Larry Hardesty obtained bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education from Kearney State College and a master’s degree in library science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He then received a master’s degree in Instructional Systems Technology and a doctorate in Library Science from Indiana University. Hardesty served as head of the reference department at DePauw University, Greencastle, IN from 1975 to 1983, and as Director of Libraries at Eckerd College, St. Petersburg, FL, from 1983 to 1995. Hardesty was on faculty at Austin College as college librarian from 1995 to 2004. He served as Dean of the Calvin T. Ryan Library at the University of Nebraska at Kearney from 2004 until his retirement in 2006.
Hardesty was President of the Florida Chapter of the ACRL from 1986 to 1998, and chair of the College Libraries Section (CLS) from 1995 to 1996. He was a member of the ACRL Board of Directors (1987-1991, 1999-2001) and ACRL President from 1999-2000. He was founder and director of the College Library Directors’ Mentor Program and established the ACRL Excellence in Academic Libraries Award. His publications include Bibliographic Instruction in Practice: Dedicated to the Legacy of Evan Farber (Pierian Press, 1993); Faculty and the Library: The Undergraduate Experience (Ablex Publishing, 1991) and "Bibliographic Instruction and Faculty Culture," Library Trends 44 (Fall 1995), which received the ACRL Instruction Section Publication of the Year Award in 1996. Hardesty has served on editorial boards for Portals, The Journal of Academic Librarianship, Collection Management, College & Research Libraries News, College & Research Libraries.