Mr Jay Jordan

CEO Emeritus of OCLC, Member of NewsBank board of directors

Mr. Jay Jordan has worked in various leadership positions in the information and library space for more than 50 years, including 15 years as President and CEO of OCLC, Inc., the global library cooperative, retiring in 2013. During that period Mr. Jordan served on the advisory Boards of the Board of Visitors of the School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina; the Board of Visitors of the University of Pittsburgh Library; the Council of Advisors of the School of Information Studies, Florida State University as well as a Trustee of OCLC.

Presentations:

Librarians command such a high level of trust globally when compared to other professions such as politicians, corporate leaders, journalists and even scientists, that this confidence in the profession carries obligations to assume new roles and responsibilities. Today, new threats or challenges such as “fake news”, diminishing privacy, biased journalism, corporate consolidations, security breaches of government and corporate databases, and the increasing dominance of a few huge players such as Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Twitter face every individual and society. This brief talk will explore some possible new roles which might be logical for librarians to consider as information professionals and “knowledge Jedi’s”.