The university librarian is a dean-level position charged with overseeing and providing strategic
direction for UCLA's eight campus libraries and special collections. Ginny Steel, who has held the
position since 2013, will be the inaugural Norman and Armena Powell University Librarian.
"As an alumnus and son of our longtime university librarian, Norman knows first-hand that a gift to
the UCLA library is like giving a scholarship to every student and a fellowship to every researcher,
" said UCLA Chancellor Gene Block. "We thank him for his generosity, which will ensure that the
library continues to play an essential role in the intellectual journeys of every student, faculty
and staff member."
Powell's gift will enable the library to continue to evolve and innovate, and to best serve the
needs of the 21st-century university. Endowment funds will support the library's unparalleled
collections, innovative services that fuel teaching and research across campus, and ongoing efforts
to ensure that its physical spaces and online resources can evolve to meet the needs of UCLA's
students and faculty.
“Norman has been one of the library’s most generous and visionary donors for many, many years,
and this magnificent gift further demonstrates the strength of his support,” Steel said. “I’m
deeply honored to be the first Norman and Armena Powell University Librarian, and I trust that
I and my successors will live up to the extraordinary legacy the Powells have established at UCLA.”
As a UCLA undergraduate, Norman Powell took two years of liberal arts courses before changing his
major and graduating in 1959 with a degree in earth physics. Over the next three decades, he worked
in California and Libya as a field engineer running borehole geophysical surveys, as a research
physicist for Chevron, in technical service and exploration consulting, and as an executive
consultant with British Petroleum. After retiring in 1990, he became an environmental activist
with a focus on local open space and conservation issues in Southern California. He is the son
of legendary UCLA University Librarian Lawrence Clark Powell, in whose honor Powell Library was
named in 1966.