Paul Bracke is the Dean of the Foley Library at Gonzaga University, a position he has held since 2016. In this role, Dean Bracke provides leadership and oversight for the Foley Library and the Office of Sponsored Research and Programs. Previously, he was Associate Dean for Research and Assessment at the Purdue University Libraries. At Purdue, he provided leadership in technology, digitization, research services, and assessment. He developed internationally-recognized research support services, including the development of data management services and institutional and data repositories. He also directed projects that explored the intersections of digitization and open access publishing, and of digitization and scholarly workflows in the social sciences.
He held previous positions at the University of Arizona, the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Bracke holds a bachelor’s degree in history and journalism from the University of Missouri-Columbia, a master’s degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a doctorate in Higher Education from the University of Arizona. He was a member of the Association of Research Libraries’ Leadership Fellows 2013-2015 cohort.
Bracke’s research interests include social and relational capital in academic libraries, research services, digital libraries, and library automation. He has held leadership positions in the Library Information Technology Association, the Association of College and Research Libraries, DataCite, and the Catholic Research Resources Alliance.