As University Librarian at the University of Waterloo, Beth leads a team of 130 staff and several library facilities in the delivery of library information services that support over 42,000 students, faculty, and staff at Canada's most innovative university.  Prior to being appointed at the University of Waterloo in 2017, she held faculty and administrative appointments at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Northwestern University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the California Digital Library.  

Namachchivaya's scholarly activities focus on the intersection of human expertise and technological advancements within research libraries, including evaluation of information systems, text data mining, sustainable digital curation networks, and research impact assessment. She has authored or collaborated on over thirty refereed publications, books, and reports.  Her work has been supported by US and Canadian federal agencies including the Institute of Museum and Library Services (US-IMLS), and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (Canada-SSHRC), as well as the Andrew Mellon Foundation.  She is an academic affiliate of the University of Illinois’ Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship (CIRSS), and has held fellowships at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), and the Association of Research Libraries’ Library Leadership Fellows program.  Namachchivaya chairs the HathiTrust Digital Library Board of Governors and is Past Chair of the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL).  She is incoming chair of the Scholars & Scholarship Committee, Association of Research Libraries (ARL).