Coalition For Networked Information (CNI) Announces Publication of Festschrift to Honor the Legacy of Dr. Clifford Lynch Published

From a CNI Announcement:

We are pleased to announce the publication of Networking Networks: A Festschrift in Honor of Clifford Lynch, guest edited by CNI Associate Executive Director Emerita Joan K. Lippincott. This special issue, a supplement to portal: Libraries and the Academy 25, no. 3 (July 2025), is now openly available through Project Muse: https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/55108.

In the summer of 2024, Clifford Lynch announced his retirement as executive director of CNI after 28 years of visionary leadership. To honor and document his legacy, CNI quietly launched this Festschrift project, inviting many of Cliff’s closest colleagues and collaborators to contribute reflections on his profound impact on digital scholarship, libraries, and the information landscape.

The final CNI membership meeting of Cliff’s tenure, held April 7–8, 2025, in Milwaukee, was to include a surprise presentation of the Festschrift’s table of contents. Though Cliff’s health prevented him from attending in person, he participated virtually and heard readings of excerpts from each contribution. Clifford Lynch passed away shortly after, on April 10, 2025. Authors completed their essays before his passing, and the original text remains unchanged.

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As Andrew K. Pace and John O’Brien write in their foreword:

“It is rare in higher education and technology circles to establish a legacy that is felt by your organization, by your profession, by numerous associations and societies, and by hundreds if not thousands of colleagues across the globe. It is even rarer to build such a legacy without a single trace of the hubris or caustic personality that so often accompanies genius. Cliff’s humility, gentle but persistent persuasion, and remarkable good nature are the key elements of his indelible mark.”

portal: Libraries and the Academy
Volume 25, Number 3, July 2025, Supplement

Direct to Table of Contents
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• Foreword
  by Andrew K. Pace, John O’Brien
• Introduction: The Many Facets of Clifford Lynch
  by Joan K. Lippincott
• CNI as an Idea Factory: An Appreciation of Clifford Lynch
  by Donald J. Waters
• When Information Is Networked
  by Dan Cohen
• Clifford Lynch: “Conducting” the Infrastructure of Scholarship
  by Kevin M. Guthrie, Roger C. Schonfeld
• Libraries, Digital Libraries, and Data: Forty Years, Four Challenges
  by Christine L. Borgman
• Clifford Lynch at Berkeley
  by Michael K. Buckland
• A Farsighted Integrator
  by Marjory S. Blumenthal
• Reflections on Research Library Advocacy: Lessons Learned through Collaboration with Cliff Lynch
  by Judy Ruttenberg
• The Invisible Influencer in Information Infrastructure
  by Herbert Van de Sompel, Michael L. Nelson
• An Interview That Ran Long
  by Ken Klingenstein
• Stewardship of Digital Images
  by Howard Besser
• Lots of Cliff Keeps Stuff Safe
  by Victoria Reich, David S. H. Rosenthal
• Afterword
  by Diane Goldenberg-Hart
• Contributor List

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