The NISO Plus scholarship program is intended for anyone who feels that their voice and views are currently underrepresented in the information ecosystem. Scholarships are awarded annually, and applications are reviewed by a committee that includes representatives from the NISO staff, Board, Planning Committee, and current scholarship winners. The program is part of NISO’s ongoing efforts to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion in our community.
We engage with each year’s scholarship cohort not only at the NISO Plus conference, but also in professional development and networking events and activities throughout the year. Many thanks to the sponsor of this year’s scholarship, Digital Science.
Doyin Adenuga
After spending over four years in an academic publishing industry as technology coordinator, Doyin Adenuga got interested in the digital services side of the library profession, and went on to receive his master’s degree in library and information studies from the University of British Columbia, Canada. In 2017, he was recognized by the South Central Regional Library Council (SCLRC) for his work at the Willard J. Houghton Library (Houghton University library) and has since been a member of the SCRLC’s Advisory Committee on Information Technology & Services. He was a fellow awardee for the 2019 Digital Library Federation Forum. His interest centers around the use and benefits of open source software for collecting and managing digital assets.
Joanna Bailey
Joanna Bailey is the course reserves manager for Western Libraries at Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA, utilizing 10+ years of academic copyright experience to maximize student access to library resources while minimizing university copyright risk.
Joanna is a Copyright First Responder, trained by Harvard’s Kyle Courtney, participating in community outreach on a university and consortial level. She also serves on multiple accessibility committees, working to improve physical, electronic, and socioeconomic access to university materials, services, and spaces.
Currently piloting a controlled digital lending service as part of course reserves, she is excited to learn more about NISO standards that apply to CDL in support of expanding access to the Orbis Cascade Alliance, a consortium of regional libraries.
Whitney Bates-Gomez
Whitney Bates-Gómez is the Electronic and Continuing Resources Librarian at Georgia State University (GSU). In this role, she works to support the Resource Acquisitions Department within the University Library. Prior to working at GSU, Ms. Bates-Gómez worked as the Electronic Resources Librarian at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York, New York for over six years. Ms. Bates-Gómez currently serves as co-chair of the Program Planning Committee for the Electronic Resource and Libraries Conference (ER&L); a conference where she has also served as a session moderator and presenter. Ms. Bates-Gómez’s professional interests include database management, discovery systems, subscription license negotiation and management, and library leadership.
Janaynne Carvalho do Amaral
Janaynne do Amaral is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She teaches Scholarly Communications and conduct research on peer review and public engagement in science. She earned her Ph.D. in Information Science at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro/Brazilian Institute of Information in Science and Technology. Her dissertation identified and described the peers, concepts, and models of open peer review associated with public participation in scientific journals. In the future, she plans to develop partnerships and projects with scientific journals, libraries, scholarly societies, and outreach departments to support the understanding of the Scholarly Communication cycle inside and outside academia with a focus on the peer review process.
Tarenta Daniels
Lieutenant Tarenta Daniels is a native of Mobile, Alabama. She enlisted in the U.S. Navy and attended recruit basic training in Great Lakes, Illinois in 2003 followed by Operations Specialist “A” School in Dam Neck, Virginia. She completed her AA in General Studies through Central Texas College and received her BA in Healthcare Administration through Ashford University in 2012. LT Daniels received her officer commissioned in 2016 through the Navy’s Limited Duty Officer program.
Her sea duty assignments includes USS GRIDLEY (DDG-101) as the Leading Petty Officer, USS AMERICA (LHA-6) and USS GREEN BAY (LPD-20) as the Leading Chief Petty Officer. After commissioning she served onboard USS RAFAEL PERALTA (DDG-115), USS PAUL HAMILTION (DDG-60) and COMPHIBRON FIVE as the Assistant Operations Officer. Her operational experiences consist of three Western Pacific Deployments, two INDO Pacific patrols and two isolated deployments to Djibouti, Africa and Manama, Bahrain. She completed one shore assignment at Transit Personnel Unit, San Diego, CA as the Limited Duty Coordinator. She enrolled at San Jose State University in the fall of 2022 pursing her MLIS degree. She intends to be completed with her degree in the fall of 2025 and purse her career as an Academic Liberian at the university level while commencing her studies as a doctoral student in Library Science.
Her decorations include four Navy and Marine Corps Accommodation medals, four Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal, National Defense Ribbon, Global War on Terrorism Ribbon, Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Ribbon, Battle Effectiveness award, and Sea Service Ribbon.
Amir Rabiyah El-Chidiac
Amir Rabiyah El-Chidiac is a Diversity Resident and Research and Instruction Librarian at Susquehanna University. Amir is passionate about creating a more inclusive and supportive environment for students on campus. They co-run a food pantry in the library and have collaborated on converting numerous study rooms into sensory-friendly rooms for neurodiverse students.
Stanislava Gardasevic
Stanislava (Stasha) Gardasevic Ph.D. candidate in the interdisciplinary program in Communication and Information Sciences, and a teaching assistant/course instructor at Library and Information Science (LIS) Program at UH Mānoa. Her background is in Digital Librarianship (MLIS). Before coming to UHM, she was working at the National Library of Serbia, where she was involved in e-services projects (digital libraries, digital archive, web archive, e-legal deposit, etc.), as well as multiple international projects. Her specialty is in metadata for digital resources and her previous research interest was related to Semantic Web technologies (Linked Data & Ontologies). Her mission is to facilitate information flows and sharing and current research is related to the visualization of complex scholarly networks.
Rosy Salman Khan
Rosy Salman Khan has an undergraduate degree in Bachelor in Commerce and completed her Master’s in Library and Information Science from the University of Mumbai in 2019. She is a Library Assistant with the IGIDR (Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research). In this position, her primary responsibilities include the acquisition and circulation of books, journals, periodicals, and back volumes, as well as cataloguing and classification of print and e-resource materials into the open source library management system (Koha). She reviews and consolidates daily economics-related happenings and news from newspapers for dissemination via the library Twitter handle account. Khan is a contributor in the monthly newsletter called “Econbuzz”. Her publications include “Search Engines with reference to Information Retrieval: A Case study of Library and Information Science Students University of Mumbai”, “Open Textbooks and Libraries: A Study” and “Access Broker Browser Extensions: A Study”.
Grace Kim
As the Electronic Resources Librarian at Nevada State College (NSC), Grace Kim leads the e-resources lifecycle and supports faculty and students in her role as the liaison librarian for the college’s Data, Media, and Design department. She comes to NSC from Touro University Nevada, where she served as the Electronic Resources and Systems Librarian. Prior to making her move to Nevada, she first gained an interest in electronic resources management as the Instruction and Assessment Librarian at Notre Dame de Namur University in California. Her passions include learning, encouraging lifelong learning in others, and connecting information in as many dimensions as she can conceptually understand. Grace earned her MLIS from San Jose State University and also holds a MA in Art History from the State University of New York in Binghamton.
Nancy Kwangwa
Nancy Kwangwa is a disruptive thought leader with 10+ years of experience in designing and implementing information science and knowledge management projects. She is currently working as the Manager for Scholarly Communication and Publishing at the University of Zimbabwe. In this role, she is involved in developing research support programmes, provide advisory services of scholarly communication, intellectual property and research data management. She holds a MSc. in Library and Information Science and a BSc. in Library and Information Science from the National University of Science and Technology (Zimbabwe). She is pursuing her PhD in Knowledge Management from the University of Cape Town in South Africa. Her research interests are research data management, knowledge management, intellectual property management, information for development and digital equity. Nancy has presented papers at local and international conferences on current trends in academic librarianship. She has published research on knowledge management, information policy and research data management. Nancy has received recognition and support for her work. In 2018, Nancy was a Fellow of the United States Department of State Community Solutions Programme. In 2023, she was nominated to serve as a Global Specialist for the U.S Department of State’s Community Engagement Programme. Nancy is the current Chairperson of the Zimbabwe Library Association Mashonaland Branch. Nancy is active in her community outside the formal employment. She volunteers in providing digital literacy training in under-resourced communities, and is available to collaborate in research projects in the areas of scholarly communication, knowledge management and information and digital literacy.
Mubanga Lumpa
Mubanga Lumpa is a professional librarian working at the University of Zambia Library. He began his career as a librarian in 2016 after graduating with a Bachelor’s Degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Zambia. As Senior Library Assistant, his current role involves assisting library users in locating information resources and making other information resources (physical or electronic) to researchers, students and lecturers available in a timely and most effective way. Lumpa is currently enrolled at the University of Western Cape pursuing a Masters in Library Science. His ambition is to become a data librarian and consider how data and data analysis continues to influence effective librarianship.
Shima Moradi
Shima Moradi is the lead librarian at the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences, San Marcos campus. In addition, she is a part-time faculty member and librarian at El Camino College, Cypress College, and Irvine Valley College. Her teaching focuses on information literacy, scholarly communication, cognitive biases, and knowledge management. Previously, she was a faculty member and research analyst at the National Research Institute for Science Policy where she conducted multiple research projects on open science, academic integrity, research evaluation, research policies, and smart cities. She published two books in Altmetrics and Open Science. She holds degrees from Allameh Tabatabaee University (B.A. in Library Science, Minor in Humanities), Azad University (MLIS), and Azad University (Ph.D. in Library Science, Minor in Scientometrics / Research Evaluation).
Caterina Reed
Caterina M. Reed is an Instructional Support Associate for Content Acquisitions and Services at Stony Brook University Libraries. She holds an MS in Information and Library Science from the University at Buffalo and an MA in English from Stony Brook University. Her research interests include metadata justice, authenticity & ethics in the workplace, and mentorship & professional development for BIPOC paraprofessionals and early career librarians.
Milo Santamaria
Milo Santamaria is currently the webmaster at YouthFacts, a blog dedicated to advancing the rights of youth. Milo is also an MLIS student at San Jose State University, and earned a bachelor’s degree in Sociology at UC Santa Cruz. While at university, Milo was also a fellow with UCSC’s Everett program, a student-led organization focused on using technology to create social change. Milo has co-led youth workshops on prison abolition, and helped maintain websites for Everett and its community partners. Milo also has associates degrees in Sociology, Anthropology and Social Sciences from Pasadena City College.
Sonali Sugrim
Sonali Sugrim is currently the Electronic Resources Librarian at Queens College Library, City University of New York. There she manages the library’s electronic resources throughout the entire lifecycle in integrated library system, Alma. Prior to her current position, Sonali has worked at various universities, hospitals, museums and libraries. Some of her specialty areas include electronic resources management, collection assessment, collection development, and cataloging.
Sonali’s work is heavily impacted by NISO’s standards and as such she has an interest in Knowledge Bases and Related Tools (KBART), Seamless Access, SUSHI Protocol, and the Transfer code of practice.
Sonali enjoys jigsaw puzzles, reading about plants, visiting lighthouses.
Thanks to Digital Science for their sponsorship of the 2023-2024 NISO Plus Scholarship cohort!