Emily is a professor in the School of Information Sciences (the iSchool, formerly GSLIS) at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Her research interests include information access, intellectual freedom and censorship, information ethics, information policy, and the intersection of print culture and reading practices. She is also a member of the Mapping Information Access research team.

Her most recent book Foundations of Intellectual Freedom (ALA Neal-Schuman) won the 2023 Eli M. Oboler Prize for best published work in the area of intellectual freedom. Emily recently co-edited Foundations of Information Ethics published by ALA Neal-Schuman . She also edited Trigger Warnings: History, Theory Context, published by Rowman & Littlefield. Emily’s previous book, Book Banning in 21st Century America, was also published by Rowman & Littlefield and is the first monograph in the Beta Phi Mu Scholars’ Series. 

Her articles have been published in the Library Quarterly, Library and Information Science Research, and the Journal of Intellectual Freedom and Privacy.

Emily also contributed a chapter on religion and intellectual freedom to the Library Juice Press Handbook of Intellectual Freedom: Concepts, Cases, and Theories, the 2016 winner of the Eli M. Oboler Memorial Award for best published work in intellectual freedom.

She is chair of the board of the National Coalition Against Censorship , a member of Advisory Board for the African Centre of Excellence for Information Ethics (ACEIE), and an Expert Advisor to the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) Advisory Committee on Freedom of Access to Information and Freedom of Information (FAIFE). Emily previously served on the boards of the Association for Information Science & Technology, Beta Phi Mu, and the Freedom to Read Foundation. She is also the  editor of the Journal of Intellectual Freedom and Privacy.

She has been interviewed by media outlets such as NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, and Slate. She also testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on book banning.

Emily received her Ph.D. from the doctoral program at the Rutgers University School of Communication & Information. Her master’s in library and information science is from the iSchool at Illinois. She also holds a B.A. in Religious Studies from Smith College and an A.M. in the same field from The University of Chicago Divinity School.

She was the Associate Director and Reference Librarian at the St. Mark’s (now Keller) Library of the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church in New York City for five years before returning to school.

Emily previously wrote a manual on running a small interlibrary loan and document delivery department published by Neal-Schuman, an imprint of the American Library Association (ALA). It is listed as a key source in Library and Information Science: A Guide to Key Literature and Sources (Bemis, 2014, p. 107).