Hwa Wei Lee


Hwa-Wei Lee, Chief of Asian Division, the Library of Congress and Dean Emeritus of Ohio University Libraries, completed his B.Ed. at the National Taiwan Normal University in Taiwan, and his M.Ed., M.L.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh. In the 40 plus years of his library career, mostly in the U.S., he worked in various library administrative positions at the University of Pittsburgh, Duquesne University, Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, Asian Institute of Technology (in Bangkok, Thailand, under the sponsorship of U.S. Agency for International Development), Colorado State University, and Ohio University (1978-1999), as well as a Visiting Distinguished Scholar at OCLC (2000-2002). He authored or co-authored five books and 80 papers, organized six international conferences, and served as an editor for six library journals. Upon his retirement in 1999, Ohio University named a new library building as Hwa-Wei Lee Library Annex and the first floor of the main library as Hwa-Wei Lee Center for International Collections. Among the many honors he received are the Outstanding Administrator Award of Ohio University in 1982, Distinguished Service Award of the Chinese American Librarians Association in 1983, Ohio Librarian of the Year in 1987, John Ames Humphry Award of the American Library Association for Significant Contributions to International Librarianship in 1991, Distinguished Service Award of the Asian/Pacific American Librarians Association in 1991, Ohio Librarian Hall of Fame in 1999, and OCLC awards for significant contributions as OCLC Visiting Distinguished Scholar in 2000 and 2001.