School of Music

Jade Kastel

Jade Kastel, M.L.I.S., M.M.
Assistant Professor, Music Librarian
Pronouns: she, her
Sallee 108
Phone: (309) 298-2147
Email: JM-Kastel@wiu.edu
Visit: WIU Music Library, jadekastel.com

Jade Kastel joined the WIU faculty in 2021 as the music librarian and an assistant professor. Jade is the 2023 Illinois Academic Librarian of the Year awarded by the Illinois Library Association. In 2023, Jade was appointed as the founding Diversity Officer for WIU Libraries. She graduated with a B.M. and M.M. in saxophone performance and a Masters in Library and Information Science, and she completed a teaching assistantship in the Tirocinante program at the Conservatorio di Musica “Niccolò Piccinni” in Bari, Italy. Jade is pursuing a DMA in jazz performance with a minor in queer studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

In 2019, Jade was a fellow in the Institute of Jazz Studies Archival Fellowship at Rutgers University. Since 2008, Jade has worked as a jazz musician in Milwaukee, Miami, and now in Illinois. Her performances have taken her to Bolivia, Brazil, Great Britain, Italy, Slovenia, and across the United States.

Jade's publications have appeared in the Music Library Association's journal Notes, Florida Libraries, and the ALA's Academic BRASS newsletter. Jade has presented at conferences for the Illinois Library Association, Southeast Florida Library Information Network, Society of Indiana Archivists, Southwest Popular/American Culture Association, Southern Miss Institutional Repository Conference, Florida Library Association, and at the Virtual Poster Conference for the Association of College & Research Libraries. Jade's scholarship focuses on the contributions and representation of gender and LGBTQIA+ people within jazz music, archives, and librarianship. She is an active commentator in the "Women's Voices Series" on Tri States Public Radio.

Before joining WIU, Jade worked as a librarian at Purdue University Fort Wayne and at Johnson & Wales University in North Miami, and she was the Supervisor of Library Services at Broward College in Davie, Florida.

Jade is an active member of the Music Library Association as a book reviewer for Notes and a member of the MLA. She currently serves on the CARLI Preservation Committee, the IACRL DEI Committee, WIU’s University Committee on Sexual Orientation Gender Identity and Expression (UCOSOGIE), she is the chair of the WIU Libraries Diversity Committee, and serves on the Indiana Library Federation's Racial Justice & Inclusion Committee where she hosts the interview series Tapestry.