About
About America's School Trust Library
America's School Trust Library is a working library for the school trust lands — the 77 million acres set aside, beginning in 1785, to fund public education in perpetuity.
Corporate record
America's School Trust Library is an Oregon nonprofit public benefit corporation. Its Articles of Incorporation were e-filed on July 21, 2026 — Oregon Registry No. 259005891. The Library has not yet filed its application for federal tax-exempt recognition; it is being prepared. No federal tax-exemption determination has been issued, and until one is, the Library does not describe contributions as tax-deductible.
A volunteer board of directors governs the Library — no owners, no shareholders, no voting members. Governing documents: Governance.
The board
Founded the Library in 2026, after the record of one state's school-land promise turned out to be scattered — and every other state's scattered just as badly. Twenty-five years teaching information systems at Oregon State University's College of Business, where he holds an emeritus appointment; before that, a finance manager at Tektronix. He is also president of Oregon Advocates for School Trust Lands — a separate advocacy organization, and a dual role he discloses and sits out of whenever the two have business with each other.
Founded four Oregon companies across fifty years — accounting software for CPA firms in 1978; three personal-computer stores through the 1980s; Evergreen Technologies, a microprocessor-upgrade manufacturer he ran from a garage start to a subsidiary in England; and Belle Vallee Cellars, a Corvallis winery, until 2012. Mathematics and computer science at Western Washington State University, 1975. He coached academic and local startups as an executive in residence at the Oregon State University Accelerator until 2018. He and Dave Sullivan cofounded the Corvallis PC Club in the 1980s and have been friends since.
A professor of competitive strategy at Oregon State University. He has also taught strategy in graduate programs at universities in Taiwan, Thailand, and the Philippines.
Reference Librarian
Dr. Bob Zybach has been named Reference Librarian of America’s School Trust Library. He is a forest and wildfire historian with decades of research on Pacific Northwest forest history.
Portraits and records of the people who founded and advise the Library: the Founders' Cabinet.
Two director seats and the Law Librarian seat are open; the postings are at Open seats. On September 10, 2026 the board directed that the presidency pass to a person other than the founder no later than December 31, 2027, and that the search begin now.
What the Library has published about itself
A six-month report, a three-year plan, the case for keeping this record, and the invitations the Library sends to librarians and archivists, lawyers, legislators and agency staff, teachers, and families who hold papers are gathered at Participate. Each is on this site as web text and as a PDF you can print.
Who the Library works with
On August 10, 2026 the board of Oregon Advocates for School Trust Lands voted 3–0 to establish a non-exclusive alliance with the Library — limited to information, education, and preservation, and carrying no control, no agency, no financial obligation, and no litigation position on either side. Either board may end it at any time. OASTL is the advocacy organization Dave Sullivan also serves as president; he disclosed the dual role and sat out the vote. The Library's board accepted the alliance on its own side by unanimous written consent, effective September 10, 2026: it was approved by Kenneth Magee and Barry Shane, each of whom states that he has no interest in either organization, and David Sullivan disclosed his interest and took no part in that approval. The same consent approved, on the Library's side, an alliance on the same terms with the national organization, Advocates for School Trust Lands, to take effect only if and when that organization's board adopts the resolution before it; as of September 10, 2026 it has not. The organizational record carries the action.
What the alliance means in practice is that the Library expects to hold Oregon's school-trust record — including the Elliott State Forest material — on exactly the terms it holds anything else: catalogued without regard to whose argument it helps, free to every reader, corrected in public, and open to a reader who disagrees with every word OASTL has ever written. Keeping a document is not endorsing it. The Library takes no position in any case or campaign, and its Constitution forbids control by any advocacy organization — including that one. An alliance that could change what the shelves say would not be worth having, to either side.
More on the founder's dual role: Independence.
The Library's day-to-day building — cataloging, drafting, design, the back-end — is carried out in partnership with Claude, an AI system, under the direction of the Library's named human editors. No machine exercises final editorial authority, and no machine holds a corporate office or a seat on the board; the artificial-intelligence Librarian at the Reference Desk answers readers from what the Library has already published. How that partnership works is described in How the Library Works.
The rooms
- Catalog — the index of the collection.
- Reading Room — three book-length works.
- Court Room — rulings, filings, and case files.
- Atlas — fifty states under four lenses.
- Map Room — where the trust lands are today.
- Counting House — the financial record.
- Newsroom — a weekly survey of what's changing.
- Voices — signed editorial pieces.
How this Library is made: the Librarians' Room. Or .
Contact and corrections
Use the Submit Feedback and Submit Correction controls on any page. Every correction is dated and numbered in the corrections log.
See also: How to Cite · Rights, Use, and Takedown · The Founder's Statement.
Dave Sullivan
President, America's School Trust Library
