Catherine Meals

Catherine Meals serves as Associate Professor and Reference & Assessment Librarian at the University of the District of Columbia since 2018, specializing in information literacy instruction, research pedagogy, and library assessment to foster student empowerment through faculty-librarian collaborations.

Her academic credentials include:

• Master of Library and Information Science from University of Maryland
• Bachelor of Arts from Swarthmore College

Her research investigates affective dimensions of information literacy, critical librarianship frameworks, and embedded librarian models. She examines how research assignment design influences student resilience and confidence, with emphasis on open educational resources and assessment methodologies to enhance academic success in library instruction contexts.

Publication trends reveal strong focus on practical applications in academic libraries, connecting psychology of learning with information science. Recent works analyze personal librarianship impacts on student outcomes and strategies for addressing research failure, spanning interdisciplinary domains of education, psychology, and library science.

Key recognition:

• Institute for Research Design in Librarianship Scholar (2019)

Meals actively shapes library practice through Washington Research Library Consortium's Sharing Expertise Committee since 2018, presenting at national conferences including Association of General & Liberal Studies (2024) on faculty-librarian collaboration frameworks and student empowerment strategies.

Within UDC Library, she leads assessment initiatives and reference services, developing student-centered instructional activities aligned with information literacy frameworks while advancing collaborative partnerships across academic departments.