The University of Virginia Library has selected Brandon Butler as its first Director of Information Policy. Butler has been Practitioner-in-Residence at the Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Law Clinic at American University’s Washington College of Law since July 2013. His duties at UVA will include implementing programs to guide the Library on issues of intellectual property, copyright, and rights management for scholarly materials. He will serve as the Library’s expert on matters of legal concern, and advocate for provisions in law and policy that enable and advance appropriate, broad access to materials and content in an educational context. Butler will begin consulting remotely with the Library on these issues in January 2016, and will assume full-time responsibilities at the Library in June 2016.

Brandon Butler

Butler is well known to the library world from his roles at the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) from 2009 to 2013. As Director of Public Policy Initiatives at ARL, he represented the Association in a variety of policy matters, and was co-principal investigator of a project to develop and promote what instantly became the widely-respected Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Academic and Research Libraries. As a Practitioner-in-Residence, Butler supervised student attorneys representing real clients in a wide variety of matters, including winning an expanded right to use film clips in college and university teaching. He is a frequently sought-after speaker and writer on copyright, fair use, and other public policy issues affecting libraries in a range of academic, government and legal settings.

A 2008 graduate of the UVA School of Law, Butler earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Georgia and a master’s degree at the University of Texas. In addition to his work at ARL and the Washington College of Law, Butler has been a policy consultant to higher education institutions and national education-related organizations.

“We’ve had outstanding copyright expertise at the UVA Library before,” said Martha Sites, University Librarian and Dean of Libraries, “and Brandon’s arrival signals a renewed intensity of Library engagement in the pressing issues of information policy at national and international levels, in addition to here at the University.”

“We’re extremely pleased to have someone of Brandon’s stature and experience working on these critical issues, and we’re doubly pleased to welcome Brandon and his family back to Charlottesville,” she said.

Butler will serve in the Content Stewardship area of the UVA Library, and will work in close coordination with the Office of the University Counsel on matters of mutual interest.