Shayna Pekala is the Scholarly Communication Librarian and the liaison librarian for Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, International Studies, Native American Studies, Political Science, and Women’s and Gender Studies at Gonzaga University Foley Library. Shayna leads Foley Library’s open access and open education initiatives, including managing the open access publishing program, Gonzaga Library Publishing. Previously, she worked as the Discovery Services Librarian at Gonzaga University and the Scholarly Communication Librarian at Indiana University Bloomington. Shayna holds a Bachelor of Arts in English from Duke University and a Master of Library Science with a Digital Libraries Specialization from Indiana University Bloomington.
Shayna’s capstone project focused on understanding Gonzaga faculty attitudes, use, needs, and barriers related to OER. In order to accomplish this, she designed and conducted a faculty needs assessment survey, and compiled the results in a report for campus stakeholders. She also created a toolkit for planning and conducting faculty surveys about OER based on her experience.