John Howard

Dr. John B Howard is Adjunct Professor in Arizona State University's School of Human Evolution and Social Change. Until September 2009 he served as Associate University Librarian at ASU, responsible for planning and administration of digital library services and all library technology functions, the metadata and technical processing areas, the University Archives and Special Collections, and the Labriola National American Indian Data Center. From October 2009 he holds the post of University Librarian, University College Dublin.

John came to ASU in 2005 after 25 years at Harvard University, where he served as a faculty member in the Department of Music and held a variety of positions in the Harvard libraries, including: Keeper of the Isham Memorial Library; Richard F. French Music Librarian; Librarian for Information Technology; Director of Digital Library Initiatives; and Associate Director for Informatics and Technology Research at the Harvard Medical School. He has worked extensively in the design and implementation of information and knowledge management systems, including Harvard's geospatial data library, the Harvard Digital Repository System and associated services, and the Harvard Medical School Digital Library. He oversaw research computing services for the Harvard Medical School and led efforts to establish the Medical School's Computational Biology Initiative.

As a humanities scholar John has done pioneering work in the digital representation of musical information and music information retrieval as part of his work on the NEH-funded project, the International Inventory of Musical Sources (also known as RISM). His work in advancing music scholarship through the application of digital technologies continues as member of the advisory board for the Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities at Stanford University and the editorial board for the new edition of the complete works of Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach.

At ASU John is an active collaborator on several ASU sponsored research projects: Land-Use and Landscape Socioecology in the Mediterranean Basin ("MedLand"); Understanding Agents of Scientific Change: the Case of Embryo Research ("Embryo Project"); and Digital Antiquity (national cyberinfrastructure for archaeology).

Education: Ph.D., historical musicology, M.A., historical musicology (Bryn Mawr College); M.L.I.S. (University of Rhode Island); B.A., summa cum laude (Connecticut College).