Robert Keating O’Neill is Director of the John J. Burns Library and Part Time Faculty, Political Science, at Boston College, chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. He has been Burns Librarian since 1987. He holds both a PhD in History and an MA in Library Science from the University of Chicago. Previously he was Director of the Indiana historical Society Library in Indianapolis and head of Special Collections at Indiana State University, where he was also Associate professor of Library Science in the College of Arts and Sciences.

His many publications include: Irish Libraries, Museums, Archives and Genealogical Centres: A Visitors’ Guide (2002); Management of Library and Archival Security: From the Outside Looking In (1998), co-published simultaneously as Journal of Library Administration (volume 25, number 1, 1998); Ulster Libraries, Archives, Museums and Ancestral Heritage centres: A Visitors Guide (1997); and English-Language Dictionaries, 1604-1900: The Catalogue of the Warren N. and Suzanne B. Cordell Collection (1988). He co-edited The Art of the Book from the Early Middle Ages to the Renaissance: A Journey through a Thousand Years (2000). He has written numerous articles, reviews and prefaces.

O’Neill is a former president of the Manuscript Society (1992-1994), and the Eire Society of Boston (1995-1997). He continues to serve as a member of the board of directors of both these organisations. He also serves on the board of the Charitable Irish Society of Boston and is a past member of the boards of Bookbuilders of Boston and the Madame C.J. Walker urban Life Center, Indianapolis. He is a fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston, and a member of the Grolier Club in New York, the Club of Odd Volumes in Boston, and the Royal Dublin Society, and received the Society’s Award of Distinction.

He was honoured by the Irish and American governments for his role in the recovery of stolen Irish artefacts in 1991. In 2003 he received the Eire Society of Boston’s Gold medal and was named to Irish America magazine’s ‘Top 100 Irish Americans’. O’Neill is also the 2004 recipient of the Ambassador’s Award, established by the St Patrick’s Committee of Holyoke, Massachusetts in conjunction with the Irish Ambassador to the United States.