Faculty Profile: Rita Johnston

Rita Johnston joined the University of Miami Libraries faculty in 2022 and serves as the Head of Digital Initiatives. She is responsible for managing and providing leadership for digital initiatives services at the Libraries. In her role, she supports in-house and outsourced digitization of library resources for digital collections and on-demand requests from researchers. She works with her colleagues in Distinctive Collections and Learning & Research Services to plan new digital projects that support teaching and scholarship at UM. She also shares responsibility for preservation and stewardship of digitized resources, including audiovisual recordings.
 
Before joining the University of Miami, Rita worked at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte for nine years, where she was the Digital Production Librarian. She managed the library’s digitization program, supervised student employees and temporary staff, and created descriptive metadata for digital collections.
 
Rita earned her Master’s in Library Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and her Bachelor’s in History from the University of North Carolina at Asheville. Her research interests include improving users’ experience with digital collections, reparative description projects, and copyright issues relating to digital collections.
 
Rita is a member of the Society of American Archivists (SAA) and is active in the Digital Library Federation (DLF) community. She also serves on the Steering Committee of the Sunshine State Digital Network (SSDN), the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) service hub for the state of Florida.