2026 Wharton Award winner

Janet McCue

Janet is a writer, researcher, former director of Mann Library, and Associate University Librarian Emerita. Her involvement in collaborative international projects began in 1998 with TEEAL (The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library). She served as Principal Investigator for the $1M award from the Rockefeller Foundation to create and distribute “the library in a box” for institutions in developing economies. The goal of the project was to build research capacity and level the playing field in the area of agricultural information. TEEAL’s success led to additional collaborative initiatives with the U.N.’s Food and Agricultural Organization and the U.N.’s Environment Program. With a subsequent grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2016, McCue served on the three-person evaluation team analyzing the effectiveness of TEEAL and the specific challenges researchers encounter in their information landscape.

McCue is a member of the Cornell-Sathguru Foundation for Development, participated in several International Agriculture 401-601 courses in India, and served as a consultant for the International Rice Research Institute in the Philippines. In 2025, she had the pleasure of joining Professor Ralph Christy and a SMART team in a service-learning project in New Orleans. During her thirty-year career in public services, libraries evolved from print-based models to electronic collections and services. Helping to lead this transition was a highlight of her career. During her tenure at Mann, McCue led a $4M endowment campaign for the library as well as the multi-year renovation and addition to the library.

Since her retirement in 2013, McCue has published two books and numerous articles. Her biography of the conservationist (and Cornell grad) Horace Kephart won the prestigious Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award in 2019. Her newest biography, “George Masa: A Life Reimagined,” focuses on the Japanese-born photographer whose images had a major impact on the establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Co-authored with filmmaker Paul Bonesteel, Masa’s life will be featured in an upcoming documentary on PBS in May 2026. In the words of 19th century writer and conservationist Horace Kephart, McCue believes that “librarianship offers a better field for mental gymnastics than any other profession.”