WILLA LIBURD TAVERNIER admits she’s the kind of person who reorganizes other people’s cupboards. “When I was visiting a friend in Pennsylvania, she said, ‘Why are you doing this?’ and I said, ‘Why are your taco shells in two different cupboards?’” she recalls. “That’s not efficient.”
That penchant for order also informs her work as Indiana University’s Research Impact and Open Scholarship librarian. In a nutshell, she democratizes access to information. “You’d be surprised to know how much of my job is dealing with data,” she says. “I work with a lot of Excel spreadsheets. I track and monitor publication data.” Whether she’s analyzing research output or helping to shape open access publishing agreements, her goal is the same: to make sure everyone, regardless of social class or economic means, is able to obtain the same information.
That mission guided one of her proudest achievements, the Land, Wealth, Liberation Project, a sweeping digital archive tracing the financial lives of early Black communities. “We pulled together various resources that describe Black communities across the U.S. and what it was like in terms of trying to build economic wealth or parity with the general population,” Tavernier says.
Her path to librarianship was almost as challenging as the literal and figurative stacks of information she turns into accessible academic resources. “I was a practicing lawyer,” she says, “but after a hurricane destroyed my office and home in the British Virgin Islands, I couldn’t go back.”
Tavernier decided to study library science. The IU offer came the day she graduated. “I’m still here seven years later,” she says, adding that she is proud of the difference she’s making. “I’ll probably be organizing information until I retire,” she says. “And then I’m going to open a bakery.” With the most organized muffin case around, no doubt.
