Michele Cloonan currently serves as dean and professor of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science of Simmons College, Boston, Massachusetts. Prior to her position at Simmons, she was chair and associate professor at the Department of Information Studies at UCLA, and worked as a conservator, preservation librarian, and a rare book librarian at different libraries in the US.
Her research interests lie in the social and political aspects associated with the preservation of cultural heritage and in the history of book trade. She has published widely in these fields over the past years. Some of Michele Cloonan's most recent publications include From Teacher to Learner to User: Developing a Digital Stewardship Pedagogy (2011), and Libraries, Archives, and the Pursuit of Access (2009).
Together with her husband she owns a small press, called the Doe Press, where they occasionally print and publish broadsides and chapbooks.
Dr. Cloonan received a B.A. from Bennington College, an M.A. from the University of Chicago, and an M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Michele Cloonan is a Fellow of Session 466 Connecting to the World's Collections: Making the Case for the Conservation and Preservation of our Cultural Heritage.