About

Rachel E. Vacek has been a librarian for over 11 years and is an active member in the professional field of web librarianship.

Rachel Vacek, Photo by Cindi Trainor

Rachel Vacek, Photo by Cindi Trainor

Rachel is currently the Head of Web Services at the University of Houston Libraries, in Houston, Texas, where she strives to streamline and integrate web-based access to library resources and services in support of the teaching, research and learning needs of the University of Houston community, as well as provide innovative resources and tools to librarians and library staff.  She is passionate about the library profession and capitalizing on emerging technologies to help communicate, teach, and learn from one another.

She brings a well-rounded perspective to the table having taught classes, led information literacy initiatives, provided reference, maintained electronic resources and redesigned large websites.  Managing six FTE within a web services department in a large research library has provided her with a unique understanding of the needs of different areas within libraries.

Rachel is also active in her profession.  She’s been on ALA Committees, LITA Committees and Interest Groups, was elected to the LITA Board of Directors in 2012.  In 2007, Rachel was chosen to participate in ALA’s Emerging Leaders Program designed to help develop the next generation of library leaders.

Rachel is originally from West Chester, Ohio (just north of Cincinnati)  and earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Dayton and her master’s degree in library and information science (MLIS) from the University of Pittsburgh.

For more information, please see her LinkedIn site.

Speaking

Rachel speaks regularly on library and web technologies at national conferences like Internet Librarian, the American Library Association (ALA) Annual and Midwinter Conferences, and the Library & Information Technology Association (LITA) National Forum. She’s also been invited to keynote at several regional conferences.

Her areas of interest and expertise include:

  • Open-source technologies
  • Drupal
  • Web services in research libraries
  • Social networking
  • User experience design
  • Mobile web technologies
  • Encouraging innovation
  • Digital libraries
  • The future of libraries
  • Board games and MMORPGs

If you are interested in Rachel speaking at your event, please contact her and she’ll get back to you as soon as she can.