![](\"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/files\/2016\/02\/160217_Katie_Vale_0072.jpg\")
<\/a>Katie Vale, photographed in February 2016 by Phyllis Graber Jensen.<\/p><\/div>\n
In her brief time at Bates, Vale \u201cquickly proved herself to be a strong and creative organizational leader,\u201d said President Clayton Spencer on Nov. 28 in a message to the campus community<\/a> announcing what Spencer characterized as \u201cshocking and profoundly sad news.\u201d<\/p>\n Praising Vale as a \u201cnational leader in educational technology,\u201d Spencer said that Vale was a \u201cwonderful, collaborative colleague, a professional of enormous breadth and intellect, and a person possessed of quick wit and self-deprecating humor.\u201d A memorial service for Katie Vale will be held at 1 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 4, at Temple Shir Tikvah, 34 Vine St., Winchester, Mass. Complete service information is at katievale.com<\/a><\/p>\n \n<\/section><\/p>\n Just the ninth college librarian since Bates\u2019 founding in 1855, Vale oversaw the college\u2019s integrated Information and Library Services organization, including Ladd Library, the Edmund S. Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library, Academic and Client Services, Network and Infrastructure Services, and Systems Development and Integration.<\/p>\n At the time of her appointment<\/a> in 2015, Vale said that she looked forward to helping Bates \u201cdemonstrate how information technology and the library can support the value proposition of the liberal arts \u2014 the lifetime reward of intellectual curiosity, academic rigor, and engaged citizenship.\u201d<\/p>\n In a recent Bates Magazine<\/i> story about the college\u2019s new interdisciplinary Program in Digital and Computational Studies, Vale said that she and her colleagues looked forward to supporting students and faculty in the new program because \u201cwhat ILS excels at, especially on the library side, is helping people make connections, find information, and learn to use technologies to ask questions and solve problems.\u201d<\/p>\n She added that \u201ctechnology plays a central role in myriad forms of inquiry and expression, and students will learn and apply skills that will help them at Bates and well beyond. That excites us a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n She was an adroit advocate for her team\u2019s needs and projects.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In her time at Bates, Vale and her ILS team bolstered information security protocols and improved disaster preparedness while deepening the college\u2019s network redundancy capacity. They introduced better project-management practices and improved and expanded the capacity of the IT Service Desk.<\/p>\n She prepared the college\u2019s online research and scholarship repository, Scarab, to accommodate more faculty and student work, part of a rapid ramp-up of efforts to educate the Bates faculty on the \u201cbroad issues relating to scholarly communication, such as open access and authors rights,\u201d said Laura Juraska, the college\u2019s associate librarian for research services.<\/p>\n Jim Bauer, who reported to Vale as director of network and infrastructure services, said she was an adroit advocate for her team\u2019s needs and projects, whether it was understanding the promise and limits of cloud computing or the changing space needs and uses in Ladd Library.<\/p>\n \u201cI could go to her with a list of 87 or so things that we\u2019re doing, and she could turn that technical language into clear English to help other college leaders understand not just what we do, but how our work supports the college\u2019s academic mission and the choices that can be made based on limited resources,\u201d said Bauer. \u201cIt was great to have those conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cKatie was an open, inclusive, unflappable, and deeply kind leader.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nService Information<\/h5>\n