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UK Libraries is proud to recognize exemplary faculty member Kathryn Lybarger as the recipient of the 2026 Paul A. Willis Outstanding Faculty Award.
Named for long-time UK Libraries director Paul A. Willis, the Willis Award is given annually to a UK Libraries faculty member who stands out amongst their colleagues through outstanding achievements in their primary assignment and exemplary leadership, creativity, and spirit of service. Faculty members are nominated by their colleagues and selected by the UK Libraries National Advisory Board.
“Over her decades of service to UK Libraries, Kathryn has not only brought an unflagging dedication to her many roles, but a spirit of creativity that continually pushes our work forward and enables us to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing field head-on,” said Doug Way, Dean of Libraries. “I am so pleased that we can recognize her impact and her work with the Willis Award.”
Lybarger currently serves as the Director of Cataloging & Metadata Services, a position she has held since 2021. In this position, she directly supervises the centralized cataloging unit in William T. Young Library and supports cataloging in the Little Fine Arts & Design Library, the Special Collections Research Center, and the Maps Library. She also develops and supports tools and workflows for cataloging, metadata, and database management.
“I really enjoy adopting new technologies and investigating how we can apply them to our current work,” said Lybarger.
She recently developed a framework called Grima that facilitates the quick creation of online tools for working with Alma's APIs, which librarians and staff use everyday. Most recently, Lybarger and her team developed specialized tools using Grima to facilitate their Extra Barcodes project.
Lybarger also created a new resource called "Looking for Trouble," a collection of tools and analytics reports that librarians around the world can use to find issues affecting searching, reporting, access, and to display their own library metadata and collections.
Lybarger’s career at UK Libraries began in 1995 as an undergraduate student assistant in the former Shaver Engineering Library’s computer labs. After a long break to pursue her Master’s in Mathematics at UK, she began a Master’s in Library & Information Science and rejoined the Libraries in 2005 as a graduate assistant in the Digital Programs Department where she helped with the National Digital Newspaper Program. After graduating with her MSLS, she worked in Preservation & Digital Programs as project manager for the Daily Racing Form Preservation Project, leading the microfilming, digitization, and metadata creation for the historic thoroughbred racing newspaper. She joined the UK Libraries faculty in 2009 as Head of Cataloging & Metadata.
The current chair of the Promotion & Tenure Committee, Lybarger is an active contributor to Project Gutenberg, which inspired her to seek a career in libraries, and with over 17,000 edits, she is also an active contributor to Wikipedia and Wikidata.
“I really appreciate my fantastic colleagues throughout UK Libraries, and know that I have made some lifelong friends here,” she said. “It is inspiring to be among people who are so dedicated to learning new things and so generous with sharing that knowledge. When I look at the librarians who have been recognized with this award in the past, I am so impressed by their achievements, and am honored to be counted among them.”
Lybarger will be honored at the annual Spring Celebration on May 14, along with several other award winners:
A 1963 graduate of the University of Kentucky, Paul A. Willis served as a library director for 41 years throughout the Southeast. He worked as a cataloger at the Library of Congress before beginning his Master’s in Library Science. In 1966, he began as a circulation librarian at UK’s Law Library before becoming a university law librarian. He then served as director of UK Libraries from 1973 to 2003, later serving as the University of South Carolina’s Dean of Libraries from 2004 until 2007.
