Beverly P. Lynch

Beverly P. Lynch is an American scholar, professor, librarian, and administrator. She was president of the American Library Association from 1985 to 1986.

Education
Lynch earned a Bachelor of Science degree with majors in English and music from North Dakota State University, a Masters of Science degree in library sciences from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Career
Lynch was executive director of the Association of College and Research Libraries from 1972 to 1977. She was the university librarian at the University of Illinois at Chicago from 1977 to 1989.

In 1989 she was appointed dean of the University of California Los Angeles UCLA School of Education and Information Studies. She was far-thinking about education for librarians. She was also Director of the UCLA Senior Fellows Program

From 2000 to 2001 she took leave to lead the Center for Research Libraries.

Returning to UCLA she became the first director of UCLA's California Rare Book School.

She served as president of the American Library Association from 1985 to 1986. Her papers are held at the American Library Association Archives.

Awards
In 1987, she was honored as a distinguished alumna by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She received a similar honor in 2009 from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Lynch won the highest honors from the American Library Association. She was awarded the Joseph W. Lippincott Award in 2009, Melvil Dewey Medal in 2012 and the Beta Phi Mu Award for distinguished service to education for librarianship education in 2015.