Janette has had a long and diversified career in libraries and the scholarly publishing field. These roles have included leadership roles at two Australian state libraries, (State Library of Queensland and State Library of New South Wales); two other university libraries (United Arab Emirates University and Federation University); and senior roles with library consortia, (CAVAL Ltd) and system and content vendors, (RMIT Publishing, RoweCom, Dynix and AWA Computers), as well as public libraries in Sydney and Perth.
Throughout her career, Janette has advocated for more open and accessible pathways to knowledge as an important contributor to democracy.
In her role as Dean of Libraries at the UAEU in Abu Dhabi, Janette was invited to host ETD 2020. While planning for this in-person event proceeded well in 2019, by the beginning of 2020, it was clear that the annual symposium would not attract any in-person participants due to world-wide COVID restrictions. Hence a smaller online symposium was organized and run, in spite of many challenges. In addition, Janette advanced the innovation of launching an online ETD Journal, to include the papers and presentations from each annual symposium. Initially led by Prashant Pandey, a colleague in Australia, J-ETD has continued to capture contributions to ETD annual conferences.
Following ETD 2020, Janette offered to host the ETD2021 as part of the re-opening of UAEU post-COVID. The ETD2021 hybrid event was held at EXPO2020 in Dubai, attended by senior UAE government officials, and ably managed by UAEU colleagues Mariam Al Jaberi and Amina Itani.
Invited to join the NDLTD Board in 2019, Janette served as Chair of the Nominating Committee through 2025 when she will be retiring from the Board of Directors.