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Julie Glascock has been appointed associate university librarian for collections at the Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries. She previously served as director of collection strategy. In her new role, Glascock will provide strategic leadership for the development, stewardship and accessibility of Vanderbilt University’s collections in all formats.
Glascock, who currently oversees the Heard Libraries’ collections budget and leads the Acquisitions, E-resources, and Cataloging and Metadata teams, will add oversight of Special Collections and University Archives to her portfolio, unifying all collections efforts in one area. As associate university librarian for collections, she is charged with managing the allocation of Vanderbilt’s multi-million-dollar collections budget, guiding preservation and access strategies for unique and rare materials, and ensuring that all collections—both general and special—are discoverable, accessible and aligned with the university’s teaching mission and research priorities.
“Julie has been absolutely essential in shaping the Heard Libraries’ user-focused, mission-driven collection strategy over the past several years, skillfully balancing our investments across licensed content, open access resources and distinctive holdings,” University Librarian Jon Shaw said. “I look forward to continuing to work with Julie and her team to advance the libraries’ digitization efforts, expand our open access programs, and ensure that Vanderbilt’s collections are broadly available for global research and scholarship.”
Since 2023, Glascock has led negotiations and implemented more than 40 publisher agreements supporting open access, strategically aligning the libraries’ collections budget with university priorities. These agreements have significantly expanded Vanderbilt’s open access content, enhanced its global research impact, and achieved more than $8 million in savings on article processing charges to date.
She also was instrumental in advising on Vanderbilt’s partnership with the National Museum of African American Music to acquire rare and distinctive collections, as well as the Heard Libraries’ ongoing collaboration with Google Books to digitize and make available online more than a quarter-million books across the university’s nine campus libraries, among other efforts.
At the national level, Glascock has served since 2021 on the Program Council for the NERL consortium, a group of leading academic and research libraries that collectively license electronic resources, and she has twice been part of agreement negotiation teams for NERL. She also has been a key contributor to the Electronic Resources & Libraries Conference since 2018 as both a member of the program planning committee and a frequent session moderator. The annual ER&L Conference convenes information professionals to discuss, learn and collaborate on trends, technologies and best practices for managing electronic resources and digital library services.
Glascock has served in a variety of roles since joining the Heard Libraries in 1993. She holds a bachelor’s in education from the University of Missouri–Columbia and a master’s in information sciences from the University of Tennessee.
“I am tremendously honored and excited to take on this expanded role within the Heard Libraries,” Glascock said. “Together, with our talented librarians and staff, we are committed to expanding access to scholarly resources through open access, data-driven decision-making, and building innovative and sustainable collections.”
In addition to Glascock’s new responsibilities, Celia Walker, formerly associate university librarian for community engagement, has transitioned to the role of special projects librarian. Walker will continue to oversee the libraries’ Strategic Communications team as well as key community engagement efforts. The libraries’ grants function will move under Stacy Curry-Johnson, director of research strategy.