Starting on July 1, three Miami University Librarians will have new titles. In February, Ken Irwin, Web Services Librarian; Megan Jaskowiak, Health and Social Sciences Librarian; and Carla Myers, Coordinator of Scholarly Communication were approved by Miami University’s board of trustees for a promotion to associate librarian.
Ken Irwin is a Web Services Librarian. He received a Master of Information and Library Studies from the University of Michigan and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Kalamazoo College. His scholarship focuses developing open-source solutions to solve challenging library issues and to make the most of our resources. His projects include MyGuide, a personalized research dashboard, and Software Checkout, a mechanism for “checking out” software licenses that has saved Miami students over $200,000. His current project, Argus, developed in collaboration with Miami Special Collections Librarian Rachel Makarowski, is a special collections project management tool that will save scholars and librarians time and effort in managing research projects.
Megan Jaskowiak is the Health and Social Sciences Librarian. She holds a Ph.D. in Botany from North Dakota State University and a Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) from Kent State University. She liaises with the Criminology, Gerontology, Psychology, Sociology, Speech Pathology and Audiology, Family Science and Social Work departments, as well as the Physician Associate Studies program. One of her primary responsibilities is supporting faculty, staff, and students conducting systematic and scoping reviews. A recent scoping review she co-authored with two Miami faculty members and a graduate student was accepted for publication in International Emergency Nursing. Her research has also appeared in the Journal of the Medical Library Association, Serials Review, Interlending & Document Supply, and the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved.
Carla Myers received her undergraduate degree in Psychology from the University of Akron and her Master’s degree in Library and Information Science from Kent State University. Her work in libraries focuses on fair use, copyright in the classroom, and library copyright issues, and she has presented across the U.S. and internationally on these topics. As coordinator of Scholarly Communications for the Miami University Libraries, she also helps lead campus affordability initiatives that seek to reduce or eliminate the cost of textbooks and other learning materials students use. In collaborations with partners in the library and across campus, these initiatives have saved students over $1.6 million dollars since 2018.
Dean and University Librarian Jerome Conley congratulated the three librarians saying, “Please join me in congratulating our colleagues on this exciting achievement. Their dossiers were absolutely stellar, and I am so happy to see that the board saw the merits of their achievements. I am so incredibly happy to have them on our team.”