Reimagining the Penn Libraries

When Brigitte Weinsteiger became the H. Carton Rogers III Vice Provost and director of the Penn Libraries last year, she took the helm of what she characterizes as “one of the most consequential research libraries in the country.” With 19 libraries, more than 300 staff, a $95 million budget, and 10 million volumes across print and digital formats, she now leads an intellectual ecosystem that reaches across Penn’s campus and beyond.

Weinsteiger says her mandate is clear: “Not just to preserve knowledge but to expand who can access it, how it’s used, and what it empowers people to do.” She has chosen her leadership team, and they have just released a three-year strategic plan.

“Brigitte Weinsteiger is the ideal leader for the Penn Libraries, combining a deep fidelity to our scholarly mission with a dynamic strategic vision for Penn’s shared landscape of research, teaching, and innovation,” says Provost John L. Jackson Jr. “Her work embodies the values of being engaged, inventive, and interdisciplinary at the heart of the University’s strategic framework, In Principle and Practice.”

Weinsteiger’s career reflects a blend of tradition and transformation. A trained medievalist and longtime leader within the Penn Libraries, she came to Penn in 2008 and rose through the ranks, shaping collections, partnering with publishers, and helping to build the foundation of what she says is one of the most ambitious academic library systems in the world.

In 2022, Weinsteiger was appointed the inaugural Gershwind and Bennett Family Senior Associate Vice Provost for Collections and Scholarly Communications. Erik Gershwind, chair of the Penn Libraries Board of Advisors, says he and his family have known Weinsteiger since she started at the Libraries, and they established the named position.

“Gitte leads with clarity, imagination, and a deep sense of purpose,” Gershwind says. “In my time working with her on the Board, I’ve seen how she brings both staff and supporters into a shared vision for the future of research libraries, one that is as grounded in scholarly tradition as it is energized by innovation. She doesn’t just adapt to change; she helps shape it.”

In 2023, Weinsteiger was named interim director of the Penn Libraries, stepping in after the departure of Constantia Constantinou, who was appointed in August 2018 when H. Carton Rogers III retired after 43 years at the Libraries. In June 2024, Weinsteiger was appointed to her current role.

“I have been deeply impressed with Gitte’s leadership skills. She listens carefully, thinks deeply, and is unafraid of making the hard decisions that her position demands of her,” says Sean Quimby, associate vice provost and director of the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts. “While she has deep experience with collection-building, she knows that the 21st century library is about so much more.”

Today, Weinsteiger oversees not only library collections, but also strategic vision, board development, faculty engagement, digital infrastructure, and budget with an eye to ensuring Penn’s libraries remain expansive, inclusive, and globally relevant, she says.

“The Libraries don’t live separate from the University,” she says. “Our success is the University’s success and how well we are aligned with achieving what the University needs to achieve.”

Since June Weinsteiger has met with nearly 100 people—deans, faculty, students, and donors—to begin shaping a long-term strategy. That work has culminated in the launch of a new three-year strategic plan, Knowledge for Life, structured around five pillars: preparing students for the world of tomorrow, evolving the library as a place, empowering cutting-edge research, safeguarding the scholarly and cultural record, and expanding access to Penn’s intellectual heritage.

When talking about the role libraries play in the lives of students and scholars, Weinsteiger says, “Librarians are solely there to help you. We want you to succeed. We’re there to welcome you with open arms and do everything that we can, with the resources and expertise that we have, to help you achieve what you want to achieve.”

Libraries are not simply service hubs but research collaborators, she says. Weinsteiger has expanded support in digital scholarship, knowledge synthesis, and artificial intelligence, ensuring Penn’s faculty and students can not only access information but generate new insights.

“We’re not just curating content anymore,” she says. “We’re helping researchers generate new knowledge, in new formats, and with new tools.”

She is also overseeing a major multiyear capital planning effort to reimagine the fifth floor of Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center as a dedicated space for the Center for Global Collections with flexible, inclusive, and interdisciplinary research environments in mind.

“We no longer need our libraries to be simply warehouses for print books,” she says. “We’re evolving to reflect the changes that our students and scholars want out of the physical space of the libraries.”

That evolving mission, Weinsteiger says, includes long-term digital preservation and enhanced access to collections. Penn has built internal capacity and expanded its use of technology to safeguard scholarship and cultural memory, she says, ensuring that today’s knowledge is still accessible decades from now.

“Safeguarding the cultural and scholarly record is something libraries have done for millennia, and we have to keep doing it,” she says. “Literally no one else can do that except about 120 organizations worldwide that, like the Penn Libraries, accomplish that for all of society.”

Weinsteiger has also become a national leader in scholarly publishing reform, emphasizing that the Penn Libraries is opening a majority of Penn’s scholarship to the world for free. “This is about more than access to information,” she says. “It’s about rebalancing an entire ecosystem for the benefit of researchers, readers, and society.”

Faculty at Penn are already seeing their work cited more widely and reaching new audiences around the world, she says, an impact that speaks to her commitment to knowledge equity and global research visibility.

“She also knows that the core mission of libraries has remained the same for centuries: to collect, preserve, and provide access to knowledge,” Quimby says. “That simple, enduring, and frankly beautiful mission lies at the core of this strategic plan and whatever follows it. It was visionary in the past and remains so today even as our strategic plan reflects the evolving needs of the Penn community.”

As Weinsteiger looks to the future, she says her focus remains fixed on the essential role of libraries in lifelong learning and democratizing knowledge. Libraries, she says, need to evolve to “be the home of independent learning."

“We are really reflecting on the fact that when our students leave Penn, their careers will be constantly evolving in a dynamic world,” she says. “Rather than just helping them learn the skills for their first job, we’re actually building within them the skills for how you continue learning throughout your lifetime. It’s why we call the strategic plan Knowledge for Life.”