Joel Cummings has worked at Washington State University since 1999, first as an electronic resources librarian, then collection manager for the sciences and now Head of Collection Development. Previous positions include reference and instruction librarian at University College of the Fraser Valley, corporate librarian at ID Biomedical and information specialist at Nova Chemicals.  He received an MLIS from the University of British Columbia. 

He has been published in journals Library Hi-Tech, Serials Reviews, portal and New Library World. He has contributed to the research literature and professional meetings in the areas of information technology for library public services including articles on link resolvers, wireless devices usage by library users, virtual reference and collection development, including articles on aggregation databases, Open Access, collection evaluation and eBooks. Also, he has have been a reviewer for Reference Reviews and Choice for many years. He and co-authors received an Emerald Literati Award for a Highly Commended Article published in Library Hi-Tech in 2010.