Laura Quilter is the UMass Amherst Copyright and Information Policy Librarian, headquartered in the Office of Scholarly Communication at the UMass Amherst Libraries. She works with the UMass Amherst community on copyright and related matters, equipping faculty, students, and staff with the understanding they need to navigate copyright, fair use, open access, publishing, privacy, free speech, and other legal issues that relate to research and teaching.
Laura holds an MSLIS degree (1993, U. of Kentucky) and a JD (2003, UC Berkeley School of Law). She is a frequent speaker, who has taught and lectured to a wide variety of audiences. Laura’s research interests are the intersection of copyright with intellectual freedom and access to knowledge, and more generally the public interest within technology and information law. As a librarian, she began teaching people to use the Internet in the early 1990s in Kentucky, worked with an early community computing center in Chicago, and on independent progressive media and media concentration issues in Chicago in the mid-1990s. Laura went to law school at Berkeley, then the only law school with a public interest technology program. She was one of the first teaching fellows at the Samuelson Law, Technology, and Public Policy Clinic, working on matters relating to copyright, privacy, free speech, and electronic voting machines. Laura took several years off to be with her family, while teaching “Intellectual Freedom” at Simmons, before joining UMass in 2012. At UMass, Laura has taught in the Legal Studies Dept. ("Copyright, Computers, and Criminal Law" and "Owning Property: From Apples to IP, from Life to Land").
She is a Wikipedia admin (User:Lquilter), supports a local independent citizens' journalism project (the Amherst Indy).
Besides information law and policy, Laura has long been involved with feminist science fiction fandom. Other current interests include wooden jigsaw puzzles, native plants, and environmental and law use law.
Laura is a cat person (who also has a beloved dog). She lives in Western Massachusetts, is partner to a scientist and educator (Michele Markstein), and mom to a teenager.
Education
- J.D., University of California Berkeley (Boalt Hall) School of Law, 2003
- M.S.L.I.S., University of Kentucky College of Library & Information Science, 1993
- B.A., University of Alabama, New College, 1990
Courses
- LIS 493 - Intellectual Freedom