KT Vaughan Appointed to the Library of Virginia Board The Hal F. and Barbra Buckner Higginbotham University Librarian will serve a five-year term.

By Brian Laubscher
July 20, 2026

KT Vaughan, Hal F. and Barbra Buckner Higginbotham University Librarian at Washington and Lee University, was recently appointed to the board for the Library of Virginia. Vaughan will serve in this role for a five-year term and officially began her duties on July 1.

“It is an honor to be asked to serve the Commonwealth as a member of the Library Board,” said Vaughan. “For more than two centuries, the Library of Virginia has collected, preserved, shared and celebrated the literature and historical archives that define who we are today and in the future. I’m thrilled to combine my identities as a library user and as a library leader in this role.”

The board consists of 15 members who are appointed by the governor. The board determines the scope of the library’s collection, establishes policy concerning what books are kept as well as how they are housed and exhibited. It also promotes education of the library’s history, archival science in the commonwealth and enters into agreements with institutions and organizations with similar purposes. The board also has the authority to award an honorary Patron of Letters degree, the library’s highest honor, to individuals who have made outstanding contributions in the arts, history and humanities or for information, library or archival science.

Vaughan also currently serves as president of the Oberlin Group of Libraries and is in the middle of a three-year term on the group’s executive board. She previously served as president of the Virginia Library Association and has held various leadership roles in the Association of College and Research Libraries, the Medical Library Association, the Association for Information Science and Technology and the American Association of Colleges and Pharmacy.

Vaughan joined the W&L community in 2020 after 19 years of service in the University of North Carolina system and at James Madison University. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in biology from Harvard University, a Master of Science in library science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Doctor of Education from Arizona State University.

The Library of Virginia was established by the Virginia General Assembly in 1823 to organize and manage the state’s collection of books and official records. Serving as the commonwealth’s official state archives, it is the leading source of information on Virginia history, government and people, housing more than 134 million items. The library offers research and reference support to state officials and consulting services to public libraries and government agencies across the state, and administers a range of federal, state and local grant programs.

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