Jon Shaw

Jon Shaw leads Vanderbilt University’s Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries, which encompass nine campus libraries and multiple research entities including the Digital Lab, Slave Societies Digital Archive, and Vanderbilt Television News Archive. He also oversees the McGee Applied Research Center for Narrative Studies and the W.T. Bandy Center for Baudelaire and Modern French Studies within Vanderbilt’s College of Arts and Science. Under his strategic direction, the Heard Libraries have spearheaded original exhibitions, programs, and events for Vanderbilt’s Sesquicentennial and launched a Geographic Information Systems Lab with the Peabody College and an AI Legal Lab with the Law School to bolster Discovery Vanderbilt research. 

A forward-thinking and transformational leader, Jon is elevating the Heard Libraries into a central hub for collaboration and engagement among faculty, staff, and students. He is driving cultural change both within the libraries and across campus, modernizing processes, and building strong relationships with campus leadership and the broader higher education community. Jon also has accelerated the libraries’ digital transformation, including upgrading IT infrastructure and adopting AWS cloud technologies. 

Before joining Vanderbilt in July 2022, Jon was the associate vice provost and deputy university librarian for the University of Pennsylvania Libraries. There, he was the lead administrator for operations, chief strategist, and senior advisor to the vice provost. 

Jon holds a master of science in education from the University of Pennsylvania, a master of science in library and information science from Drexel University, and a bachelor of arts in philosophy from Temple University. 

Jon is an active member of various advisory boards, including Clarivate, the Research Library at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the AmeriQuests: Narrative, Law and Society journal. He serves as the incoming chair of the Research and Analytics Committee of the Association of Research Libraries and is a representative for several major library and research organizations. He has been recognized as a senior fellow at UCLA’s School of Education and Information Studies and as an Association of Research Libraries Leadership Fellow. 

Jon lives in Nashville and enjoys hiking.