Chris Bourg is an American librarian, sociologist and former officer of the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the primary Land warfare, land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of th ...

. She has been the director of Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries since 2015.

Career and education

Bourg graduated with a B.A. from Duke University and a M.A. from the University of Maryland. She went on to study sociology at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

where she completed an M.A. and PhD. Her doctoral thesis, titled ''Gender Mistakes and Inequality'', was supervised by Cecilia L. Ridgeway. She worked at Stanford for 12 years where she held several roles including associate university librarian for public services. She started as the director of Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries, overseeing the library and

MIT Press The MIT Press is the university press of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The MIT Press publishes a number of academic journals and has been a pioneer in the Open Ac ...

in 2015. She took over the role from previous director Ann Wolpert, who had been in the position for 17 years. Prior to her career in libraries, Bourg spent 10 years as an officer in the

, teaching for three years as a faculty member at

West Point The United States Military Academy (USMA), commonly known as West Point, is a United States service academies, United States service academy in West Point, New York that educates cadets for service as Officer_(armed_forces)#United_States, comm ...

. Bourg is a frequent public speaker and has given multiple conference keynotes. In a 2018 keynote at a Code4LIb conference, she discussed diversity in software development. The talk, which referenced research by the Kapor Center for Social Impact indicating record numbers of people are leaving tech environments due to

discrimination Discrimination is the process of making unfair or prejudicial distinctions between people based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they belong or are perceived to belong, such as race, gender, age, class, religion, or sex ...

, resulted in

online harassment Cyberbullying (cyberharassment or online bullying) is a form of bullying or harassment using Electronic communication network, electronic means. Since the 2000s, it has become increasingly common, especially among teenagers and Adolescence, a ...

and personal attacks. Bourg is known for talking openly about and challenging

systemic racism Institutional racism, also known as systemic racism, is a form of institutional discrimination based on race or ethnic group and can include policies and practices that exist throughout a whole society or organization that result in and suppor ...

within the library profession. She has also called into question the neutrality of librarianship. During an

American Library Association The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world. History 19th century ...

panel in 2018 Bourg argued against the possibility of neutrality concluding that: "If we believe that libraries have any role to play in supporting and promoting truth in our current post-truth culture, then our work is political and not neutral." Bourg has been equally vocal about open access publishing. In 2013 she resigned from the editorial board of the ''

Journal of Library Administration The ''Journal of Library Administration'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal that covers library management. Established in 1980, the journal is published 8 times a year by Routledge. The editor-in-chief is Gary M. Pitkin, from the University of N ...

'', along with the editor-in-chief and other board members, as a sign of support for open-access publishing following the death of

Aaron Swartz Aaron Hillel Swartz (; November 8, 1986January 11, 2013), also known as AaronSw, was an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, writer, political organizer, and Internet hacktivism, hacktivist. As a programmer, Swartz helped develop the we ...

Select publications

Chapters

* *

Articles

* *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bourg, Chris Living people Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty Stanford University alumni Women in the United States Army Duke University alumni University System of Maryland alumni Year of birth missing (living people) American women academics 21st-century American librarians 21st-century American women librarians