Joan Ridder Challinor

Joan Ridder Challinor is married to David Challinor.

In 2003: "President George W. Bush has named historian Joan R. Challinor Chairman of the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS). Dr. Challinor succeeds Martha B. Gould, whose term on the Commission expired July 19, 2003. Dr. Challinor, a resident of Washington, DC, was appointed to her current term on the Commission by President Bill Clinton in 2000; she was first appointed to the Commission in 1995.

"Former Chairman Martha Gould expressed great pleasure at the designation of Dr. Challinor as Chairman. "Joan's experience as Vice Chair of the Commission and her leadership of the Commission's international committee make her a fine successor to the chairmanship," said Mrs. Gould. "The past few years have been a time of intensive reexamination of the role of the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science. The designation of a new Chairman and the efforts of the White House to fill vacant positions on the Commission indicate to me that the Administration recognizes the ongoing and important role that NCLIS can play in developing policy proposals for our Information Age."

"Dr. Challinor's first official act as Chair was to designate Jack Hightower of Austin, Texas Vice Chair of the Commission. Judge Hightower, a former Member of Congress and former Justice of the Texas Supreme Court, was appointed to the Commission by President Clinton in 1999.

"Dr. Challinor is a member of the Library Council of the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and a former director of Knight Ridder, a newspaper and electronic publisher. She was a research associate at the National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institution from 1984 to 1990. From 1976 to 1984, Dr. Challinor served as a professorial lecturer at American University in Washington, DC. She is a member of the James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation at the Library of Congress."

• Advisory Board, International Center for Journalists