Perspectives on Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Libraries

Nandita S. Mani, PhD, MLIS, is the Dean of University Libraries at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she provides strategic, administrative, and financial leadership of the largest publicly supported research library in New England. Oversight of the Libraries includes vast physical and digital items and the Robert S. Cox Special Collections and University Archives Research Center, which contains the papers and memoirs of W. E. B. Du Bois, Horace Mann Bond, Daniel Ellsberg, and Kenneth R. Feinberg, the Irma McClaurin Black Feminist Archive, and hundreds of other collections documenting the lives and work of activists, innovators, political figures, spiritual leaders, writers, and more. Dean Mani oversees the UMass Libraries in its role as a strategic partner supporting the academic and research enterprise of UMass Amherst, a flagship land grant institution, and represents the UMass Libraries with service as a member of the Association of Research Libraries, the Five College Library Consortium’s leadership committee, and the Board of the Boston Library Consortium. Mani had transformational roles at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she served as Associate University Librarian for health sciences and Director of the Health Sciences Library. In her role at UNC, Mani led the development of the University Libraries’ data science framework, which articulated how the libraries can contribute to campus-wide data-science initiatives. She was also part of the UNC Libraries’ Reckoning Initiative to build antiracism into the Libraries’ policies, systems, structures, and approaches and is an Advisory Board Member of ARiA: Anti-Racism in Academia Mani's publishing experience has been in areas including information science, diversity, equity, inclusion, health literacy, and instructional design and technology. She held the role of Managing Editor for Advances in Chronic Kidney Disease from 2009-2019. A recognized expert on data science in libraries, Dean Mani is co-editor and author of Academic Libraries as Partners in Data Science Ecosystems, published in 2022. Dean Mani received her bachelor’s degree from Concordia University of Edmonton, Alberta, and subsequently earned a master’s in library and information science and a Ph.D. in instructional technology, both from Wayne State University in Detroit.

Michelle Cawley , MLS, MA is the Head of Clinical, Academic, and Research Engagement (CARE) unit in the Health Sciences Library (HSL) at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. In this role, she leads a team of liaison librarians who engage and partner with the University’s schools of dentistry, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and public health as well as multiple clinical departments within UNC Medical Center. She supports innovation, outreach, and curriculum engagement with the five Health Affairs schools and the hospital and has deep experience in the application of machine learning solutions to improve the efficiency of completing scoping reviews, systematic reviews, and other large-scale literature reviews. CARE staff also partner with health affairs researchers around visualizing their research impact through bibliometric and other analyses. Ms. Cawley also partners with the Clinical and Statewide Engagement (CaSE) unit at HSL that includes health literacy and community outreach librarians committed to engagement with communities across North Carolina. Further, Ms. Cawley is interested in how libraries can effectively support data science curricula and research on campus. In 2019, she lead a committee tasked by the University Librarian to develop a framework and recommendations around services to begin or grow, increasing data-related skills among librarians, and how to address infrastructure needs. Previously, Ms. Cawley was on the development team for a machine learning application for reducing manual burden of reviewing literature search results. She has lead or consulted on multiple projects that have successfully applied this technology and is the co-author of several publications on the topic. Finally, she has presented on applications of machine learning technology at the annual meetings for the Society of Toxicology, American Public Health Association, Society for Risk Analysis, and Medical Libraries Association.

Emily P. Jones , MLIS, AHIP is a Health Sciences Librarian at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In her current role, she serves as the team lead for systematic reviews and Liaison Librarian to the Adams School of Dentistry. She holds a Master's Degree in Library and Information Studies from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Previously, she served as a Research and Education Informationist and Liaison Librarian to the College of Pharmacy at the Medical University of South Carolina. In her free time, she loves to travel, spend time outdoors, and try new things.