From Stage to Stacks: Savanna Nolan on Legal Research, Teaching, and Community
Savanna Nolan came to be a law librarian by a route that blends theater, curiosity, and a taste for challenge. A double major in theater and English at the University of Southern California, Nolan was on track to graduate early when she enrolled in business law classes “for a challenge.” Those courses “piqued my interest in law school and being a lawyer,” she says. So, she enrolled at the University of Georgia School of Law, graduating in 2013. “I thought I was going to be a corporate intellectual property attorney,” Nolan admits — a plan that gave way to a different, deeply satisfying career.
While studying for the bar, Nolan worked in the UGA law library and discovered she enjoyed the work. After a year of weighing options, she pursued a master’s degree in library science at the Catholic University of America, graduating in 2016. That decision set the stage for a steady progression through academic law libraries: digital reference librarian at the University of Baltimore School of Law, reference librarian and adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center, and most recently instruction and faculty services librarian at UGA Law from 2020 to 2025.
Nolan joined Mercer Law as associate law librarian for administration and public services in 2025 to broaden her supervisory and management experience. “This position is a great opportunity for advancement for me,” she says. Her role at Mercer blends teaching, reference management, faculty support, and scholarship promotion. She teaches first-year legal research and advanced legal research courses and focuses her scholarship and instruction on information literacy, misinformation and disinformation, artificial intelligence, and emerging technologies.
A significant part of her work is practical and visible: managing the circulation desk and reference services, coordinating faculty research projects, maintaining faculty profiles on the website, and uploading scholarship to the online repository. Nolan’s approach is student-centered. She wants students to leave her classes with curiosity and confidence to try different approaches if the first attempt doesn’t work. “Too often law students want to be perfect on the first try,” she says. “I hope they learn to be curious and think laterally and creatively to come up with new solutions.” She also emphasizes critical evaluation of information sources: “Where the information is coming from and how it’s being distributed and organized are key.”
Completing her first year at Mercer confirmed a few pleasant surprises. Nolan was struck by how engaged Mercer students are in the broader community. “I was shocked and pleased at how seriously the Legal Food Frenzy is taken here,” she notes. She also sees shifts in the law-student experience since her own studies: timelines are compressed and pressures intensified. “When I was a student, employers couldn’t even talk to students until after Christmas,” she observes. “Now 1Ls are having job interviews right after the first few weeks of school.”
What energizes Nolan most in this phase of her career is the variety and problem-solving inherent in academic librarianship. “I don’t just do the same thing day in and day out — I get to solve a lot of
problems as they come up on the fly, which can be exciting.” Equally rewarding are the classroom moments when students connect the dots: “I love that moment when it starts to click for my students and they begin to see the bigger picture and do legal research,” she says. Watching students move from confusion to mastery — understanding how resources interrelate and how tools reveal patterns — is the highlight of her work.
She praises Mercer for its people. “The faculty and staff really care about the mission, and the students care about the community,” Nolan says, and that culture has helped her settle in. Outside work, she enjoys reading, playing video games on her Switch, and canning jams and jellies — most recently a spiced peach jam made with peaches from Dickey Farms and candied pickled jalapeños grown by her mother.
Combining a theatrical background with legal training and library science, Savanna Nolan brings curiosity, tech-savvy instruction, and a commitment to information integrity to Mercer Law. Her teaching and administrative leadership help students navigate not only the mechanics of legal research, but the critical thinking required to interpret and use information responsibly in a fast-changing legal landscape.
