Jane Zhao, the Director of Digital Media Commons (DMC) at Fondren Library, leads a small but mighty team of three members and a dozen student workers, all dedicated to supporting digital media projects and promoting digital media literacy.
Jane’s knowledge extends to various multimedia technologies. She develops and teaches workshops on topics like poster creation, data visualization, and research data management. Her passion lies in assisting patrons with their digital media endeavors, whether it’s audio recording, video production, or scanning for publication. Jane also provides in-depth consultations to faculty members who utilize Zotero for scholarly writing.
Embracing changes and challenges, Jane firmly believes in continuous improvement. Under her guidance, the DMC equipment reservation procedure has undergone four significant overhauls, ensuring efficiency and excellent customer service. She even delved into the exciting field of data visualization, becoming a Tableau Associate in 2019.
In 2017, she received the Library Shapiro Award, recognizing her strong commitment to the DMC services. During the pandemic in 2021, she adapted by sharing DMC workshop recordings on YouTube, enabling self-paced remote learning. The YouTube playlist of the DMC workshop now boasts 23 videos, covering a wide range of DMC workshops. Her post on Reading, Annotating, Note-taking, and Drafting/Outlining with Zotero 6 garnered over 8,000 views in just one year.
Jane Zhao holds an MS in Computer Science from The University of Rhode Island and a BE in Mechanical Engineering from The Hefei University of Technology. She always seeks opportunities to grow professionally and contribute more to the community!
