Wilma van Wezenbeek started as the 14th Director General of KB, the National Library of the Netherlands, on September 1st. Van Wezenbeek succeeds Lily Knibbeler, who stepped down before the summer after 10 years as director.
Van Wezenbeek is looking forward to starting her new role. "There are some interesting tasks to get to work on. Not only in taking care of Dutch written heritage, but also in working together with the public libraries and helping to build the national scientific infrastructure."
Hugely diverse
Foto: Jacqueline van der Kort, Beeldstudio KB, nationale bibliotheek van Nederland, CC-BY-SA.
To get to know the scope of the KB better, Van Wezenbeek will make an extensive tour of the various operations in the coming period. Van Wezenbeek: "The work of KB colleagues varies hugely. We have collection managers, metadata managers, IT staff, warehouse staff, researchers, digitisers, digital preservation specialists, public library field programme managers - to name just a few positions. I am keen to learn more about what we're working on together and will commit to achieving our goals in the best way possible. On many goals we of course collaborate with people outside our organisation, whom I would also like to get to know better."
Series of columns
Van Wezenbeek will report on her introduction to the KB in the coming months by writing about it periodically. Her columns will be shared on the KB website and via KB social media channels.
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Wilma van Wezenbeek accepts her access pass on her first day of work at the KB.
More about Van Wezenbeek
Van Wezenbeek (b. 1967) graduated in materials engineering at TU Delft and started her career in various roles in the world of publishing. She was director of TU Delft's university library from 2011 to 2020. She was also director of Student and Educational Affairs at VU University Amsterdam for over three years. Before becoming Director General of the KB, she spearheaded the Digital Learning Resources transformation hub of the National Growth Fund programme Npuls.
