Beth Weil

Beth Weil made important contributions to the UC Berkeley Library, the field of science librarianship and the biosciences world of scholarly publishing. Weil received the UCB Distinguished Librarian Award in 2003 and was awarded emeritus status upon her retirement. 

At Berkeley, from 1987-1995 she managed the complex process of building the Marian Koshland Biosciences Library facility, collections and staff and served as the Head of the branch. She was a leader in science librarianship, and worked closely with international scholarly database producers, journal publishers and UC librarians to shape the scholarly publishing world in biosciences.

As a founding member of the Board of Directors of the Public Library of Science (PLoS) she was a key influencer in the Open Access movement.  Weil was a member of the UCB Library Scholarly Communications Advisory Group (2007) and provided vision in designing and implementing the Berkeley Research Impact Initiative (BRII) which established the rational and structure for library funding to pay publishers’ charges to fund open access to published articles by Berkeley researchers. She served as the BRII Application Coordinator and in 2010 co-authored with Chuck Eckman an article about BRII and the need for open access funds (PloS Biology). 

From 1998-2011 she served on the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Library Advisory Board. 

Read more:

Institutional Open Access Funds: Now Is the Time