Frances Neel Cheney (August 19, 1906 – May 5, 1996) was an American librarian, professor, and prolific reviewer of reference books.

[3] Cheney enrolled in Vanderbilt University, her father's alma mater, in the fall of 1924, with the intention to study social work.

[4] At Vanderbilt, Cheney studied under Donald Davidson and John Crowe Ransom, members of the Fugitives literary movement.

[3] During her junior year, she met her future husband, Brainard Cheney, who was then a young reporter for the Nashville Banner.

[2] In 1951, Cheney was one of five librarians recruited by Robert Gitler to help start the first library school at a Japanese university.

To commemorate her thirty years of contributions, the Bulletin published a compilation of accolades from her peers and dubbed her the "Profession's Number-One Reference Reviewer".

John David Marshall, who compiled a bibliography of Cheney's work in 1983, put her total at nearly 8000 reference books reviewed across all three publications.

Wiley J Williams, a colleague and friend of Cheney, noted that while the Cheneys were "radically conservative," many of their views differed from those of their more controversial friends, including their early acceptance of integration and their maintaining close associations with people from many different ethnic backgrounds.

[11] Her work influenced figures in library science including William Katz, who claimed he "learned everything I know from Cheney, and a bit from [Louis] Shores."