Ann Hartness

Retired in 2008, Hartness was a member of the first broad generation of women to rise to professional academic leadership positions in the US. Hartness worked for 38 years at UT Austin, beginning as a serials cataloger in 1970. Her assistance has been acknowledged in original research by numerous scholars in the humanities and social sciences.

Hartness' focus on Brazil and collecting trips there helped make the UT library a global resource for study of that country. In 2003, Brazil named her a Commander of the National Order of the Southern Cross, the highest honor granted by that country to non-Brazilians.

Hartness also directed the United States Library of Congress field office in Brazil in 1989-90. In March 2022, the University of Texas renamed the main reading room at the Benson Latin American Collection the Ann Hartness Reading Room.

This led to a comprehensive published guide for scholars, the 1977 Subject Guide to Statistics in the Presidential Reports of the Brazilian Provinces, 1830–1889, published by the Institute for Latin American Studies at the University of Texas. This later became an interactive online guide.

In 1972-73, while an intern at Brazil's National Library in Rio de Janeiro, Hartness began compiling an index for researchers of the statistics provided during the 19th century in annual reports by the governors ("presidents") of the 20 provinces of the then Brazilian Empire. The work spanned 59 years of reports, from 1830 to 1889.

Hartness has been active since the 1970s in the permanent Seminar on the Acquisition of Latin American Library Materials (SALALM), a nationwide collaborative effort among research libraries, founded in 1956. She was elected Honorary Member of the SALALM board of directors (Secretariat) in 2008.

Hartness's published works also include a review of reference books since 1965 concerning Brazil, first published in English in 1990 and updated in Portuguese in 1999 (see list of published works). While much of Hartness's work has focused on Brazil, she also published in 1995 a guide to political street literature in Guatemala during the early Cold War: Revolution and Counterrevolution in Guatemala, 1944–1963.

Ann Hartness (born March 11, 1936) is an academic research librarian who was Head Librarian of the University of Texas (UT) Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection from 2002 to 2008. The library, established in 1926, is the largest dedicated to Latin America in the United States, and is part of the Perry–Castañeda Library, the country's fifth-largest academic library.