Cargill is greeted by LSU community members at a September 1991 reception welcoming her as dean of LSU Libraries (https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/foll/34)." data-title="Cargill is greeted by LSU community members at a September 1991 reception welcoming her as dean of LSU Libraries (https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/foll/34)."/>
Jennifer Cargill, Dean of LSU Libraries from July 1991 until her retirement in 2013, passed away on October 6, 2020.
A distinguished graduate of LSU’s School of Library and Information Science, Cargill began her career as an assistant acquisitions librarian at the University of Houston in 1967. She soon took on responsibility for managing two science branch libraries there and went on to hold increasingly more responsible administrative positions at Miami University (Ohio), Texas Tech University, and Rice University, where she served as Associate University Librarian, before joining the LSU Libraries faculty as dean in July 1991.
During her tenure at LSU, Cargill played a leadership role in the development of the Louisiana Academic Libraries Information Network Consortium (LALINC) and the LOUIS consortium, which provides resources and services to libraries across the state. Both have had a positive impact on LSU and other academic and cultural heritage institutions in the state, and have been used as models around the country. She helped to garner more than $3.5 million in grant funds needed to support those efforts. Today, LOUIS negotiates and licenses statewide purchases for electronic scholarly resources (books, journals, abstracts, and indexes) on behalf of public and private universities and colleges in the state of Louisiana. She also established the system of library liaisons that serves as the framework for the extensive library services still offered at LSU.
She was the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of eleven books, as well as numerous articles and book chapters. She served on and chaired numerous committees in the American Library Association and the Association of Research Libraries, as well as in various regional and statewide professional organizations. In 1990, she was honored by LSU’s School of Library and Information Science as the Outstanding Alumna for the year, and she received the Louisiana Library Association’s Outstanding Academic Librarian Award in 1997.
Services will be held in Ruston, Louisiana, at a date to be announced.
The LSU Libraries includes the LSU Library and the adjacent Hill Memorial Library. Together, the libraries contain more than 4 million volumes and provide additional resources such as expert staff, technology, services, electronic resources, and facilities that advance research, teaching, and learning across every discipline.