At Carnegie Mellon University Libraries, we celebrate the many contributions of the faculty and staff who make the Libraries the destination for scholarly information, creative inquiry, and intellectual collaboration across disciplines, propelling the significance, reach, and impact of the university.
STEM Librarian Melanie Gainey, Business & Entrepreneurship Librarian Ryan Splenda, and Social Sciences Librarian Sarah Young represented the CMU Evidence Synthesis Program with a talk at the virtual Library Evidence Synthesis Service Symposium (LESSS). The talk was titled "From service to program: Strategic reframing of library evidence synthesis work for sustainability, visibility and impact.”
Arts and Humanities Librarians Charlotte Kiger Price, Jill Chisnell, and Ashley Werlinich presented "From Discard to Discovery: Hands-On Community Programming at a Tech-Focused University" at the 2026 Canadian Association of Professional Academic Librarians (CAPAL) Conference, held virtually in June.
The presentation described a series of hands-on workshops and drop-in events developed at CMU Libraries using deaccessioned books, slides, and other discarded materials as the basis for creative community programming. Programming included "Remixing the Book: from Medieval Manuscripts to Meme Culture," a workshop tracing the history of collage and remix from medieval manuscripts to internet meme culture, as well as library orientation stations and pop-up events.
STEM Librarian Kristen Scotti presented a poster, "An Open-Source Zotero Plugin for Automated Institutional Monitoring of Open Scholarship" at LIBER in Trondheim on July 1. STEM Librarians Melanie Gainey and Chasz Griego, Associate Dean for Academic Engagement Nicky Agate, Data Analyst Clarke Bacharach, Open Knowledge Librarian Emily Bongiovanni, Statistics and Data Science Ph.D. student Elizabeth Cucuzzella, and Open Science Postdoctoral Research Associate Chisom Obasih are also contributing to this work.
A research paper co-authored by STEM Librarian Huajin Wang, entitled “Open practices across science, software, education and other domains”, was published in “Nature Human Behaviour” (DOI: 10.1038/s41562-026-02526-0). The paper describes the history and messiness of openness, plus seven lessons for making openness work. These practical lessons can help any group trying to open up — whether a school, government agency, company, or scientific organization — better achieve their goals.