The University of Chicago Library since 2016, where she began her career in 1993. She served as interim library director and university librarian from December 2021 to April 2022, and was an Association of Research Libraries Leadership Fellow in 2018–2019. Long holds a BA from St. John’s College, an MLIS from the University of Maryland, and an MFA in book and paper arts from Columbia College Chicago.