Michèle Cloonan (MS '84, PhD '88), dean and professor emerita in the School of Library and Information Science at Simmons University, will deliver the 2026 iSchool Convocation address on Sunday, May 17, at 1:30 p.m. at the Activities and Recreation Center. For those who would like to watch the ceremony online, live video will be available as well as archived for future viewing.
"My message to graduates is to engage your vision, use your imaginations, and be willing to have a leap of faith. Have career ambition, but also moral ambition. Try things that may seem impossible. And have fun along the way," said Cloonan.
Cloonan is an internationally recognized expert in the preservation of cultural heritage, with a focus on its cultural, political, and ethical dimensions. Her work emphasizes an interdisciplinary approach to protecting both physical and digital media.
Prior to joining Simmons in 2002, Cloonan served as chair and associate professor in the Department of Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has worked at the Newberry Library, Brown University, and Smith College as a conservator, preservation librarian, and special collections curator.
Her publications include The Monumental Challenge of Preservation: The Past in a Volatile World (2018), Preserving Our Heritage: Perspectives from Antiquity to the Digital Age (2015), and Becoming Alice Millard: Bookseller and Tastemaker (2026). Cloonan has served in leadership roles in the American Library Association, American Printing History Association, Northeast Document Conservation Center, and Massachusetts Center for the Book. She is a past president of the Association for Library and Information Science Education. She has served as editor of Preservation, Digital Technology & Culture and has edited or co-edited three issues of Library Trends.
Her honors include the University of Mary Washington Historic Preservation Book Prize, Banks/Harris Preservation Award, the Robert Vosper/IFLA Fellows Programme Award, the Bibliographic Society of America Fellowship, and a fellowship to the Virginia Center of Creative Arts.
In addition to earning her MSLIS and PhD from the iSchool, Cloonan holds a bachelor's degree in literature from Bennington College and master's degree in humanities from the University of Chicago.