The LYRASIS Board of Trustees Nominating Committee is pleased to announce the slate of candidates for the open position on the LYRASIS Board of Trustees for the FY 2019 election. This is an uncontested election, and the elected candidate will serve a three-year term, beginning July 1, 2018.

The election will begin on May 23, 2018, at 8 am ET and will close May 31, 2018, at 9 pm  ET. The election is open to all designated LYRASIS member voting representatives (one per member), who will receive an email with a link to the ballot.

The Nominating Committee Slate is:


Academic Research 
Joe Lucia, Dean of Libraries- Temple University, Paley Library

Joseph Lucia is Dean of Libraries at Temple University. Prior to that, he served as University Library at Villanova University for eleven years. During his tenure at Villanova, Falvey Library won the 2013 ACRL Excellence Award in the University category. Before assuming his post at Villanova in 2002, Lucia served as Director for Library Technology & Access within Information Resources (a merged library & computing support organization) at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

He served as a member of the LYRASIS Board of Trustees from 2009-2012, where he was founding President during 2009-2010, and he has also served on the boards of the Hathi Trust and PALCI (an academic library consortium serving the mid-Atlantic region). While at Lehigh, Lucia taught creative writing in the English Department from 1995 through 2002.

Lucia’s educational background includes a BA from McGill University in Montreal and graduate degrees in English and Information Science from the University of Toronto and Syracuse University respectively. In addition to his professional work, he is an active amateur musician with a current solo project called Sounds from Upstairs audible on Soundcloud at https://soundcloud.com/jlucia.


Cultural Heritage Institute
Derick Dreher, The John C. Haas Director- Rosenbach Museum and Library

Derick Dreher is Vice President of Special Collections for the Free Library of Philadelphia, and simultaneously the John C. Haas Director of The Rosenbach, a museum and rare book library formally affiliated with the FLP. His work centers on the effort to engage and inspire ever broader publics through programs rooted in the vast special collections of the Rosenbach and the Free Library.

Dreher serves the community through a variety of boards including the national library consortium LYRASIS and the Independence Foundation in Philadelphia. Dreher received a B.A. at Princeton and an M.A. and Ph.D. at Yale, all in art history of the Renaissance. His academic work centered on rare books, manuscripts, old master drawings, and prints. Today he publishes and speaks on topics ranging from rare books of numerous periods to museum and library collaborations, mergers and deaccessioning. He is married to an art historian from Germany and has a son in elementary school.


Public Library 
Gina Millsap, Chief Executive Officer- Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library

Gina Millsap is the chief executive officer of the Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library, the 2016 Gale/LJ Library of the Year. She leads an organization of 220 employees serving a community of 179,000. She’s worked in libraries for 40 years and received her Masters of Library Science from the University of Missouri. She’s been recognized as a 2007 Library Journal Mover and Shaker and is Past President of the Library Leadership and Management Association, a division of the American Library Association. She currently serves as chair of the ALA Committee on Library Advocacy and on the boards of the Public Library Association of ALA and LYRASIS, an organization that partners with libraries, archives and museums on digital content management.

In the Topeka and Shawnee County community, she is past chair of Heartland Visioning, the strategic planning process for the Topeka and Shawnee County community. She is currently serving on the Greater Topeka and Shawnee County Holistic Economic Development Strategic Planning Steering Committee and the Momentum 2022 Implementation Committee where she serves on the Talent Development Work Group and chairs the Metrics Task Force, the Mayor’s Community Broadband Planning Task Force and the board of 712 Innovations LLC, A cowork/makerspace small business incubator.

She presents and writes nationally on a variety of topics, including community leadership and engagement, library trustee education, 21st century librarianship, advocacy, process improvement and is an experienced facilitator for library and community groups.


Our elections are administered through BigPulse. BigPulse will send an email from the domain name mail1.bigpulse.com, which currently uses IP addresses: 209.15.228.130 and 5.44.17.248.

The LYRASIS Board of Trustees is the governing body for LYRASIS. The Board of Trustees ensures that the organization provides the services, leadership and insight required to support information professionals and the organizations they serve.