SMIRC Speaker Biographies

Kathleen Shearer is the Executive Director of COAR (Confederation of Open Access Repositories), an international association of repository initiatives with a membership of over 150 institutions worldwide from over 40 countries on all 5 continents. COAR has been advancing the vision of the next generation repository, which is to position repositories as the foundation for a distributed, globally networked infrastructure for scholarly communication, on top of which layers of value added services will be deployed. Most recently, COAR was awarded funding by Arcadia to develop and implement the COAR Notify initiative. COAR Notify is developing and accelerating community adoption of a standard, interoperable, and decentralised approach (using Linked Data Notifications) to link research outputs hosted in the distributed network of repositories with resources from external services, such as overlay-journals and open peer review services. Shearer has been working in the area of open access, open science, scholarly communications, and research data management for over 20 years. She is an active member in many initiatives related to open science, such as the Research Data Alliance (RDA) and is also a research associate with the Canadian Association of Research Libraries.

Scott D. Bacon is Coordinator of Digital Initiatives at Coastal Carolina University Libraries. He is the coordinator of the university’s institutional repository, CCU Digital Commons. He also coordinates digital collections and digital preservation efforts at the library. His interests include scholarly communication, research information management, and cultural heritage collections. He enjoys identifying, assessing, and implementing emerging technologies that increase and enhance access to library resources and services.

Erin Jerome is the Library Publishing & Institutional Repository Librarian at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She manages the campus’ institutional repository, ScholarWorks@UMassAmherst, runs the libraries’ open access journal publishing program, and partners with the Research Data and Digital Scholarship Librarian as co-administrator of UMass’ Data Repository. Beyond UMass, she is committed to building platform-agnostic communities within the world of institutional repository practitioners and is one of the co-founders of both the Northeast Institutional Repository Day (NIRD) and the IR Managers Forum.

Abbie Norris-Davidson is the Digital Initiatives Librarian and Assistant Professor at the University of Mississippi, where she is an administrator for the university’s institutional repository, eGrove. She earned her Master of Science in Information Studies from The University of Texas at Austin. Abbie's research interests include digital preservation and expanding awareness of digital scholarship methods.

Jeanne Pavy is Scholarly Communication & Collection Development Librarian at the Earl K. Long Library, University of New Orleans. She has been the manager of the University’s institutional repository, ScholarWorks@UNO, since it was launched in February 2011.

Karen Ramsden is market research analyst in the division of communications and marketing at Montclair State University, where she leads and collaborates on various research projects for the division, as well as the university. Prior to her current position, Karen served as coordinator of Montclair State University Digital Commons, the university’s institutional repository, and as the lead administrator for Research with Montclair, a RIM platform. Karen received a master of public administration from Kean University, and an MA in social research and analysis from Montclair State University.

Arjun Sabharwal joined the University of Toledo Libraries faculty as Digital Initiatives Librarian in January 2009. His areas of responsibilities include digitizing manuscript collections and archival records and developing virtual exhibitions at the Ward M. Canaday Center for Special Collections, managing the University of Toledo Digital Repository, and curating the Toledo's Attic Virtual Museum. Since 2017, he has also been the system administrator and lead technical contact for the Open Journal Systems, which houses several Open Access journals at the University of Toledo. He is the selector for the following disciplines: Geography and Planning, Music, Political Science and Public Administration, and Hungarian Literature/Language. He oversees the collections for the Margaret M. Papp Perry Memorial Hungarian Culture Endowment Collection and currently serves as the University Libraries' Inclusion Officer. His research interests include Digital Humanities, interdisciplinary approaches to digital curation, digital preservation, archival science, information architecture, data visualization, and multimodal literacy. He is the author of Digital Curation in the Digital Humanities: Preserving and Promoting Archival and Special Collections (Oxford, UK: Chandos Publishing, 2015) and has authored and co-authored several research articles and chapters.

Kate Blalack is a librarian, and a nationally certified archivist and digital archives specialist. She joined the Hesburgh Libraries as the Digital Repositories Librarian in July 2023. She brought with her 20 years of experience in various roles of librarianship, including academic, public, archival, and museum settings. Kate currently serves as a teacher and mentor and is passionate about creative innovation and human connections. Her research is primarily focused on social connections through technology, in the areas of international human relations, artificial intelligence, and neurodiversity. Kate has served on professional committees in state, national, and international organizations, including the Society of Southwest Archivists, the Society of American Archivists, and the International Council of Archives.

Melissa Chim is the first Scholarly Communications Librarian at Excelsior University where she is involved in managing the university’s scholarly publishing platform and institutional repository. She holds an MLIS from St. John’s University and an MA in History from Queen Mary, the University of London. She was a SPARC Open Education Leadership Fellow for their 2022-23 cohort and a Society for Scholarly Publishing Fellow for 2024. She co-authored the OER textbook entitled Living Archives: A History of the Center for Christian Spirituality, and is currently co-authoring another textbook on information literacy.

Chuck Hodgin holds an M.L.I.S. with an emphasis in Digital Libraries from Drexel University (2012) and an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Mississippi (2013). His primary duties include administering the Belmont Digital Repository, growing the library's digital preservation program generally, and administering the library's OneSearch discovery service. Hodgin's current research interests are systems administration, digital preservation, and A.I. in higher education.

Andrea M. Quinn is the Law Librarian for Digital Initiatives and Research Services at the MacMillan Law Library at Emory University’s School of Law, where she manages the Law School’s institutional repository, Emory Law Scholarly Commons. Her research and teaching focus on issues related to scholarly communications, academic librarianship, legal and political institutions, and copyright law.

Anne Shelley is the Digital Repository Services Unit Lead at Iowa State University. She collaborates with library staff and campus stakeholders to develop and promote the ISU Digital Repository.

Trent Dunkin has been employed by Louisiana State University (LSU) Libraries since 2019 as a Resource Sharing Specialist (2019-2022) and Institutional Repository Librarian (2022-present). Trent currently holds two graduate degrees: a Master of Arts in Romance Languages from the University of New Orleans (2019) and a Master of Library and Information Science from LSU (2021). In addition to being the Institutional Repository Librarian at LSU, Trent is also pursuing a doctoral degree in French Studies, focusing primarily on Medieval French Literature and Civilization. Some of Trent’s specific research interests are Academic Librarianship, Old French Language and Literature, and Comparative Romance Philology. In his spare time, Trent enjoys reading, traveling, and taking full advantage of living in a region considered part of the Francophone world.

Dr. Justin Ellis serves as the Program Manager for Operational Strategy and Impact Analysis for UGA’s Office of Sustainability in the Facilities Management Division. His primary role is to infuse the power of data analytics and data communication into the strategic vision and operational strategy for sustainability at UGA. He leads the Office’s Clean Energy and Climate Solutions programs, Biodiversity and Landscape programs, co-leads Campus as a Living Lab programs, and is the chair of the FMD Fleet Electrification Workgroup. As a restoration ecologist and GIS specialist he has over two decades of experience using data models to lead strategic planning and implementation strategies capable of achieving ambitious sustainability targets. He launched the UGA Campus Sustainability Archive (in coordination with UGA library leaders) and the UGA Sustainability GIS Data Hub in 2022 and 2023 as mechanisms to build a repository of hyper-local sustainability knowledge focused on advancing on-campus sustainable change.

Michelle Emanuel is the head of Metadata and Digital Initiatives at the University of Mississippi, where she has worked since 2002. Among those initiatives is eGrove, UM’s institutional repository, which launched in fall 2018. She was named one of 4 "Digital Commons IR All-Stars" for the year 2022. She holds several degrees from the University of Alabama, including a BA in American studies, a PhD in French, and an MLIS.

Vanessa Garrett is the Digital Publishing Librarian at the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries, a role she began in April 2023. Prior to starting at UTA, she worked in both academic and trade publishing as well as education in roles at companies including Taylor & Francis, The Royal Society of Chemistry, and Broward County School District. Originally from South Florida, her educational background includes dual BA degrees in English and Theatre from the University of Florida, an MA in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) from the University of Southern California, and an MA in Publishing from Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, United Kingdom. She is passionate about open access and the role that publishing plays in the global academic world.

Emily Johnson is the Scholarly Communication Librarian at the University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries & Museums. She manages UTSA's DSpace repository and provides support for faculty and students in the areas of copyright, intellectual property, scholarly metrics, author profiles, publishing choices, publishing agreements and compliance with funder mandates. Emily earned both her Bachelor of Arts in Government and History and Master of Science in Information Studies from The University of Texas at Austin.

Saad Khan has worked at the intersection of Product, Business, & Technology for most of his career. He led product management, content development, design, technology, & marketing teams at companies such as Wiley, Rosetta Stone, and Consumer Affairs, and before joining Elsevier he headed product development and marketing at a teacher test prep start-up. Saad is passionate about delivering premium customer experiences by inspiring results-focused, customer-centric solutions. That customer-centric mindset and his background as a product management and marketing executive with a track record of delivering premium award-winning customer experiences across multiple international markets positions him well to lead the next phase of DC’s evolution.

Elizabeth La Beaud is the Head of Library Technology for The University of Southern Mississippi and the Director of the Mississippi Digital Library. She holds a M.L.I.S., a certificate in archives and special collections, the digital archives specialist certificate from the Society of American Archivists, and is a Library of Congress trained digital preservation topical trainer. She serves on the National Digital Stewardship Alliance’s (NDSA) Levels of Preservation Steering Group. Elizabeth specializes in digital preservation, project planning and implementation, and copyright as it pertains to digital collections.

Camila Lívio is the Scholarly Communications Librarian at the University of Georgia. She works with open access initiatives on campus and is interested in advancing knowledge about open research practices.

Colleen Lougen is a serials and electronic resources librarian at SUNY New Paltz, actively supporting accessibility at the institutional and consortium levels, and is interested in scholarly communication, electronic resources assessment, and financial literacy.

Matthew Mayernik is Deputy Director of the Library at the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), based in Boulder, CO. At the NCAR Library, he conducts independent research and leads organizational initiatives related to digital scholarship, research data curation, and open science. He is also the Joint Editor-in-Chief of the Data Science Journal.

Andrew Mckenna-Foster is a Product Specialist at Figshare with a background in ecology, natural history, and information science. For a decade, Andrew oversaw the operations of a small natural history museum and aquarium and directed the related research programs and biological collections. An interest in open science and data management led Andrew to the field of information science and he received a masters of library and information science, with a focus in data curation, from the University of Washington in 2020. At Figshare, Andrew focuses on helping researchers and librarians think through their open research and repository needs.

Hang Pham-Vu graduated from the University of Texas at Arlington in 2021 and currently works as a Digital Publishing Specialist for UTA Libraries under the Department of Open Partnerships and Services. Her four years spent in the College of Liberal Arts strengthened her interests ranging from creative writing to technical communication. In her work at UTA Libraries, she puts her skills in writing, research, and graphic design to use when formatting Open Access Journals and providing quality customer service to graduate students as an ETD coordinator. In her free time, she enjoys reading, crocheting, watching films, and listening to music.

Whitney Russell is the Digital Projects Librarian at the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries. Whitney serves as the Secretary for the Society of Southwest Archivists. She earned her MLIS and Graduate Certificate in Archives and Special Collections from the University of Southern Mississippi, as well as a BA in History from Mississippi University for Women. Whitney is also certified as a Digital Archives Specialist through the Society of American Archivists.

Carli Spina is an Associate Professor and the Head of Research & Instructional Services at the SUNY Fashion Institute of Technology Library. She is interested in finding ways to improve inclusion in libraries through accessibility, user experience design, and Universal Design.

Elliot Williams is the Metadata Strategist at the University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries & Museums. In that role, he focuses on metadata quality, interoperability, and discovery across systems and formats. Elliot has an MS in Information Studies from the University of Texas at Austin, as well as an MA in history and a BA in archaeology.

Mary Willoughby is the Digital Conversion and Curation Librarian at the Digital Library of Georgia. She supports open scholarship initiatives at the University of Georgia through ScholarWorksUGA and Open Journals at the UGA Libraries and manages DLG's in-house digitization and preservation workflows to support cultural heritage partners around the state.