Patrick Wilkinson is Director of the Forrest R. Polk Library.  Previously, he served in academic library positions at Murray State University (Kentucky), the University of Northern Iowa and the University of Vermont.

Mr. Wilkinson earned a B.A. and M.A. in American history from Drake University and a M.L.S. from Indiana University. His special areas of interests include cooperation among libraries to enhance library services and collections and weaving library resources into the Web and electronic learning environments.

Since his arrival on campus in 1996, Polk Library has implemented numerous high value information services for the benefit of students, faculty, staff and the general public. He has worked with other library directors within UW System to create a “One System, One Library” approach to manage the opportunities and challenges of  today’s information environment. Since 2001, he helped lead a UW System effort to create a University of Wisconsin Digital Collections which currently has over one million images and pages of unique UW libraries holdings available freely on the Internet (http://uwdc.library.wisc.edu/). He is chair of the Council of University of Wisconsin Libraries’ Strategic Directions Committee.  Professionally, Mr. Wilkinson is an active participant and speaker in state, national and international library organizations.  He is Wisconsin’s representative to the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), the largest worldwide library cooperative.  In 2006 – 2007, he chaired an international OCLC Members Council task force that examined the impact of electronic books.  This year he will chair OCLC’s E-Content Service Group.

Contact Information

University of Wisconsin Oshkosh
Forrest R. Polk Library
Polk 204A
800 Algoma Blvd.
Oshkosh, WI 54901

Phone:920-424-2147
Fax: 920-424-7338
E-mail: wilkinso@uwosh.edu