Gillian M. McCombs is Dean and Director of Central University Libraries at SMU with responsibility
for the Fondren libraries, the Science and Engineering Library, the
DeGolyer Special Collections, Hamon Arts and Institute for the Study
of Earth
and Man libraries, the Center for Media and Instructional Technology,
and library services at SMU-in-Legacy and Fort Burgwin in Taos, N.
M.
McCombs has published extensively in the areas of organizational
culture, public and technical services, leadership and management, computing,
and historical children's literature. She has won numerous awards in
the library profession and currently serves on the editorial boards of College & Research
Libraries and Internet & Reference Services Quarterly.
McCombs began her professional career in England as the
music librarian at Huddersfield Public Library in her native Yorkshire.
Her professional career in the U.S. has taken her from Washington, D.C.,
where she worked at the Landscape Architecture and Garden Library at
Dumbarton Oaks, as well as such federal libraries as the National Library
of Medicine, the Federal Reserve, and the Department of the Interior,
to the University of Albany, SUNY, where she worked for 16 years before
joining SMU in 1998.
McCombs received a Bachelor's degree in French and European
Literature from the University of Warwick and a Master's degree from
the Leeds School of Librarianship, She received a Master of Public Administration
degree from State University of New York at Albany in 1995.