Simmons College

Simmons College President and GSLIS alum Helen Drinan was featured as the "In Person" profile in the Boston Business Journal on June 14, 2013. Her profile, titled "Putting Simmons 'on the map' for Women," focuses on Drinan's work to make Simmons College a leader among women's institutions.

Congratulations to Sue Considine, who was recently honored as a "Champion of Change" at the White House. Considine is a current PhD/MLIP student at GSLIS, and is also the Executive Director of the Fayetteville Free Library in Fayetteville, NY. These twelve Champions from various libraries and museums, were honored for engaging their communities and making a difference with individuals and in the world. 

Each honoree submitted a blog post for the White House Champions of Change Blog.  A video of the event, including the discussion panels and Champions Q & A can be found at www.whitehouse.gov/champions.

Photo: Executive Director of the FFL, Sue Considine, speaks about relentless innovation at the FFL, while at the White House on Tuesday, June 13th on a panel of six museum and library leaders from across the country.

Courtney Louise Young, a 1997 graduate of GSLIS and head librarian at the Penn State Greater Allegheny, has been elected president-elect of the American Library Association. Young defeated Barbara Froling Immroth, professor at the University of Texas at Austin School of Information.

As ALA president, Young will be the chief elected officer for the oldest and largest library association in the world.

Young will become president-elect at the close of the 2013 ALA Annual Conference in Chicago and will assume the ALA presidency at the close of the 2014 ALA Annual Conference in Las Vegas.

"It is truly an honor to be elected by members of ALA to serve as president. I am excited to continue working with ALA members and ALA staff to demonstrate the value of membership through diversity, career development and engagement and outreach," she said.

For the full ALA Press release, visit: http://www.ala.org/news/pr?id=12986.

Click here to read a recent interview with Courtney Young: http://simmons.edu/gslis/for/current/news/blog/2013/03/snapshot-courtney-young-97ls.php.

The first issue of Preservation, Digital Technology and Culture (PDT&C), previously Microform and Digitization Review, was published in March 2013. With the new editor-in-chief, Simmons GSLIS Dean Emerita and Professor Michèle Cloonan, comes a new title and a stronger focus on digitization and preservation issues involving multiple types of cultural heritage institutions.

Originally established in 1972 as Microform Review, the periodical has tracked the progression of projects and technical developments that contributed to preservation in libraries and archives. Though initially emphasizing microforms, the focus of the journal has shifted over the years to embrace the proliferation of new technologies.

In its new manifestation, PDT&C treats both practical and theoretical aspects of current issues affecting the field of preserving digital content. It will provide a timely forum for refereed articles, news, and field notes from around the world.

The first issue under the new name, volume 42, issue 1, contains articles concerning the contemporary preservation landscape, digital imaging error in HathiTrust, the Occupy movement, and social reading. Cloonan also introduces the new editorial board, which reflects the international focus of the journal. For further information on the issue, visit http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/pdtc.

On Tuesday, April 9, 2013 the GSLIS Alumni Board hosted a BiblioBrews event in Washington, DC. Alumni from the classes of 1976 up to 2012 were there and the conversation was lively. Guests shared stories about their career paths and current professional activities as well as talked about challenges and opportunities they are seeing first hand in the fields of librarianship, archives and information technology. It was a great first GSLIS event in D.C., but certainly will not be the last!

Check out the April 2013 issue of Infolink!

The 2nd Annual Graduate Symposium took place on Saturday, March 30, 2013, as a result of collaborative work of the diverse GSLIS student organizations, including SCoSAA, Progressive Librarians Guild (PLG), American Library Association Student Chapter (ALASC), Panopticon, LISSA, American Society for Information Science and Technology Student Chapter (ASIS&T), User Experience Professional Association (UXPA@Simmons), and Special Libraries Association (SLA), and support from GSLIS. The symposium was developed last year by SCoSAA and SLA to allow students to present their research, prepare for professional conferences, network with their peers, and explore how related professions in areas such as archives, libraries, history, and museums are converging.

Continue reading Annual Graduate Symposium

Katherine McCanless Ruffin is a professional book artist pursuing a doctorate in library and information science. Ruffin multi-tasks with Olympian discipline as Book Arts Program Director at Wellesley College's Clapp Library; lecturer in the College of Fine Arts at Boston University; entrepreneur at Shinola Press; trustee of the American History Printing Association; board member of the Fine Press Book Association; MFA in the Book Arts advisory board member at her alma mater, the University of Alabama; and as a GSLIS doctoral student. Her letterpress printing, bookbinding, and papermaking skills are in demand at several institutions. She has taught workshops at New York City's Center for Books Arts, Penland School of Crafts, and Wells College Books Arts Summer Institute. In Summer 2013, she will join the faculty of Rare Book School at the University of Virginia.

Continue reading Ph.D. Profile: Katherine McCanless Ruffin

As an award-winning independent user experience professional, Nicole Hennig '82LS is creating new educational products and experiences for librarians and academics across the globe. In addition to her years playing pipe organ and harpsichord as a professional musician trained at the Boston Conservatory, Hennig worked at MIT Libraries for 14 years, first as webmaster, then as Head of User Experience. Earlier, she was a systems librarian at Bose Corporation. As she plans the next stage of her career, she continues to embrace virtual technologies that allow her to live a location-flexible lifestyle, working in various geographic locations at different times of the year.

How did you become interested in specializing in user experiences?
When I was working as a systems librarian at Bose Corporation in 1997, I read Jared Spool's book Website Usability: A Designer's Guide. At that time, usability testing had been applied only to software, not to websites. I began conducting tests of the Bose intranet and found that I loved usability testing. We were able to evaluate actions, as well as perceptions about user experiences, to determine how to make better sites. The experience qualified me for the webmaster position at MIT. I was promoted to head of the user experience department when the libraries changed their organizational structure in 2010. Now I am developing educational products, such online classes, ebooks, and apps, that help librarians and educators learn about emerging technologies.

When I went to Simmons GSLIS in the early eighties, the Internet as we know it didn't exist. Yet database management and the literature of science and technology courses with Professor Candy Schwartz, as well as classes about the structure of information, created a foundation for the work I do now.

Continue reading Alumni Interview: Nicole Hennig '82LS

Assistant Professor Laura Saunders presented two papers, "Information as a Weapon: Propaganda, Politics, and the Role of the Library" and "Culture and Collaboration: Fostering Integration of Information Literacy by Speaking the Language of Faculty," at the Association of College and Research Libraries National Conference in Indianapolis, IN, on April 11. Saunders is presenting "Future of Information Literacy" on behalf of the New England Library Instruction Group at Phillips Andover Academy on April 19, and presenting as part of a panel on Information Literacy at the Massachusetts Library Association Conference on April 25.

Adjunct Professor Claudia Morner co-authored the 8th edition of Library and Information Center Management, which was published by Libraries Unlimited in December 2012. Barbara Moran and Dean and Professor Emeritus Robert Stueart co-authored the book.

Assistant Professor Mary Wilkins Jordan presented "Managers and IT: A (Potentially) Beautiful Relationship" at Educause Midwest in Chicago, IL. Jordan hosted a webinar, "Collection Development for Distance Patrons & Students: Where are our people? Everywhere!" Jordan is also organizing the ALA-SC-sponsored Library Liaison Lecture Series in March and April.

Assistant Professor Mary Wilkins Jordan, Assistant Professor Laura Saunders and Associate Professor of Practice Donna Webber, Jordan presented the second annual Job Hunting Bootcamp, which covered resumes, cover letters, and interviewing skills.

Saunders and Jordan's article "Culture and Competencies: A Multi-Country Examination of Reference Service Competencies" is in the current issue of LIBRI. Their article "Significantly Different? Reference Service Competencies in Public and Academic Libraries" will be featured in the upcoming issue of Reference & User Services Quarterly.

Will students still need to make a six-figure investment in higher education in the future? Will college students still receive instruction in classrooms in the next ten years? GSLIS professors have been offering online education programs since the nineties, and the innovations in online education present exciting opportunities and challenges for U.S. academic libraries and LIS schools.

"Online learning offers more control over time and the flexibility of choosing where and when students and professors want to work," says GSLIS Senior Lecturer Dr. Ross Harvey, a recent recipient of a WISE Consortium Excellence in Online Teaching Award. "The faculty and staff's high touch approach to connecting with students can easily be replicated in virtual environments."

As students juggle work, family, and school, an increased demand for online courses is a result. Students seek the flexibility such programs offer. According to a 2009 report by the National Center for Educational Statistics, more than 12 million students in the U.S. participated in distance education courses, with 77% of the enrollments in online courses, 12% in hybrid courses, and 10% in other forms of distance delivery.

Continue reading Future of Online Education for LIS Schools

Professor Peter Hernon's 53rd book, Reflecting on the Future of Academic and Public Libraries (ALA, 2013), and his 54th book, Library Leadership in the United States and Europe (Libraries Unlimited, 2013) have been published. His 55th book, Higher Education Outcomes in the 21st Century, will be published in May, and his 56th book, Getting Started with Evaluation (ALA) will be published over the summer.

Assistant Professor Joel Blanco-Rivera gave a talk, "Human Rights and Archives: The Role of Archives to Help Bring Transitional Justice" on April 1 at the University of Connecticut at El Instituto's: Institute of Latina/o, Caribbean and Latin American Studies. http://lib.uconn.edu/about/news/events/HumanRightsArchives.pdf.

Professor and Associate Dean Jeannette Bastian was a Visiting Scholar for three weeks at University College London in the Department of Information Archives and Records Management. During her time there, Bastian gave the annual Sir Hilary Jenkinson Public Lecture, "Forgetting to Remember: Archivists and the Memory Imperative." http://www.ucl.ac.uk/shs/shsevents-publication/jenkinson-lecture.

Doctoral candidate Patricia Condon was awarded first prize in the poster session at the "Curate Thyself!" DigCCurr Ph.D. Symposium on March 17 at the University of North Carolina. http://sils.unc.edu/news/2013/curate-thyself.

PhD/MLIP students Sue Considine and Ben Hunter were named "Movers and Shakers" by Library Journal for their work as leaders and "Change Agents" in libraries.

Master's student Sean Crawford was hired by the Serials Cataloging unit of Harvard Library.

Master's student Jennifer Moyer was selected as a library student blogger for the Medical Library Association's One Health meeting, May 3-8 in Boston, MA. More details at http://
www.mlanet.org/am/am2013/. Moyer also did a review of Doody's Core Titles which will appear in the April issue of the Charleston Advisor.