Jane Miller receiving the Williamson Award from Bruce Williamson.
The 2024 Robert D. Williamson Award was awarded to Jane Miller from Victoria University.
Jane Miller’s excellence is demonstrated in multiple areas of practice. She has an established a well-deserved reputation for people leadership, service excellence and driving innovation. Her excellence is also consistently demonstrated in her advocacy for evidenced-based and informed decision-making, that positions people at the heart of technological choices.
Jane has brought to industry, and to the organisations she has worked for, a wealth of innovation and excellence. Particular areas include:
- proactively led user experience embedded thinking into approaches to digital library challenges
- actively leads and encourages iterative and experimental approaches to technology use in libraries
- extensive and long-standing leadership role within institutions and across industry in the information management, digital libraries and systems space
Throughout her career, Jane has actively sought opportunities to innovate and experiment with intent. Jane has pursued continuous innovation and iterative experimentation. She has actively sought opportunities to improve digital library experience across research, search and discovery, metadata and description and website experience. Jane is a constant advocate for developing new, fit-for-purpose solutions to solve real library problems and her approach to purposeful experimentation has led to many large and small innovations implemented into library systems, process and interface.
In 2020, recognising the complex relationship libraries have with vendor discovery layers and the need to build library learnings about how discovery layers function, Jane initiated a cross-library project to develop a prototype open-source discovery layer, leveraging skills and expertise across metadata, discovery, systems and user experience to create a fully functioning prototype discovery layer. This innovative and experimental piece was intentionally designed for building learning and cross-team collaboration. More than just successfully delivering a functioning prototype, Jane’s vision was to:
- Learn more about discovery platforms and how they surface content
- Understand more about the search, discovery and access experience
- Work together across the library teams, utilising the range of expertise and skills to engage in understanding how we can leverage the search, discovery and access paradigm
- Create a point of reference and comparison on which to compare our vendor interfaces
Jane’s vision and innovative approach delivered new learnings and built library expertise that have influenced Deakin Library’s understanding and expectations of, and capabilities around, the discovery experience that continue to have impact today.
Also notably, is the development of a self-service bibliometrics dashboard at Deakin University. This dashboard supports researchers in demonstrating their research impact using author profiles sourced from Symplectic Elements and Scopus. It includes both traditional citation-based metrics and Altmetrics, which encompass non-traditional bibliometrics such as policy, media, and social media mentions. This innovative tool has streamlined the number of requests the library receives and provided optimised data linked to ORCID and Scopus researcher IDs, enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of research impact analysis.
To demonstrate her impact over time, an early example of Jane’s people-led approach to innovation can be seen in her 2004-2005 Project Officer role at Victoria University Library. In this work Jane was a key player in a $3.5 million Higher Education Innovation Program funded project to improve computer facilities across the 12 Victoria University Campus Library locations.
Jane’s extensive people leadership experience has been defined by her pragmatic and empathetic leadership style. She has mentored emerging leaders and guided the development of many library specialists to the benefit of our industry.
Leadership contribution has also been evidenced in industry volunteer work, such as Jane’s Committee Member role on the Trove Strategic Advisory Committee (TSAC). Jane’s contribution to Trove emerges from a drive to support strategic development of this unique online service as a critical nexus and portal for research, learning and content is one that I am keen to embrace with energy and purpose.
Additionally, Jane has also acted as a consultant, undertaking comprehensive reviews of systems, collections, and workflows at Monash and Adelaide University Libraries. Her reviews identified key areas for improvement and modernisation, leading to the implementation of more efficient processes and advanced technologies that have significantly improved the library’s operations and services. Jane’s forward-thinking approach and dedication to leveraging technology have not only advanced the capabilities of the libraries she has worked with but also set a benchmark for innovation in the field of library and information services. Her contributions have been instrumental in shaping modern library practices and ensuring that libraries remain pivotal in the academic and research landscape.
Mostly recently, Jane’s extensive leadership experience and capability has been recognised through her appointment as University Librarian for Victoria University.