Biography

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Michèle V. Cloonan grew up in Hyde Park, near the University of Chicago and across the street from the Museum of Science and Industry. Cloonan found early inspiration in the historical significance of places like the Museum, one of the few buildings left from the influential 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition, which shaped art, architecture, and American cultural life for millions of people. Cloonan would go on to trace the threads of historic sites throughout her diverse career as a book conservator, librarian, and educator.  

Raised with a bi-coastal perspective as she grew up visiting family on the West and East coasts, Cloonan developed an early interest in cultural heritage and preservation through visits to her maternal grandmother in New York City, who lived across the street from the Morgan Library and Museum. Her other grandmother introduced her to San Francisco. Cloonan’s mother, aunt, and maternal grandmother were all voracious readers who collected books and took her to many museum exhibits. 

Cloonan graduated from Vermont’s Bennington College in 1975, where her thesis advisor was noted poet, professor, and publisher of the Banyan Press, Claude Fredericks. Cloonan studied bookbinding with Kathryn Gerlach, who coincidentally bound books for Fredericks’ press. Cloonan’s thesis on Shaker poetry included research using primary source materials at the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village in Poland Spring, Maine, and Chapin Library at Williams College, with the guidance of librarian H. Richard Archer. 

By the time Cloonan graduated from Bennington with an A.B. in Literature, she decided that she wanted to become a book conservator, and began graduate studies at the University of Chicago, first in library science, then in the humanities. She took a leave of absence to study conservation at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, under bookbinder, book conservator, and director of conservation Anthony Cains, where she was his first American intern. 

This experience taught Cloonan about the social and political aspects of conservation. During The Troubles, the Irish government decided that an international traveling exhibit of Ireland’s greatest treasures, with the Book of Kells as the centerpiece, be created. Part of the motivation was to present Ireland in a positive light. The exhibit was objectionable to many who felt that the Book of Kells should not travel for security and conservation reasons, which included the concern that since the manuscript had never left the British Isles, changes in the temperature and humidity levels would damaged the manuscript. Special exhibition cases were designed so that the temperature and humidity levels could be controlled while the Book traveled and was on display. 

After Cloonan returned to the U.S. and finished her master's degree at the University of Chicago, she worked for four years at the Newberry Library in Chicago. Eventually, she decided that she preferred research and writing to bench work, and went to the University of Illinois to get her M.S. and Ph.D. in library and information science, though her interest in conservation and preservation never abated. 

After graduating, she worked at Brown University where she developed a preservation program for the libraries and the Bell Gallery. During this time, she also taught as an adjunct at the University of Rhode Island. From Brown, she went to the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), where she was on the faculty from 1990-2002, and chaired the Information Studies program during her last several years there.

In 2002, she became dean of what was then known as the Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS), now the Simmons University School of Library and Information Science. At Simmons, her interest in international librarianship was rekindled, and she established an exchange program with Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea, with a professor there who had been her student at UCLA. Cloonan also served as a guest speaker in the GSLIS Vietnam program.

Cloonan views preservation as a human rights issue; she believes that if we do not preserve our heritage–and make it accessible–we will lose important parts of our history. Preservation and censorship are closely related; everyone should be concerned about the continual disappearance of digital information, and in particular, the intentional destruction of it.

Cloonan’s commitment to cultural preservation was embodied by her collaborative work to support librarians in the Middle East. After the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, Cloonan and colleagues decided to train Iraqi librarians, archivists, and faculty in the preservation of their collections. Due to the earlier Iran-Iraq War (1980-88), and the Gulf War (1990-91), there had been a brain drain in Iraq prior to 2003 – with little money allocated to higher education after the wars. Thus, Iraqi librarians and academics were in isolation for decades, with faculty using text books from the 1970s. To remedy this, Cloonan and colleagues offered courses in many areas of librarianship, which were held in Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Kurdistan. Cloonan drew on these international experiences in her 2018 book The Monumental Challenge of Preservation: The Past in a Volatile World.

From 2013-2018 she was editor of Preservation, Digital Technology & Culture, published by De Gruyter. She served on the board of directors of the Northeast Document Conservation Center from 2017-23.

Cloonan married fellow educator and librarian Sidney E. Berger in 1987, and together they collect fine-press and artists' books and have a small printing press, Doe Press, which occasionally produces keepsakes. Their publications include: Thom Gunn, Lament, 1985; Ernest Kroll, Six Letters to An Apprentice, 1994; Donald Justice, Banjo Dog, 1995, and Michèle Cloonan, The Invisible Presence of Gertrude Stiles, 2010.

Cloonan and Berger compiled a collection of more than 22,000 pieces of paper, now the Berger-Cloonan Collection of Decorated Paper at the Cushing Library, Texas A&M University.