Nancy Kranich teaches community engagement, information policy and intellectual freedom at the Rutgers University School of Communication and Information and works on special projects with the Rutgers Libraries. A past president of the American Library Association (ALA), Kranich founded ALA’s Center for Civic Life and the Libraries Foster Community Engagement Membership Initiative Group. Trained as a public innovator with the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, she was instrumental in launching its partnership with ALA and has served on the board of the National Issues Forums Institute. At Rutgers, she lead an initiative to strengthen the role of library liaisons through tools developed by Harwood/ALA Libraries Transform Communities initiative.
She has written numerous articles about libraries and community engagement including one for C&RL News about “turning outward” at Rutgers.
Kranich is the 2015 recipient of ALA’s Ken Haycock Award for the promotion of librarianship, and a 2016 inductee into the Freedom to Read Foundation’s Roll of Honor for her work promoting libraries as centers for community dialogue. She holds an MPA from New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service, and an MA in Library Science and a BA in Anthropology from the University of Wisconsin.