As university librarian, Jon Shaw leads Vanderbilt University’s Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries, which comprise nine campus libraries and multiple research entities, including the Digital Lab, Slave Societies Digital Archive and Vanderbilt Television News Archive. Shaw also has administrative oversight of the McGee Applied Research Center for Narrative Studies and the W.T. Bandy Center for Baudelaire and Modern French Studies, both institutionally situated in the College of Arts and Science. Under Shaw’s strategic direction, the Heard Libraries have taken a leading role in several key initiatives at Vanderbilt, from organizing original exhibitions, programs and events that celebrate the university’s Sesquicentennial to launching a Geographic Information Systems Lab that strengthens Discovery Vanderbilt research. He also has built collaborative relationships across the broader community that position the Heard Libraries for further growth, including joining the prestigious U.K.-based Digital Preservation Coalition as one of only a select few members from the U.S.
Shaw is currently a member of the advisory boards of Clarivate, the Research Library at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and AmeriQuest: Narrative, Law and Society journal; incoming chair of the Research and Analytics Committee of the Association of Research Libraries; and institutional representative, member and/or delegate for the Association of Research Libraries, Coalition for Networked Information, Center for Research Libraries, HathiTrust, and Association of Southeastern Research Libraries. In past roles, he served on the Pennsylvania Digital Futures Advisory Board, OCLC’s research groups (Networking Names Advisory Group and Scanning and Photography Working Group), and as a delegate, representative or committee member of the Pennsylvania Academic Library Consortium Inc. and Ivy Plus Libraries’ committees and initiatives. He also was selected for Harvard University’s Leadership Institute for Academic Librarians and named a Senior Fellow in UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies (2016) and an Association of Research Libraries Leadership Fellow (2018–19).
Prior to coming to Vanderbilt in July 2022, Shaw was associate vice provost and deputy university librarian for the University of Pennsylvania Libraries. There, he served as the lead administrator for operations, chief strategist and senior advisor to the H. Carton Rogers III Vice Provost of the Penn Libraries. Throughout his career at Penn Libraries, Shaw chaired various enterprise-wide initiatives, from capital projects to technology solutions. He also guided several strategic plans and spearheaded civic engagement partnerships, including the formative collaboration with the Athenaeum of Philadelphia and the model partnership that led to the support and building of Penn Libraries’ community outreach program. In addition, he produced scholarly exhibits, including The Civil War: An Ephemeral Lens of the Life and Times and Prehistoric Wessex: Towards a Deep Map, and led the collaborative digital humanities teaching and research initiative between Penn, Swarthmore, Haverford, and Bryn Mawr colleges on the Penn Libraries’ Collection of British and American Fiction Collection, 1660-1830.