Athena N. Jackson

Athena N. Jackson is the Norman and Armena Powell University Librarian. She returned to UCLA for this role in March 2024, after previously serving as director of UCLA Library Special Collections. The focus of her work has been building interdependent organizational structures and institutional frameworks that elevate teaching and learning by centering the needs of scholars through collections, technology and implementation of modern, scalable research service models.

Throughout her career, Jackson has championed practices that provide scholars with open access to trusted information and resources integral to academic success, and she has consistently worked to ensure research libraries are places where every learner is supported, inspired and empowered to excel.

As a library leader, she is sought out for her expertise on topics ranging from transformative leadership, radical empathy and its role in higher education, open scholarship, accessibility in libraries and archives, and topics related to special collections leadership and management. 

Jackson has a history of service at the local and national levels. She is an active member of the Association of Research Libraries, where she served on the Research and Analytics task force, and she served as chair of the Association of College and Research Libraries Rare Books and Manuscripts Section executive committee. Given the geographic scope of her career, she has been or remains involved with various consortia, such as the Pacific Rim Research Libraries Alliance (PRRLA), the Greater Western Library Alliance, the Council on Library and Information Resources, Hathi Trust and the Digital Library Federation. 

Jackson holds a B.A. in English from the University of Houston and an M.S. in library and information science from the University of North Texas. She completed the UCLA Library Senior Fellows program, designed to prepare library leaders to pursue advanced leadership roles in academic librarianship, in 2018.