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Vanderbilt University Librarian Jon Shaw has been elected to the Association of Research Libraries Board of Directors for a two-year term beginning Jan. 1, 2026. Shaw was elected by ARL membership at the group’s 2025 Fall Association Meeting on Oct. 7.
The nonprofit ARL is a preeminent membership organization of the research libraries and archives of major public and private universities, federal government agencies and large public institutions in the United States and Canada. ARL serves as a forum for sharing ideas, shaping policy, fostering collective action, and advocating for the development and sustainability of research libraries and the global knowledge ecosystem.
As the governing body of ARL, the Board of Directors represents the interests of its member libraries in directing the organization’s business, including establishing operating policies, budgets and fiscal oversight; modifying ARL’s mission and objectives; and representing the association to the larger community.
“I am honored to be elected by my peers to the ARL Board of Directors,” Shaw said. “Together, with our colleagues across the association, we will carry out ARL’s critical work of ensuring access to knowledge, advocating for digital preservation, promoting innovation in scholarship, and helping to shape the future of research and education for the benefit of society.”
Shaw, who came to Vanderbilt in July 2022, leads the Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries’ nine campus libraries and multiple research entities, including the Slave Societies Digital Archive and the Vanderbilt Television News Archive. Under his direction, the libraries launched the Digital Lab, an initiative that empowers Vanderbilt faculty, students and staff to create, develop and sustain digital projects, and the Geographic Information Systems Lab, which gives university scholars a significant computing edge in the rapidly growing field of geospatial visualization and analysis.
He also helped launch the Vanderbilt AI Law Lab to champion radical collaboration and experimentation in reimagining the future of law through the lens of artificial intelligence, as well as the McGee Applied Research Center for Narrative Studies, designed to promote media literacy by providing resources to evaluate the objectivity of news coverage and other narratives.
In addition to his role at Vanderbilt, Shaw serves on numerous advisory boards and as a member of various library and research committees nationally and internationally. These include the boards of Clarivate, a global leader in analytics services; the WashU Libraries’ National Council at Washington University in St. Louis; and the Research Library at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, among others. In 2024, Shaw was named an Education Champion by Amazon Web Services.
For more about ARL’s Board of Directors for 2026, visit the association’s website.