Dr. Grace Jackson-Brown announces her retirement from Missouri State University (MSU) Libraries after sixteen years of service. Before coming to MSU, Grace served sixteen years with Indiana University Libraries where she was a tenured Associate Professor. She served at IU as a Reference Librarian for graduate students and faculty in the, presently named, Herman B Wells Library, and as a branch head librarian for both IU’s Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center Library and former Weil Journalism Library.

Dr. Jackson-Brown started as an Assistant Professor at MSU, in 2008, soon after she had received her doctorate from Indiana University School of Journalism in mass communication. She taught multiple courses in the MSU library science program held jointly in an agreement with the University of Missouri, School of Information Science and Learning Technologies, which provided in-person, seated classrooms to students living in the Ozarks. During this time, Grace served on committees with the Ozarks Children’s Literature Festival that promotes reading and author visits. In 2015, when the joint agreement between MSU and Mizzou ended, Dr. Jackson-Brown joined the MSU Meyer Library Research and Instruction Unit.

Grace earned tenure and Associate Professor status at MSU in 2014 and Professor status in 2020. While at MSU Dr. Jackson-Brown published a book titled Promoting African American Writers: Library Partnerships for Outreach, Programming and Literacy (Libraries Unlimited and ABC-Clio Publishers, 2023) and a book chapter in an edited book published by the Association of College and Research Libraries titled Motivating Students on a Time Budget: Pedagogical Frames and Lesson Plans for In-Person and Online Information Literacy Instruction (Steiner and Rigby, 2019). Grace has to her credit numerous conference presentations, and published journal articles, including two journal articles on librarian blogs and several on academic libraries’ outreach programming in partnership with school libraries and public libraries. Grace is co-founder and served for fifteen years (2008-2023) of the Springfield African American Read-In a literacy partnership between five organizations—MSU, Drury University, Springfield Public Schools, Springfield-Greene County Public Libraries, and the Springfield Chapter of the NAACP.

In 2020, Dr. Jackson-Brown served as co-director with Dr. Deborah Robinson (University of Michigan) in a federally funded IMLS Planning Grant, “A Taxonomy of Black History Month Programming in Public Libraries,” that was awarded to the Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA) in partnership with the Public Library Association (PLA) and the University of Michigan. In 2023, a three-year IMLS Planning Grant (2022 – 2025) was awarded to the University of Michigan, “Developing a Model of Black History Month Programming in Public Libraries,” in partnership with BCALA and PLA. Dr. Jackson-Brown is serving as BCALA’s director for this grant.