UW-MILWAUKEE, SCHOOL OF INFORMATION STUDIES
Fall 2012
In this issue... learn how local and international collaborations, real-world experiences and active partnerships are enhancing the education and research of the students, faculty and staff at the School of Information Studies.
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SCHOOL OF INFORMATION STUDIES | UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - MILWAUKEE
IN THIS issue Dean’s Note ....................................................................01 New SOIS Faculty & Staff .............................................02 Mobile Apps- SOIS Partners with MKE County ..........04 Collective Development - Alternative Spring Break ..06 The Universal Language of Stories .............................08 Information Expert - Holly Hopton...............................10 Imagining the Possibilities - Shannon Barniskis ....... 11 Using Valuable Resources - Hayley Johnson ............12 A Passion for Technology - Pheandro Welsh.............14 Breaking Down Access Barriers - Adriana McCleer ..15 Staff Profile - Toby Deutsch .........................................16 SOIS Joins iSchools Organization ..............................17 SOIS Almnus Honored - Robert Bothmann ................18 Graduate of the Last Decade - Umashanie Reddy.....18
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Research Center Update: CIPR.................................... 19 Research Group Update: IOrg ..................................... 20 EIO2 Conference Report .............................................. 21 International Staff Training Week ................................ 21 Research Group Update: SSIrg ................................... 22 Research Group Update: rgIR...................................... 22 Professional Development Institute ............................ 23 SOIS Tech Corner .......................................................... 24 Remembering Phyllis & Ted Samore........................... 25 Faculty & Staff Updates ................................................ 26 SOIS Recieves Grant For Online Courses .................. 28 Conference Report - Dr. Wilhelm Peekhaus ............... 29 Save the Date ................................................................. 30
Fall 2012 VOL. 4 No. 1 Inside SOIS is published twice a year by the School of Information Studies Interim Dean: Wooseob Jeong Assistant Dean: Chad Zahrt Assistant Dean: Joey Zafra
Stay Connected...
Executive Editors: Chad Zahrt Scott Lenski
Share Your News & Updates!
Writers: Scott Lenski Chad Zahrt
We invite all students and alumni to send us
Art Direction / Design: Rebecca Hall
your updates and news for future issues of Inside SOIS. We’d love to hear from you!
ADDRESS CORRECTIONS AND UPDATES UW-Milwaukee, School of Information Studies Attn: Inside SOIS PO Box 413 Milwaukee, WI 53201 Phone: 414-229-4707 | Fax: 414-229-6699 Email: rjhall@uwm.edu
Photography: Natalie Puariea, Photographer Rebecca Hall, Contributing Photographer Tobiah Deutsch, Contributing Photographer UWM Photographic Services: Pete Amland, Peter Jakubowski, Alan Magayne-Roshak, Troye Fox
Inside SOIS is printed in limited quantity. Electronic issues are available online at: http://www.uwm.edu/ sois/news/publications/ Please share this publication with colleagues and please recycle!
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DEAN’S note
I’m excited to be assuming the role of interim dean as SOIS continues to grow in size and stature on campus, nationally and internationally. As we settle in at NWQ, our programs remain healthy, with an ever-expanding Bachelor of Science in Information Science & Technology (BSIST) and strong MLIS and Certificate of Advance Study (CAS) programs. Furthermore, this past May, we are proud to have our first two Ph.D. students graduate from the doctoral program in Information Studies. The Ph.D. program has grown since its start in 2008 with more than 25 students enrolled for fall 2012.
DEVELOPING... the student experience We continue to look forward as we experiment with Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and other future possibilities for teaching. We are also developing another Master’s degree program, a Master of Science in Information Science and Technology. SOIS has always been visionary; we were one of the first LIS schools to offer an MLIS program entirely online. Affirming our commitment to our students, scholarship awards continue to increase significantly, in part, because of alums and donors who are active contributors to our foundation. SOIS will continue to increase scholarship opportunities to recruit and to retain first-class students. Our research profile and output continues to grow. To further facilitate research productivity, SOIS strives to secure external grants from various funding agencies. This is indeed an exciting time. I believe we have accomplished a lot in recent years; we aspire to be nationally ranked as a top 10 school in the Library and Information Science field. To that end, I am certain that SOIS will continue to offer the best programs and degrees at all levels. Finally, I want to thank Professor Dietmar Wolfram for his dedicated service to the School during his tenure as Interim Dean. Dr. Wolfram accomplished many great things during this time, including having SOIS admitted to the iSchools organization. This is a great accomplishment—one that elevates SOIS to the ranks of the top information schools around the world. I wish Dietmar well as he returns to his faculty position and robust research agenda.
Thank you very much! Interim Dean Wooseob Jeong
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SCHOOL OF INFORMATION STUDIES | UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - MILWAUKEE
Welcome to SOIS!
N E W F A C U LT Y & P O S T - D O C R E S E A R C H E R S J O I N S O I S
Lei ZHANG POST-DOC RESEARCHER Dr. Lei Zhang has been pursuing her post-doctoral work at SOIS since January 2012. Dr. Zhang, originally from Shanghai, China, received her Bachelor’s in English from Shanghai International Studies University. She went on to receive her Master’s in Applied Linguistics from Tongji University in Shanghai. While pursuing her Master’s, Dr. Zhang worked as a cataloging librarian in an academic library for six years. She relocated to Vancouver, Canada and studied at the University of British Columbia for her doctorate in Library and Information Studies which she received in 2011. Her research examined information interaction and information organization. Her dissertation, entitled “A Study of Functional Units for Information Use of Scholarly Journal Articles”, studied organization of the information within journal articles by genre characteristics, and its effects on reading outcome and reading
process. Her current research examines the role of genre in organizing, structuring, and presenting information. Dr. Zhang has received a number of awards, including a University of BC Graduate Fellowship for three years, and honorable mention in the ALISE Doctoral Student Research Poster Competition. She is the author of multiple articles in academic journals and conference proceedings; her most recent publication is ““Rethinking Genre in Knowledge Organization Through a Functional Unit Taxonomy” with Associate Professor Hur-Li Lee in Cultural Frames of Knowledge recently published by Ergon-Verlag. While at SOIS, Dr. Zhang is the instructor for the course L&I Sci 511 Organization of Information. Dr. Zhang is impressed with the architectural and natural features of Milwaukee. In her free time, she enjoys watching sports and traveling.
Alessandra RENZI POST-DOC RESEARCHER Dr. Alessandra Renzi will be the first Social Studies of Information Research Group Postdoctoral Fellow starting August 2012. Dr. Renzi, originally from Italy, has an interdisciplinary MA degree in North American Studies from the Free University in Berlin, Germany. In 2010, she completed her PhD in Sociology and Equity Studies from the Ontario Institute for the Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. Her focus was on media studies, and
the title of her dissertation was “From Collectives to Connectives: Italian Media Activism and the Repurposing of the Social.” Since receiving her PhD, Dr. Renzi has been the research fellow at the Infoscape Centre for the Study of Social Media at Ryerson University in Toronto. Dr. Renzi discusses her work at Ryerson University: “I have collaborated on a research project on the crimi-
Post-Doc Researcher Joins Faculty
Nadine KOZAK ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
Dr. Nadine Kozak has been hired as Assistant Professor at SOIS beginning the fall semester of 2012. Dr. Kozak graduated in 2010 with a PhD in Communication and Science Studies from the University of California, San Diego. Her dissertation is titled “On the Last Mile: The Effects of Telecommunications Regulation and Deregulation in the Rural Western United States and Canada.” It examined how telecommunication policies are made and analyzed how well these policies serve rural areas.
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nalization of dissent that used multimedia platforms and Freedom of Information Act documents as research tools. I am very excited about the book that resulted from this research and that will be published in November this year with Arbiter Ring Press. The book, co-authored with Dr. Greg Elmer investigates the current effects of surveillance protocols, media and austerity measures on civil society in Canada.” Dr. Renzi’s research interests include media activism, art and emerging communication technologies, social networking and collaborative platforms, and Italian MarxistWorkerist and Feminist Thought referred to as Autonomia. She also works on developing community art projects: “My latest project ‘Activism beyond the Interface: the Sandbox Project’ developed with Dr. Roberta Buiani, will be presented in New York City at the Queens Museum of Art in September. We hope that this event will spur a series of discussions and productions that think about how media can be used to support and connect local communities.” While at SOIS, Dr. Renzi will be teaching, as well as continuing with her research. She is excited to work with SOIS faculty: “Before I saw the position, I was already familiar with the work of some of the SOIS faculty. This is, for me, a great opportunity to work with scholars I respect and to be embedded within a school of information studies that welcomes interdisciplinary researchers and is interested in supporting sociological research on information.” Although Dr. Renzi has been to the Midwest, this will be her first visit to Wisconsin, and she looks forward to living near Lake Michigan. During her free time, Dr. Renzi enjoys plotting art or media interventions with friends. She loves to travel, cook local food, and ride her bicycle. “While in Milwaukee, I would like to explore the city and its countryside, and learn to ride horses.”
“Before I saw the position, I was already familiar with the work of some of the SOIS faculty. This is, for me, a great opportunity to work with scholars I respect and to be embedded within a school of information studies that welcomes interdisciplinary researchers and is interested in supporting sociological research on information.” Dr. Alessandra Renzi, SOIS Post-Doc Researcher
She received her Undergraduate degree in Honors History from the University of Calgary, Canada, and her Master’s in Communication from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. She has received a number of awards, including a doctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and a 2004-2005 Summer Graduate Teaching Fellowship from UC San Diego. Most recently, she was the 2011-2012 IP Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Information Policy Research (CIPR) at SOIS. Dr. Kozak continues her research on the extension of broadband service and has found some sites where broadband programs seem to be working. She is also pursuing new research focused on intellectual property, bloggers and handicrafters. Dr. Kozak explains her research like this: “This project explores contestations
over intellectual property rights and how crafters use and understand these in their online communities. From this starting point, the study addresses the wider issues of copyright, the internet, and globalization.” In her free time, Dr. Kozak enjoys knitting, and recently knitted some highly contested designs for “Out of the Attic and Into the Stacks: Feminism in LIS: the Unconference.” She’s been living in Milwaukee for nearly a year, and has been bicycling on many of the different paths and trails. She has enjoyed going to various sporting events, the Milwaukee Art Museum shows, and exploring the food and beer culture of the city.
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SCHOOL OF INFORMATION STUDIES | UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - MILWAUKEE
Smartphones are taking over the U.S. mobile market. In March of 2012, the Pew Internet & American Life Project reported that 46% of American adults own a smartphone. One of the biggest appeals for smartphones is apps. Ben Specht, Brian Thompson, Sean Anderson & Miles Koller
MOBILE APPS there’s a cla S O I S PA R T N E R S W I T H M I L W A U K E E C O U N T Y Apps allow users to do things such as check the weather, get restaurant reviews, or play games. Soon smartphone users will be able to explore Milwaukee County services through apps, thanks in part to some students in the Bachelor of Science in Information Science & Technology (BSIST) program. This past spring, SOIS offered a course titled L&I Sci 291 Building Native Mobile Applications. The course taught students how to use Titanium, an open-source software used in application development. As part of their coursework, students worked on developing applications for Milwaukee County, including the Milwaukee County Parks, Milwaukee County Transit System, Milwaukee County Zoo, and General Mitchell International Airport. Quinn Madson, Lead Developer for Web & Mobile Services Development at UW-Milwaukee University Relations, is the primary instructor of the course. He explains how the partnership between SOIS and Milwaukee County came about: “The partnership with Milwaukee County originally developed out of discussions with the Office for Persons with Disabilities about building apps to help under-served citizens in Milwaukee County. Out of those discussions, we looked into having students build an app for Milwaukee County that focused on Milwaukee County services.” Brian Thompson and Ben Specht are both majoring in the IST program, and worked on the Milwaukee County Zoo app. Ben talks about building the app: “It was a lot of fun. It was a little difficult at first, and a little frustrating because it’s hard to pick up a
Sean Anderson, SOIS IST Student
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new coding language that you don’t really know. But once I got the grasp of it, it became a more fun thing to do.” Brian talks about what Milwaukee County wanted for features in the app: “It was just general, they wanted to have maps, info, an events calendar, they wanted weather. We were able to get a Google maps view of it, so the view of Google maps is really cool.” Dawn Gehlhoff, Network Applications Specialist for the Information Management Services Division of Milwaukee County, is the Project Manager. Ms. Gehlhoff discusses the benefits of this partnership: “The collaboration with UWM benefits Milwaukee County in the following ways: facilitates a cooperative partnership between UWM and County gov-
ass for that!
More About the Apps
SOIS Undergraduate Students Partnered With Milwaukee County on the Following Apps:
By Scott Lenski
ernment; leverages combined resources to achieve a common goal; capitalizes on the mutual benefits of collaborative development of new technology; exposes students to the opportunity for internships/careers with County government; meets the information and service needs of a growing population of smartphone users; and provides a learning opportunity for County staff.” The app isn’t available to the public just yet, but Ms. Gelhoff discusses a possible release date: “While a specific target release date remains fluid at this time, we’d like to see the first version of the Milwaukee County mobile app released to the public by the end of this year or early next year.” The course will again be offered next semester, and Madson talks about his hopes for the course: “I would like to see future semesters continue on the work that students started this semester, as well as reach out to new county entities and create new functionality.”
Milwaukee County Parks: Provides driving & bus directions to parks; provides Facebook integration that allows users to post pictures from the parks to their Facebook timeline, as well as share various Parks’ events with their friends. Milwaukee County Transit System: Shows timetable information about all Milwaukee County Buses and route maps; provides multiple suggestions on routes of how to get from point A to point B anywhere in Milwaukee County. General Mitchell International Airport: Arrivals and departures by airline (including gate number, if the flight is on-time/delayed, location of baggage); ground transportation options; airport map. Milwaukee County Zoo: General information; zoo map; zoo events.
Beginning this fall, incoming freshman can become part of the Mobile Rockstars Living Learning Community (LLC) created and supported by SOIS. A LLC is a group of students who take at least one class together, as well as live on the same floor at Cambridge Commons, RiverView or Sandburg Residence Halls.
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SCHOOL OF INFORMATION STUDIES | UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - MILWAUKEE
Collective Development By Scott Lenski
Archival Experiences During Spring Break
During spring break, college students often visit Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, and Panama City to catch some rays and take a break from university life. A group of SOIS students passed on the sand and sunshine and instead participated in the School’s Alternative Spring Break program. Alternative Spring Break allows graduate students to gain realworld experience by volunteering in an archival setting. This year, 32 students participated at 20 different repositories across the country. Katie Blank, special librarian at SOIS and coordinator of Alternative Spring Break, explains it like this; “If you want to get a job after you graduate you need to have hands-on experience. This is one way to get at least 30 hours of experience in one week, it’s concentrated. And additionally it’s a way to network with professionals, which we know is also important.”
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
Mai Cassie Young, a current MLIS student, had the opportunity to work at the Library of Congress in the music archives for her Alternative Spring Break. She worked with two different collections, the Federal Theater Project and the Howard Ashman Collection. Mai discusses her work on the projects: “With the Federal Theater Project, I looked through copies of programs and music scores, checking to make sure they were not duplicates of programs or scores, and categorized them and put them into series. I also worked with materials from Howard Ashman, a playwright and lyricist, who worked with Walt Disney and did some productions of his own.”
on n a number num umb ber off collections, ber be col olllle lect cti tio ions ions ns, including the Victor Scheurich Collection of photographs. About her time during Alternative Spring Break, Katie says, “I really enjoyed my hands on experience Ka K Katie ati tie ti e Skull, Skul ull ll, MLIS MLIS S Student tude tud tu dentt at the Seaver Center. This experience has helped me decide that the archives career is the path I want to take with the rest of my studies at SOIS.”
Katie Skull, a MLIS student with a focus in archives, spent her spring break at the Seaver Center for Western History Research at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. She worked
Students don’t need to travel to Los Angeles or Washington, DC to participate in Alternative Spring Break, since a number of local institutions host students. Katie Haasch, a May 2012 graduate
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“If you want to get a job after you graduate you need to have hands-on experience. This is one way to get at least 30 hours of experience in one week, it’s concentrated. And additionally it’s a way to network with professionals which we know is also important.” Katie Blank, Special Librarian, UWM-SOIS ress of Cong Library s e iv h rc Music A
Mai Cassie Young & Shannon Pahl, MLIS Students of SOIS, worked on a collection at the Ward Irish Music Archives located in Milwaukee. Katie found the experience very valuable and a great way to beef up her resume. “Prior to coming to SOIS, I had only 2 internships relating to Library Science. I loved the chance to work at another repository prior to graduation. It gave me a chance to experience something different.”
“Prior to coming to SOIS I had only 2 internships relating to Library Science. I loved the chance to work at another repository prior to graduation. It gave me a chance to experience something different.”
States, so any plans to escape to Europe may prove futile!” This is the second year that Lauren has participated in ASB: “Last year, my participation in ASB helped me decide that I wanted to be an archivist and to sign up for the archives concentration. While this year provided fewer life-changing revelations, it did reaffirm my commitment to the archives field.” Coordinator Katie Blank thinks that Alternative Spring Break is great for any student, no matter where their interests lie. “Even if they don’t think they are going into archives it’s always good to get a different type of experience. There are situations, for example, where a public librarian will be put in charge of the archives for their city or library so this at least gives them a little bit of exposure to archives.”
United Nations Archives New York
Katie Haasch, MLIS 2012 Alternative Spring Break doesn’t just benefit the students. Jeff Ksiazek is the archivist at the Ward Irish Music Archives, a participant in the program since 2009. The archive has only two fulltime employees along with a handful of volunteers working at the archives. As Jeff says, it’s more than just having an extra pair of hands. “We get not only trained help, but also a fresh set of eyes as to how we train volunteers, plan projects, and communicate. Our ASB students haven’t been afraid to ask questions or to offer suggestions on how projects could be done differently. Alternative Spring Break is great for us since we can have access to very talented and trained MLIS students that often knock out these tasks in a week. In the end, this translates to our users getting access to more material.” Lauren Gaines worked on two collections at the United Nations Archives in New York. Lauren is in the coordinated degree program, pursuing an MLIS, as well as a MA in History. She discusses her experience: “ASB provided an excellent opportunity to interact with people trained internationally. I learned that the employment situation is currently no different in France than it is in the United
Lauren Gaines, MLIS Student Photo by: Laura Keller
More information about Alternative Spring Break can be found at: www.uwm.edu/sois/careers/asb/index.cfm
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SCHOOL OF INFORMATION STUDIES | UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - MILWAUKEE
Stories play an integral part in our lives. Stories can tell us who we are, where we’ve been, and where we might end up. Stories are especially important to children in order to learn about the world around them. The National Library for Children and Young Adults in Korea understands the impact that stories can have on a child’s life. The library funded a project to translate 300 children’s picture books, mostly in Korean, into five other languages. SOIS Interim Dean Wooseob Jeong oversaw the translation of these stories and Senior Lecturer Bonnie Withers assisted with the project.
The Universal Language of Korea is one of the most homogeneous countries in the world. However, there are now over one million immigrants living in Korea. The National Library for Children and Young Adults in Korea has funded a project to help with the assimilation and education of these immigrants. SOIS Interim Dean Wooseob Jeong and Bonnie Withers worked on this project. It began with 300 children’s picture books, which were mostly in Korean. Interim Dean Jeong oversaw the translation of these stories into five other languages: Chinese, English, Mongolian, Thai, and Vietnamese. The translated stories were animated and are available through the library’s website (http://lscc. nlcy.go.kr:8000/). In addition, 10 of these stories are available in a print format in all five languages. Bonnie Withers, Senior Lecturer at SOIS, assisted Interim Dean Jeong with the project. Withers explains the process of translation: “Wooseob devised this system where the Korean would be translated into English first. And the English translation would then serve as a template. From the English translation, he found people to do
08 | Inside SOIS
these translations in the other languages, a three-step process.” Interim Dean Jeong explains the process in more detail: “Korean students translated from Korean to English and I reviewed a little bit of what we had. Then Bonnie and I sat down together and refined the errors. Also, these are children’s stories so we had to practice the read-aloud-ability, the rhyme.”
INFORMATION our focus INTERNATIONAL our scope INTERDISCIPLINARY our mindset
By Scott Lenski
Stories
Photos: Dr. Wooseob Jeong, Interim Dean Bonnie Withers, Senior Lecturer
Conference Presentation...
The genres of the stories vary, from folktales, to fairy tales, to biographical and educational pieces. The animated stories are in Korean, and the translations appear in captions. The viewer can switch from language to language, and can also choose to view the storyteller. There were some challenges to the project, especially concerning translation. Some concepts and words exist only in Korean, so translating these were difficult. Withers explains another translation challenge: “Take for instance in English a character named Miss Smarty Pants that tells you something about the character, but how do you say Miss Smarty Pants in some other language and convey that?”
Increasing multicultural population in one of the most homogeneous country, Korea. • More than 1 million immigrants now • Immigration for work or marriage • Next generation’s education and assimilation Government efforts • Support local governments for immigrants’ education • National level campaigns of awareness
National Library for Children and Young Adults in Korea: http://www.nlcy.go.kr/
• Over two years (2010-2011) • 300 children’s picture books (mostly in Korean) were animated. • Translated into 5 different languages: Chinese, English, Mongolian, Vietnamese, and Thai • Storytelling performances were included. • Highlighted texts in Korean for language learning • 12 book titles were published in those languages.
Interim Dean Jong says that Withers was invaluable to the project: “One of the main aspects of the project was to have someone who knows about children’s literature.” Withers says that she loved working on the project: “I very much enjoyed working with Wooseob on this because we really developed a good level of communication and I can’t imagine doing this with a different person every day. I think that it was really important to get a rhythm. I love stories anyway, and I learned a whole lot.”
Animated stories with Korean storyteller and 5 language options
Translation • Two-step process: Korean – English - Others • Faithfulness • Read-aloud-ability • Acceptability – ex) poop stories • Intertextuality • Onomatopoeias (sound words) Selection of books • Beyond our control • Based on copyright clearance availability • Bigger challenges for foreign books - redraw
• DVDs and Books were freely distributed to public libraries in Korea. • The materials are being used for Korean language learning programs and cultural activities for the immigrants and their families in libraries and schools. • The online digital library is open to the public. (http://www.nlcy.go.kr/)
Sample story page - Little Monk Ut
The World Storytelling Digital Libraries • For the entire world to share their stories • Every country/culture contributes its own stories and every story is translated into every language in the world! • Contact us for information about future participation. wjj8612@uwm.edu | bwithers@uwm.edu
SPONSORED BY: National Library for Children and Young Adults in Korea: http://www.nlcy.go.kr/
Interim Dean Jeong and Withers are presenting a paper at a preconference for the 2012 International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) Conference in Helsinki, Finland, as well as a poster at the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) Conference in London.
To see the project, visit: http://lscc.nlcy.go.kr:8000/ Fall 2012
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SCHOOL OF INFORMATION STUDIES | UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - MILWAUKEE
“I like the variety of information retrieval requests I receive. They vary from state law research to company comparisons to corporate fines and disciplinary actions. This variety is interesting, but challenging, because I have to adjust to each new request and the process for locating the information.” Holly Hopton, BSIR ‘04
Information Expert
By Scott Lenski
Undergraduate Alumna at Northwestern Mutual The School of Information Studies gives students the knowledge and experience to find a job after graduation. Just ask Holly Hopton, a graduate of the Bachelor of Science in Information Resources (now the BSIST) from SOIS in 2004.
retrieval requests I receive. They vary from state law research to company comparisons to corporate fines and disciplinary actions. This variety is interesting, but challenging, because I have to adjust to each new request and the process for locating the information.”
“SOIS prepared me to work as a team on an informationbased project. Upon graduation, I was promoted to a Project Manager in the business area of Northwestern Mutual.”
While she was a student at SOIS, Holly found her overall experiences in the BSIR program extremely pleasant. She was a bit of a non-traditional student. “I was in my late 20’s when I came back to school.” Originally she was a student in UWM’s School of Business Information Technology Management (MIS) program, but transferred to the newly offered undergraduate degree from SOIS. Holly made the switch to SOIS because the program “combined what I liked about the MIS program (learning about information systems), but it provided a “people” aspect - I enjoyed the team-like atmosphere, the opportunity to be a project manager, and I learned systems that were more like desktop, user-systems, rather than code programming behind the scenes.” There was one particular instructor that Holly made a connection with. “Elizabeth Buchanan was my mentor. She was near my age, and reminded me of myself. “
Holly currently works as the Senior Information Specialist at Northwestern Mutual. Holly explains her job like this: “I take requests from lawyers for information. I search the internet, databases, and other competitor websites for information. I also work on projects which compare processes and products that our competitors use and sell. I maintain information in electronic document storage systems and help to design the layout of this electronic filing system based on my clients’ needs.” In her position, she also has had experience managing taxonomies and classifying information. “Much of my experience has come from classes in SOIS!” There’s a lot of variety to the work that Holly does, and she finds that both interesting and challenging. “I like the variety of information
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Holly Hopton, BSIR ‘04
Holly grew up in Cedarburg, WI but has been living in Milwaukee since 1995. “My husband and I own a house in the Bayview neighborhood.” Holly had horses growing up in Cedarburg, and that has given rise to a part-time job. “In addition to my full-time job at Northwestern Mutual, I have a part-time job working at the YMCA Camp Minikani teaching horseback riding and horse-care skills to kids.” In addition to horseback riding, Holly enjoys “camping & spending time with my husband and two kids, Ruby, 11, and Henry, 8.” She sees a long career at Northwestern Mutual. “In 5 years I see myself remaining in my current position, in 10 years, still employed at the same company, but perhaps in a different information-type role.”
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Imagining the Possibilities
By Scott Lenski
Consulting with Libraries Winchester is a small community in the Wisconsin Northwoods, with a yearround population of 383. During the summers, the population grows to nearly 2,600. Winchester lies on the west shores of South Turtle Lake, making it perfect for fishing, boating, and hiking. Since 1985, the unincorporated community is also home to the Winchester Public Library. The library is housed in the former Winchester Elementary School. Judy Habermann, the Secretary of the Board of Trustees for the library, speaks about the location: “The building we are in is over 100 years old, and historically important to the town, in that it was the school back when Winchester was a logging community. The library occupies about half of this L-shaped building.” Due to the age of the building and lack of space, the library sought a new home. Judy describes the great amount of push-back from the community: “Our efforts to get a new library built met with disaster. Letters were sent to all voters and tax payers in the town, asking how the folks felt about tax dollars being spent on such a project. The answer was no, by about a 70-30 split.” That’s where Shannon Barniskis stepped in. Shannon, a graduate of SOIS, is Director of the Lomira QuadGraphics Community Library. She is also a consultant for small public libraries like Winchester; she had already completed a consulting job for the Horicon Public Library. Judy explains how Shannon was hired to work with the existing space: “We are very small, and space is at a premium. We thought it would be a good idea to have somebody who really understands come in to tell us how to best utilize our existing space.” Shannon had her work cut out for her. “I had to look at this very small library that wanted to expand its services, increase its program offerings, and renovate to present a more modern, cohesive appearance. It was so crowded that it was nearly impossible to move through the aisles. There was literally no room to sit.” To better understand the needs and wants of the Winchester community, Shannon spoke to a number of different people. “I met with a wide variety of stakeholders in the community: library staff, volunteers, users, non-users, historical society members, and
Shannon Barniskis MLIS 2011 & PhD Student
government officials. We discussed not only the library, but also the larger needs of the community, from economic development to social meeting areas and a sense of place that history provides. All of these factors were critical in deciding how to address the renovation needs of the Winchester library.” After meeting with the community, Shannon wrote a comprehensive report about the library, making recommendations on how to improve the space. The library is moving forward with most of Shannon’s recommendations. Judy feels that they made the right choice in hiring Shannon. “I felt so energized and excited after meeting with her and hearing all she had to say. She spent time looking at our space, talking with patrons and volunteers, and really listened to what everyone was saying.” When asked about consulting, Shannon said, “We’re all consultants anytime anyone asks us a question about our areas of interest. It takes a ridiculous ego to put oneself out there as a “consultant” or any kind of expert, especially for many women. But I encourage people with useful knowledge to do so, even if only on a small scale like I do.” So what’s next for Shannon? She’ll be returning to UWM to enter the PhD program at SOIS. Her focus during her studies will be information policy and public libraries. “When I grow up, I’d like to be a consultant for public libraries full-time, with an emphasis on facilitating the use and process of praxis-based research.”
Winchester Public Library Remodel Fall 2012
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SCHOOL OF INFORMATION STUDIES | UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - MILWAUKEE
Even though Hayley Johnson is extremely busy with work and school, she still finds time to attend conferences. She recently attended conferences for the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries and Museums (ATALM), the Canadian Library Association (CLA), and the American Library Association (ALA). Most of these were funded with scholarships.
Using Valuable Resources
By Scott Lenski
to Gain Invaluable Experience
Hayley Johnson didn’t always know that she wanted to be a librarian. Hayley received her Bachelor’s in Art History and English from the University of Wisconsin-Superior. After graduating, she planned on getting her Master’s in Art History, but took some time off to work for the AmeriCorps*VISTA program. She spent the first year of the program working on a Lac du Flambeau Indian Reservation doing economic development. “The second year I worked at the University of Minnesota Duluth and I was a community involvement coordinator, which was putting students in volunteer positions throughout the community and then working on service learning initiatives throughout the campus.” Hayley loved her work with AmeriCorps, and decided art history wasn’t for her. “I got really involved with the community and I did a lot of Ojibwe language classes and decoy carving classes. They have a really strong community. Everyone knows each other and so I wanted to work in something like a community.” This brought her to librarianship, and to SOIS. “I’m mostly interested in public libraries because of the community aspect. I’ve always spent so much time in libraries studying or just reading, and I always thought it was a safe place.” Hayley feels like she made the right choice in pursuing her MLIS at SOIS. “Coming to SOIS is the best thing that has happened to me. I was really lost, ‘like what am I going to do with my life’, and it was stressful. I made a decision I’m going to be a librarian. Then coming here everything’s been falling into place. I really
Hayley with Olivia at the ALA Conference in June 2012
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did make a good decision. And I think, if you just put effort and thought into what you’re doing, it will pay off.” In addition to being a full-time student, Hayley works a number of jobs, one of which is working the front office for SOIS. “I really like it because it’s a lot of working with people and events and social type things like setting up appointments, helping students, doing a lot of variety.” She also helps SOIS instructor Steve Miller find information that would be of interest to those in the Information Organization Concentration. Hayley was also recently hired at the Cudahy Family Library. “It’s in adult reference and children’s and working with the catalog. Pretty much everything the librarian could do except ordering, but I’ll get projects like weeding and collection development. And I’ll be trained on circulation in a couple months so I’ll get a really good feel of a suburban public library.” Hayley also recently helped the Cudahy library with their Teddy Bear Sleepover. Even though Hayley is extremely busy with work and school, she still finds time to attend conferences. She recently attended conferences for the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries and Museums (ATALM), the Canadian Library Association (CLA), and the American Library Association (ALA). Most of these were funded with scholarships. “I just applied for everything, and that’s my advice. I applied for the scholarship, got it. And I applied for the travel award and I’m really happy that I did. I think more students should take advantage of it.” So what advice does Hayley have for those thinking about getting their degree from SOIS? “I think it’s a really great program. I think that there’s a lot of support. There’s a lot of support from the graduate advisors. All the faculty have been really supportive. Even the students are a great support system too.” For more information about how to receive travel funding, visit: http://www4.uwm.edu/sois/resources/aid/travel/
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A Student’s Perspective.. By Hayley Johnson MLIS Student
As a student, one of the most rewarding ways of getting involved in the library profession is by attending conferences. This past year, I attended a number of conferences, including conferences on the state, national, and international levels. SOIS is very encouraging and supportive of students who are interested in attending conferences. For example, SOIS covered students’ registration costs and provided a shuttle service to the WAAL and WAPL conferences. In regards to the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries and Museums (ATALM) Conference, I received a scholarship through ATALM that covered only registration, and SOIS granted me a travel award that provided money for travel and lodging. I attended ALA as one of forty Student-to-Staff members selected to represent library schools from throughout the country. While ALA covered our registration costs, lodging, and provided a per diem in exchange for sixteen hours of volunteer work, SOIS covered my transportation costs. SOIS also offers students opportunities to be volunteer representatives at our school exhibit booth for select conferences. This is how I was able to attend the Canadian Library Association (CLA) Conference. I wrote a statement of interest, and was chosen. Along with an academic advisor, I developed a schedule in which I worked in the booth half of the time and was able to attend the conference the other half. Volunteering at the SOIS exhibit booth was a great way to meet people and talk about SOIS. I even met Molly Raphael, the 2011-2012 ALA President! I am very grateful for these experiences because they are essentially an extension of my education. Conference sessions provide information that compliment and build upon what is taught and discussed in my courses. It’s great to get a sense of how theoretical concepts play out in a practical setting. Also, conferences are a great way to meet and connect with working professionals. Librarians are especially welcoming to students wanting to learn more about the profession. I strongly recommend students attending conferences to gain professional development.
n o s n h o J y Hayle
If you would like to bestow this invaluable learning opportunity to future SOIS students, make a donation for student travel scholarship. Please contact SOIS at (414)229-4707 or soisinfo@uwm.edu to donate or learn more.
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SCHOOL OF INFORMATION STUDIES | UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - MILWAUKEE
A PASSION FOR TECHNOLOGY Turning a Pastime Into a Career By Scott Lenski
Pheandro Welsh has had an interest in technology for some time. “In high school I built and repaired computers as a small side business for myself. Most of my customers were friends, family, and teachers.” This interest in technology has led Pheandro to the Bachelor of Science in Information Science and Technology (BSIST) at SOIS. “I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my experiences in the BSIST program thus far. I’ve met many great friends and influential people.” Originally, Pheandro was in the Lubar School of Business. “I switched my major from MIS (Information Technology Management) to the BSIST program and immediately noticed a huge difference. I no longer felt like just another number. The professors and advisers were extremely helpful, welcoming, and knowledgeable.”
In addition to being a student of technology, Pheandro is also working with technology at his current position. “I am an End-User Services Trainee for the printing company Quad Graphics. In this position, I handle many of the responsibilities of a systems administrator. This includes computer repair and maintenance, installation of new computers and computer related equipment, and troubleshooting of computer equipment and software. After graduation I will be promoted from trainee to systems administrator.” Pheandro made the Dean’s list in 2010-2011 for the Lubar School of Business and also in 2011-2012 for the School of Information Studies. He worked on a project with Assistant Professor Michael Zimmer researching and transcribing interviews of Mark Zuckerberg. He also wants to continue his education after his expected graduation date of May 2014. “I want to attain my master’s degree in the first 5 years after graduation.” So how does Pheandro spend his free time? Not surprisingly, it involves technology. “I’m a huge tech head! Video games, home theater, and computers are a few of the genres of technology I dabble in.” Pheandro has other interests besides technology. “My second love is fitness and weight training. I enjoy working out on a regular basis for the health effects, fun, and for stress relief. My third love is cars. I enjoy taking my customized BMW 330i out on the twists and turns of the country roads outside the city of Milwaukee.” Pheandro, who is originally from Spanish Town, Jamaica, sees a bright future for those working in the IT field. “The field of information technology will continue to grow as technology continues to integrate with our lives. To compete in the business world today you must invest in technology. This makes IT professionals a vital asset to almost every company.”
Pheandro Welsh, BSIST Student
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By Scott Lenski
Adriana McCleer, PhD Student
PhD Student Breaking Down Access Barriers for Multicultural Populations
Adriana McCleer found herself thrust into the role of librarian. She was working with the Notre Dame Mission Volunteers and AmeriCorps in Phoenix, Arizona. “I had never considered a career path in librarianship, but on the first day of my service, I was offered the duties of running either the community garden or the library. In the scorching July heat, I was happy to choose the library as my workplace for the next year.” Adriana found that she really enjoyed working in a library. “The most rewarding part of this work was the development of relationships with the neighborhood residents. Children, teens, and adults visited our small library to take part in our winter reading club, leadership training programs, nutrition workshops, and to find the information they wanted and needed for all areas of their lives.” Her experiences have led her to SOIS, as she pursues her PhD as part of the Overcoming Barriers to Information Access (B2A) Doctoral Fellowship. Adriana has a B.A. in Spanish from Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin. While pursuing her undergraduate degree, she also studied in Madrid, Spain; Guanajuato, Mexico; and San José, Costa Rica. She earned her M.A. in Library and Information Science from the University of Arizona in Tucson. While pursuing her M.A., Adriana was a Knowledge River scholar focused on LIS issues related to Latino and Native American populations. Adriana’s current research examines community engagement and intellectual freedom. “Public libraries and information centers maintain a professional responsibility to serve all people and have opportunities to improve individual lives and empower communi-
ties, yet communities of color are often overlooked and underserved. I am interested in the opportunities that exist to improve information access through community engagement. In terms of intellectual freedom, I am exploring power and privilege in relation to information challenges and censorship in the United States.” Adriana has been recognized as a 2009 Emerging Leader by the Arizona State Library Association, as well as a participant of the 2012 Latino Nonprofit Leadership Program coordinated by UWM’s Roberto Hernández Center. “This program provides over 100 hours of leadership, management, and advocacy training and education and includes an additional project component that is focused on service to the Milwaukee Latino communities.” Adriana also created the winning poster of the PhD submissions at the 2012 SOIS Student Research Poster Day. “The poster was entitled “The Dismantling of Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican American Studies Program: A Case Study and Critical Analysis”, and addressed a case of censorship and suppression of intellectual freedom related to a high school Mexican American Studies program.” Where does Adriana see herself after graduation? “I entered the doctoral program with the vision that academia would be my new professional arena and I would soon have the honor of educating the next generation of LIS professionals. I have learned so much in my first year of doctoral studies about the professional world of academia and have also been exposed to the various disciplines that have strong connections to LIS. Although I will still consider professorship in LIS, I want to keep an open mind related to my learning experience so that I consider all paths for my future ventures.”
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SCHOOL OF INFORMATION STUDIES | UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - MILWAUKEE
Toby Deutsch’s office, much like himself, is filled with personality. His wall is covered in posters and flyers. He likes to take photographs, and he unrolls a poster he had printed of a photo he snapped of a skateboarder. When talking to Toby about his position at SOIS, his passion for the job is evident. Where does his motivation come from? “I think some of it comes from the fact that I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I went to school.” Toby now finds himself advising students, many of whom he can relate to. “I think that there’s something to be said about the age of these students and the way they come in, whether they are a new freshman or senior, but the fact that they need help and to be able to provide them with that help is something that I enjoy.”
Meet Toby DEUTSCH AN ADVISOR WITH AN APTITUDE FOR STUDENTS Toby has been an advisor with SOIS since 2011. He’s very familiar with UW-Milwaukee; he graduated from the Communication department in 2004. After graduation he held a position as an Admissions Advisor for the Department of Recruitment and Outreach on campus. Toby summarizes his previous position like this: “Primarily it was my job to know a little bit about everything on campus.” His job also required him to know things beyond the UWM campus. “If somebody said, how’s the neighborhood, I’ve heard that that neighborhood isn’t very safe, how do we address this given the context for what your information need is?” His prior knowledge of the campus and Milwaukee has made Toby a great fit for SOIS. He can help students navigate not only the requirements for the School, but also direct them with whom to speak with about financial aid, possible partnerships for independent studies, or where to look for housing. Toby discusses what he loves most about his advising position at SOIS: “I enjoy the interactions with current students. In my previous position as an Admissions Advisor I was dealing with prospective students coming in and I dealt a little bit with
16 | Inside SOIS
current students who were helping prospective students go through orientation. As my role evolved on campus, I got less and less interaction with current students. So moving into a position where I’m working directly with current students is something that I really enjoy.” There are some unique challenges that Toby faces when working with students. “I think the challenging part is that every situation is unique. So for one student that comes in and says ‘I have a problem with this’, and the next student comes in and has the exact same issue, I can’t necessarily give them the exact same advice based on that student’s place in life, and their age and what their career goals are.”
“If anyone has questions, if anyone needs information, if anyone has curiosities about what I do or about what students are doing, or how they can help students in new ways, or get information about resources on campus, come and find me. I’m more than happy to help anybody out for whatever reason.” Toby Deutsch, SOIS Advisor
INFORMATION our focus INTERNATIONAL our scope INTERDISCIPLINARY our mindset
By Scott Lenski
Since our beginning in 1966, the School of Information Studies has been a leader in LIS education. SOIS was one of the first MLIS programs to offer online education courses, and has always offered its students and staff the newest technologies. The selection of SOIS as a member of the iSchools organization proves our continued commitment to advancing the LIS field in the 21st Century.
Faculty/Staff Profile:
The iSchools organization, founded in 2005, is a worldwide collection of Information Schools who are interested in the connections between information, people and technology. The vision of the group says that the organization “seeks to maximize the visibility and influence of its member schools, and their interdisciplinary approaches to harnessing the power of information and technology, and maximizing the potential of humans. We envision a future in which the iSchool Movement has spread around the world, and the information field is widely recognized for creating innovative systems and designing information solutions that benefit individuals, organizations, and society.” On the impact of admittance into the iSchools, SOIS Interim Dean Wooseob Jeong says, “Being an iSchool member will boost the already globally renowned status of SOIS to the next level, at which our strong research on information will be reinforced. More quality students will be recruited for their promising information-focused education at all program levels - BSIST, MLIS and Ph.D.” The organization currently includes 36 institutions in 11 countries; SOIS is one of 23 U.S. information schools that are members of the organization, and the only one in Wisconsin.
Toby says that SOIS has a great work environment. “Everyone’s friendly, everyone’s helpful, everyone’s courteous and I really enjoy that. Faculty have been really welcoming, very helpful and helped me to understand where they’re going and what they do.” So if you find yourself in the NWQ, stop by Toby’s office. “If anyone has questions, if anyone needs information, if anyone has curiosities about what I do or about what students are doing, or how they can help students in new ways, or get information about resources on campus, come and find me. I’m more than happy to help anybody out for whatever reason.”
Iris Xie, Professor and Doctoral Program Director, discusses the impact of the iSchools on the SOIS doctoral program: “Being a member of the iSchool organization demonstrates the research productivity and quality of our faculty and students, and it will increase the visibility and profile of the School. It will greatly help us recruit high quality doctoral students, broaden and enhance the careers of our doctoral students, and build a stronger doctoral program.” Geoff Nunberg, a professor at the School of Information at the University of California-Berkeley, was the keynote speaker at the 2012 iSchools iConference hosted by the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. Professor Nunberg discussed the iSchools in an interview with National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air”: “It isn’t just about computer science anymore, either. That isn’t where you go to find out how technology changes people’s lives, and where it fails them, or how to make it less intrusive and more humane. Those are questions people are taking up at the schools of information that have sprung up at research universities like UCLA, Toronto and Washington—iSchools, for short. It’s a different “i”, but it too stands in for a connection between technology and the social world.” The 2013 iConference will be hosted by the College of Information at the University of North Texas and the theme will be “Scholarship in Action: Data – Innovation – Wisdom”. Fall 2012
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SCHOOL OF INFORMATION STUDIES | UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - MILWAUKEE
Robert Bothmann SOIS ALUMNUS HONORED WITH MULTIPLE AWARDS Robert L. Bothmann, an alumnus and adjunct instructor at SOIS, has had a busy year. He was awarded the 2012 Nancy B. Olson Award. The annual award, sponsored by the Online Audiovisual Catalogers (OLAC) network, recognizes a librarian who has made significant contributions to the advancement and understanding of audiovisual cataloging and electronic resources. On winning this award Robert says, “The Nancy B. Olson Award has a lot of meaning for me primarily because I was nominated by an unknown peer and the nomination was reviewed by a committee of my peers. It’s gratifying and humbling that my peers hold my work and my contributions to the profession in such regard. Added to this is the fact that the award is named in honor of one of my mentors, Nancy B. Olson, with whom I had the privilege to work with on the fifth edition of her book Cataloging of Audiovisual Materials and Other Special Materials.” Robert was also the winner of the 2012 OLAC Research Grant award. Robert explains the research grant like this: “The OLAC Research Grant award will support work on an RDA companion to Olson’s book. Over the past few years I have picked up Professor Olson’s habit of collecting resources that present unique, challenging, interesting, and/or epitomizing traits. RDA adds a new twist in that relationships to and among resources are more important and more explicitly defined. Acquiring enough resources to demonstrate this was financially daunting, so this grant is a great thing.”
“The Nancy B. Olson Award has a lot of meaning for me primarily because I was nominated by an unknown peer and the nomination was reviewed by a committee of my peers. It’s gratifying and humbling that my peers hold my work and my contributions to the profession in such regard. Added to this is the fact that the award is named in honor of one of my mentors, Nancy B. Olson, with whom I had the privilege to work with on the fifth edition of her book Cataloging of Audiovisual Materials and Other Special Materials.” Robert Bothmann, SOIS Alumnus & Adjunct Instructor Robert is the instructor for both “Cataloging & Classification” and “Advanced Cataloging” at SOIS. He is also an adjunct lecturer at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In addition to teaching, Robert works as the Metadata and Emerging Technologies Librarian at Minnesota State University, Mankato. In addition to his MLIS from SOIS, Robert also has a Master of Science in Cross-disciplinary Studies: Geography & English Technical Communication from Minnesota State University, Mankato.
Umashanie Reddy GRADUATE OF THE LAST DECADE (GOLD) AWARDEE Umashanie Reddy, a 2008 MLIS graduate of SOIS, was recently awarded the Graduate of the Last Decade (GOLD) Award by UWM. According to the UWM Alumni Association website, “the GOLD Award recognizes graduates who have achieved a measure of success in their field bringing credit to themselves and the University.”
18 | Inside SOIS
Umashanie is a leader in the LIS field, all while fighting stage four Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Umashanie is the manager of Diversity Services at the Calgary Public Library, and has worked on the library’s Dragons Den and “Welcome to the Calgary Public Library: a DVD (film) in World Languages.” She is also managing the Library Settlement Services Project which provides services such as orientation to Calgary living and community referrals for city newcomers. She was recently the speaker at the SOIS recognition ceremony for 2012 Spring Graduates.
Sharon Lake, Umashanie Reddy, Dietmar Wolfram, Morgan Reddy, Jivanya Reddy
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Center for Information Policy Research
Events, Research and Funding Opportunities
After Successful 2011-2012 CIPR Moves Ahead Under the dual leadership of SOIS faculty Joyce Latham and Michael Zimmer, the Center for Information Policy Research (CIPR) had one of its most active academic years during 2011-2012. A key goal for CIPR this past year was to involve more faculty and students – both within the School of Information Studies and across campus – in CIPR activities, with the expectation of generating a collegial and collaborative environment for engaging in a range of approaches to information ethics and information policy. This was achieved, in part, through the formulation of a doctoral student reading group on the topic of “information power” with CIPR fellow Professor Sandra Braman (Department of Communication, UWM), as well as through hosting various brown bag lunches during the year, combining faculty and student presentations, which drew attendees from across campus. CIPR also made available new Research Travel Awards in spring 2012, providing funds for members of the entire campus community engaging in research aligned with the Center. Awards were granted to Wilhelm Peekhaus (assistant professor, SOIS), Christopher Terry (lecturer, Department of Journalism, Advertising, and Media Studies-UWM), and Jeremy Mauger (PhD student, SOIS). These awards, along with CIPR’s enhanced Web and email presence, increased its visibility across campus. CIPR continued its commitment to information policy-related events across campus and within relevant academic and professional
communities. During 2011-2012, CIPR helped sponsor onsor numerous events, including: the “Minding the Gaps: aps: Wikileaks & Internet Security in the 21st Century” symymposium hosted by the Center for 21st Century Studies, es, the Computer Ethics/Philosophical Enquiry (CEPE) PE) conference, the WLA pre-conference on “Tell me What Democracy Looks Like”, the unconference on n “Feminism in LIS”, the screening of “Big Brother, Big g Business” for Choose Privacy Week, and the 2nd “Ethics in Information Organization” conference. Along with Dr. Braman, CIPR hosted other distinguished scholars as visiting fellows. Dr. Loretta Gaffney (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign) gn)) and and Dr. Jean Preer (Indiana University-Indianapolis) contributed ontributed their expertise in intellectual freedom and library ethics to the WLA pre-conference and related activities. CIPR also welcomed Dr. Luciano Floridi (University of Hertfordshire and the University of Oxford), the leading expert in the philosophy of information, who led discussions with SOIS PhD students on information ethics and the philosophy of information. Lastly, the American Library Association’s (ALA) Office of Intellectual Freedom (OIF) awarded CIPR a grant to conduct a survey on “Librarian Attitudes and Behaviors Regarding Informational Privacy” and participate in related privacy education and outreach activities funded through the OIF’s partnership with the Open Society Foundation.
Looking Forward to 2012-2013 In 2012-2013, CIPR will be directed by Assistant Professor Michael Zimmer, with Assistant Professor Latham focusing her efforts on SOIS’s Public Library Leadership Concentration. CIPR’s focus for the coming year will be on growing its research agenda through numerous projects and external grant applications. CIPR will continue its partnership with the ALA Office of Intellectual Freedom and will concentrate on the development and evaluation of educational materials to help librarians teach patrons about privacy-related issues. Dr. Zimmer’s own research agenda, centered
on issues of information privacy, intellectual property, and internet research ethics, will become incorporated into CIPR activities. Additionally, CIPR plans to add a senior Research Fellow to assist with grant and research activities. Drawn from existing UW-Milwaukee faculty, the Fellow will join the intellectual community of CIPR to collaborate on research projects, jointly write research grant proposals, and provide informal mentoring to students. A key goal for the Research Fellow will be to collaborate on the creation of a new research project focused on “big data.”
CIPR saw much momentum in 2011-2012, and 2012-2013 looks to be another exciting and busy year at the Center. Fall 2012
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SCHOOL OF INFORMATION STUDIES | UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - MILWAUKEE
Research Group 2011-2012 saw another successful year for the Information Organization Research Group (IOrg). In addition to the 2nd Milwaukee Conference on the Ethics of Information Organization (EIO2), the IOrg group also completed an anthology on the epistemology of information organization titled Cultural Frames of Knowledge, co-edited by Drs. Richard Smiraglia and Hur-Li Lee. The volume, published by Ergon Verlag of Germany in August, includes eight chapters written by nine authors, five of whom are IOrg members: Smiraglia, Lee, Melodie Fox, Hope Olson, and Lei Zhang. Among the other four authors, two are from India (Neelameghan and Raghavan), one from Spain (Martínez-Ávila), and the last originally from Israel (Friedman). The book’s publication details and Table of Contents can be accessed at http://dnb.info/1023776855/04. As the editors wrote in the conclusion, this project’s “first motivation is to turn a high beam on epistemic issues in knowledge organization followed by an intention to marshal a sample of intellectual resources that represent a wider range of cultures for consideration” (p. 153). In other words, it is intended to broaden and diversify the discourse in hopes to stimulate further scholarly conversations. In this busy year, the IOrg organized eight lectures. Invited speakers included Ms. Marjorie Bloss (who served as the RDA Project Manager between 2005 and 2009 and was a full-time lecturer at Dominican University) and Dr. Joseph Tennis (Assistant Professor at University of Washington). Dr. Lynne Howarth (Professor at University of Toronto and SOIS Distinguished Researcher in Information Organization) gave two lectures, one in fall and the other in spring. The other presenters were all IOrg members, including a faculty member (Smiraglia), two post-doctoral fellows (Julien and Zhang), and an incoming doctoral student (Graf). All lecture descriptions and recordings can be found online at: http://www4.uwm.edu/sois/research/iorg/ IOrg members also presented papers and posters at meetings and delivered lectures nationally and internationally (e.g., Brazil, Canada, The Netherlands, Spain, Greece, Taiwan), giving the group great exposure. Additionally, the group had a very productive year in terms of publications. A full list of publications can be found at: http://www4.uwm.edu/sois/research/iorg/ The IOrg has made mentoring and educating students a priority. The group continued to provide funds for students, both doctoral and master’s, to attend conferences. Students’ reports on their conference experiences are also available on the IOrg website. In the past year, IO doctoral students were especially active. They presented papers at venues such as the EIO2, the First Annual Conference of the Brazil Chapter of the International
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The Information Organization Research Group is designed to facilitate the discovery and development of knowledge in the field of information organization by established researchers and new scholars in library and information studies and related disciplines. http://www4.uwm.edu/sois/research/IORG
Society for Knowledge Organization, the annual meeting of the Association for Library and Information Science Education, the annual meeting of the Canadian Association for Information Science, and the Research Forum organized by SOIS and Madison’s School of Library and Information Studies. Some of these resulted in published proceedings. One doctoral student, Melodie Fox, not only contributed a chapter to Cultural Frames of Knowledge, but also had another chapter accepted to be published in a refereed book, Gender, Sexuality, Information: A Reader, both in collaboration with Dr. Hope Olson. This fall, two new doctoral students are joining SOIS and the IOrg, increasing the total number of IO doctoral students to six. With regard to the MLIS program, the IOrg made two significant achievements. First, four of the IOrg members (Miller, Lee, Olson, & Smiraglia) co-authored an article in a special issue of Cataloging and Classification Quarterly “Online Delivery of Cataloging and Classification Education and Instruction” which discussed the approach taken at SOIS. Second, Mr. Steve Miller and Dr. Margaret Kipp were part of a small group of SOIS faculty and instructional staff who received funding from UWM’s Department of Academic Affairs to enhance or refresh online delivery of MLIS courses. Steve and Margaret will develop a couple of new courses in IO.
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By Jihee Beak
The 2nd Ethics of Information (EIO) conference was held from June 15th-16th, 2012, and was hosted and organized by SOIS. Many sponsors including SOIS’ Information Organization Research Group (IOrg), Center for Information Policy Research (CIPR), UWM Libraries, Marquette University Raynor Memorial Libraries, and Milwaukee Public Libraries participated in the conference. The conference had 4 invited speakers, 14 refereed presenters, and more than 80 attendees. Speakers and presenters were international, and included: José Augusto Chaves Guimarães and Suellen Oliveira Milani (São Paulo State University) from Brazil, Daniel Martínez-Ávila (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid) from Spain, and Jens-Erik Mai (University of Toronto), Ann Doyle (University of British Columbia), and Dean Seeman (Memorial University of Newfoundland) from Canada. In addition to international speakers, the topics discussed during the conference were various, examining both theoretical and practical topics: ethics in information organization, cataloging, indigenous knowledge organization, sexuality, and language and critique. There was very rich, active, and propounding discussion going on among the attendees. Dr. Hope A. Olson was Conference Chair and organized the conference. As her doctoral student, I had a chance to gain experience on how to organize a conference from calling for papers to working with administrative staff. While organizing the conference, I was happy to talk with many scholars and practitioners. Although the conference was only 2 days, it took many people’s effort and time to make the conference such a success. I personally would like to thank Dr. Olson, Jeannette Renee Glover, and all the staff working the conference. At the closing session, many attendees mentioned that this conference is an important venue for scholarly and professional discussions for the concerns and issues in the ethics of information organization. Attendees are looking forward to the next conference.
Photos: Top - EIO Conference Participants Center - Joseph Tennis, Conferencier & Jihee Beak, PhD Student Bottom - Jens-Erik Mai, Opening Speaker
International Staff Training Week University of Applied Sciences - Upper Austria FH In May of 2012, Assistant Dean Chad Zahrt and Director of Marketing Rebecca Hall were invited to participate in an important conference focused on building and maintaining international relationships and connections. The conference was hosted by the Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences (FH) and featured more than 40 attendees representing 30 institutions from 19 countries. During the week-long summit, Chad and Rebecca attended workshops focused on marketing, outreach, best practices, and student services focused on the international exchange experience. Participants of the FH International Staff Training week. Cultural excursion to the Dachstein Ice Caves.
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SCHOOL OF INFORMATION STUDIES | UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - MILWAUKEE
SOCIAL STUDIES of INFORMATION
Research Group
The Social Studies of Information Research Group (SSIRG) is a newly formed research group that will examine the application of social science and humanities disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, history, critical theory, philosophy, media studies, political science, and economics to the study of information. Information is itself a multifaceted concept, and SSIRG will follow the broad scope of the iSchool movement in including information technology, information science, information systems, information services, information businesses and information practices. SSIRG, focused on social, cultural and historical studies, builds on and broadens the School’s existing recognized strength in information policy and leverages the capabilities of the Center for Information Policy Research (CIPR) and Information History Reading Group (IHRG).
On May 1, the Research Group for Information Retrieval (RGIR) hosted distinguished researcher Dr. Tefko Saracevic from the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University. Dr. Saracevic presented “The Successes we Know and Teach, but What are the Failures of Information Retrieval?” The presentation was well attended and examined three classes of failures of information retrieval. Dr. Saracevic’s presentation is available through the SOIS iStream at http://www4.uwm.edu/sois/projects/media/.
Research Group
The functions of the group include bringing together relevant faculty, staff, and students to engage in collaborative research, sponsoring talks, and coordinating related curriculum within the School. In the coming year, SSIRG will host a series of six speakers, two of them international. SSIRG will be co-sponsoring these events with other UWM groups and departments, to bring greater intellectual engagement between our faculty and students and those with related interests in other schools. SSIRG also welcomes its first postdoctoral scholar, Alessandra Renzi for the 2012-2013 academic year. For more information about SSIRG, contact Associate Professor Tom Haigh (thaigh@uwm.edu)
FOR INFORMATION RETRIEVAL
RGIR has put much effort into its most recent research project. The image retrieval project involves the study of the perception of similarities and differences between images. The findings of this research will be presented at the 4th Information Interaction in Context Symposium in Nijmegen, the Netherlands in August. The findings will also be presented at the annual American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) meeting in Baltimore, Maryland in October. RGIR is saying goodbye to our post-doctoral fellow, Pierre Tirilly. He has been pursuing his post-doctoral work at SOIS since September of 2010. While at SOIS, Pierre worked on the image retrieval project involving the perception of images, and also a project that involved the study of medical image retrieval to improve image search results for professionals in the field. Pierre has left Milwaukee for his home country of France where he has accepted a faculty position. We wish him all the best.
SOIS Student Orgs
STUDENT ORG SOCIAL MEDIA
PA R T I C I PAT E !
http://linkedin.com (UWM-SOIS:Student Organization)
The SOIS Student Organizations plan social and academic events, help develop academic programs, bring student issues to administrators’ attention and much more! Examples of past events and activities include: LAN Parties, SOIS Town Hall Meetings, Summer BBQs, Resume Building Workshops and the mighty SOIS Dodgeball Team!
http://facebook.com/soisstudentorg
Twitter http://twitter.com/soisorg
Flickr If you have an idea for a new event or just want to get involved, now is the time! Contact the SOIS Student Orgs online at soisorg.uwm.edu or by email at sois-ugso@uwm.edu.
http://flickr.com/soisorg/
vimeo http://vimeo.com/soisorg
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PDI Professional Development Institute
The SOIS Professional Development Institute offers a broad selection of seminars and workshops on the cutting edge of new information topics and technologies that are integral to the information revolution.The topics vary according to the needs of the information specialist ranging from topics like grant writing and funding alternatives to legal issues, public access to resources, and information technology.
Catherine Hansen, Professional Development Institute Director and Jack
Featured Course: Exploring Access and Privacy Legal Issues for Archivists, Librarians, and Information Professionals September 24 - November 02, 2012 Menzi will provide an in-depth course to access and privacy legal issues encountered by today’s archivists, librarians, and curators. The course will examine some of the most perplexing and vexing issues for archivists today – how to balance and provide open access while preserving personal privacy, including the privacy of unknowing third parties represented in archival collections. Through a variety of readings, participants will be explore these challenging issues, share their own experiences and then address some of these issues through case studies. This course will provide useful information to new and experienced professionals in public and private archives, libraries, special collections, and museums.
Instructor:
Menzi Behrnd-Klodt Menzi is an archivist, attorney, and consultant, currently serving as consultant for Klodt and Associates, and general counsel of Xyte, Inc. Menzi has extensive experience both in archives and the law. Menzi has worked as an archivist at Wisconsin Historical Society, CUNA Mutual Insurance Group, Circus World Museum, and American Girl, and as a consultant to museums, cultural centers, schools, and agencies in Hawaii. She is vice president of the Midwest Archives Conference and frequently speaks and teaches at meetings and workshops of Society of American Archivists and other professional groups on legal issues for archivists. Menzi wrote Navigating Legal Issues in Archives (2008) and co-edited, with Peter J. Wosh, Privacy and Confidentiality Perspectives: Archivists and Archival Records (2005), both published by the Society of American Archivists.
Coming Soon to the PDI Document Detective Work September 17 - October 26, 2012 Instructor: Dr. Kim Anderson
Designing Marketing Materials Using Industry Standard Software November 12 - December 14, 2012 No software required! Instructor: Rebecca Hall
Explore our Online Professional Development Opportunities!
www.uwm.edu/sois/CE/
Fall 2012
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SOIS
TECH CORNER By Jim Schultz
What’s new at SOIS Tech? First, we have our newly remodeled computer lab located in Bolton Hall room 289. Our new lab is outfitted with over 35 PCs and a half dozen Apple iMacs. With solid state hard drives and 8GB of RAM, these computers will certainly have the performance students need for their projects.
Displays and Lounge! New around SOIS we have interactive video displays which display information on upcoming SOIS events and information. These new displays are located around the Northwest Quadrant Building B, Floors 2 and 3. If you’re on campus, also be sure to check out our updated student lounge areas now complete with free color printing for students and large HDTV’shooked up with video game systems to kill time and a computer to work in groups. Streaming Video! SOIS has also updated our iStream video library. If you missed any of our latest events, please be sure to check them out online at istream.uwm.edu. Videos can be both streamed and downloaded. For many of our live events, SOIS now offers a live video feed so you can participate remotely. Please be sure to keep an eye out for information regarding live video feeds in upcoming event marketing materials. Virtual Compter Lab! For our distance learners SOIS also has updated the virtual computer lab with the latest software including Adobe CS6. SOIS will also continue to support our agreement with Microsoft to get free software! For more information on all of the new and updated technology resources, please be sure to check out the SOIS Tech website at: soistech.uwm.edu. If you ever need any technology assistance or have any tech ideas for our School, please be sure to get in touch with us!
soistech.uwm.edu 24 | Inside SOIS
We want to Connect with you!
SCHOOL OF INFORMATION STUDIES | UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - MILWAUKEE
Information. Connection. Philanthropy. There are several ways you can connect with SOIS, and you don’t have to be in Milwaukee!
Ways to connect to SOIS here and abroad, include:
• • • • • • •
Mentor a student Host a student fieldwork Promote alumni events Start an Alumni Chapter in your area Serve on a SOIS committee Stay connected and share all of your accomplishments Other ideas welcome!
THANK YOU! Contact the School of Information Studies to discuss these opportunities! Ph: 414-229-4707 Donate to SOIS Scholarships http://sois.uwm.edu/give
The Wisconsin Library Association Conference will be held in LaCrosse, WI! Celebrate with us at our Annual SOIS Reunion! All UW-Milwaukee SOIS alumni, students, faculty and guests are invited to attend. Join us for an evening of fun and refreshments - hors d’oeuvres, a cash bar, and a complimentary beer tasting! We hope to see you there!
October 24, 2012 5:30 - 7:30PM Radisson Hotel - LaCrosse, WI
INFORMATION our focus INTERNATIONAL our scope INTERDISCIPLINARY our mindset
g n i r e b m RemePhyllis & Ted Samore O
n
May 29, 2012, Phyllis Marie Samore passed away at the age of 88. Phyllis was the wife of Ted Samore, a Professor in the School from 1966 until 1990. Ted passed away in April of 1992. Phyllis and Ted are survived by their three children: Samuel, Eric, and Matthew, as well as seven grandchildren. She received her Masters of Education in 1965 from George Washington University. Phyllis worked as a teacher and a physical therapist for Milwaukee Public Schools and was an active and founding member of the Unitarian Church North in Mequon, Wisconsin, as well as the church pianist. Professor Ted Samore was Acting Director of SOIS (then known as SLIS) from 1971 to 1974, and chaired the SLIS Executive Committee. He was a consultant for professional organizations such as Ted & Phyllis Samore the American Library Association, Special Libraries Association, and the Wisconsin Library Association. Professor Samore was the author and editor of many books, as well as numerous articles and book reviews. He received several grants from the US Department of Education and was highly respected as a teacher and researcher by his colleagues and students. Although Ted and Phyllis have passed on, their namesake continues with the Annual Ted Samore Lecture, coming up on its 20th year in 2013. The lecture attracts national and international scholars on current issues in library and information science. In 2007, Phyllis, together with her sons Matthew, Eric and Sam, established a scholarship to honor Ted. The Ted Samore Scholarship supports MLIS students based on academic merit and outstanding student achievement or promise. To remember Phyllis or Ted, please make a gift in support of the Ted Samore Memorial Lecture Fund or the Ted Samore Scholarship Fund.
T
hank you.
To give online, please visit http://sois.uwm.edu/give. Please contact the Office of Development & Alumni Relations for any questions, or to mail a gift: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Office for Development and Alumni Relations P.O. Box 413 Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413 Fall 2012
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SCHOOL OF INFORMATION STUDIES | UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - MILWAUKEE
Faculty/Staff UPDATES Faculty Publications & Conferences Lau, Andrew, Anne Gilliland, & Kimberly Anderson. (2012). Naturalizing community engagement in information studies: Pedagogical approaches and persisting partnerships. Information, Communication, & Society 17(7). Anderson, Kimberly. (2012, July13). CoWorkshop Leader: Integrating pluralistic approaches into archival curriculum. 2012 Archival Education Research Institute, Los Angele, CA. Anderson, Kimberly. (2012, July 11). Paper Presentation: Passivity and externalization: Archivists’ avoidance of personal responsibility in framing appraisal. 2012 Archival Education Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA. Anderson, Kimberly. (2012, July 10). CoWorkshop Leader: Entering the job market: Tips for the graduating doctoral student. 2012 Archival Education Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA. Anderson, Kimberly. (2012, April 19). Panelist: Mind the gaps: Leveraging networks to learn. Midwest Archives Conference, Grand Rapids, MI. Haigh, Tom. (2012). Historical Reflections – Six lessons from bad history. Communications of the ACM, 55(9), 1-4. Miller, Steven J., Hur-Li Lee, Hope A. Olson, & Richard P. Smiraglia. (2012). Online cataloging education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Cataloging and Classification Quarterly, 50(2-3), 110-126. Special Issue on Online Delivery of Cataloging and Classification Education and Instruction.
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Thiele, Jennifer, Renee Kapusniak, and Jessica E. Moyer. (2012) Browsing for leisure reading in the digital environment: A case study. Poster Presentation, IFLA 2012, Helsinki, Finland. Thiele, Jennifer and Jessica E. Moyer. BOBCATSSS 2012 Conference Report. New Library World, Spring 2012. Moyer, Jessica E. (2012, June). Audiobooks and ebooks: A literature review and discussion of implications for library services. Reference and User Services Quarterly. Moyer, Jessica E. and Jennifer Thiele. (2012, January). Four case studies of ebook readers. Paper, 2012 BOCATSSS Symposium Proceedings. Amsterdam, Netherlands. Moyer, Jessica E. and Jennifer Thiele. (2012, January). Four case studies of ebook readers. Presentation, 2012 BOCATSSS Symposium. Amsterdam, Netherlands. Moyer, Jessica E. and Jennifer Thiele. (Spring, 2012). Ebooks in public libraries: A literature review and case study. New Library World. Moyer, Jessica E. (2011, Fall). What does it really mean to ‘read’ a text? Digital Literacies column, Journal of Adult and Adolescent Literacy, 55(3). Moyer, Jessica E. and Kaite Mediatore Stover. (2012, August/September). Space Opera for Battlestar Galatica Fans. Under the Radar Column, Public Libraries.
Moyer, Jessica E., Alicia Ahlvers, and Christy Goodnight. (2012, June). Reader’s advisory in the ebook era. Public Library Association program, American Library Association Annual Conference, Anaheim, CA. Moyer, Jessica E. (2012, April 23). Ebooks and readers’ advisory. Adult Reading Roundtable Spring Symposium. Moyer, Jessica E., Kaite Mediatore Stover, Keir Graff, and Katie Dunneback. (2012, March). Good books you might have missed. Public Libraries Association Conference, Philadelphia, PA. Dunnback, Katie and Jessica E. Moyer. (2012, March). Converstarter: Ebooks and public libraries. Public Library Association Conference, Philadelphia, PA. Olson, Hope A. (2011). A potência do não percebido: Hegel, Dewey, e seu lugar na corrente principal do pensamento classificatório / The Power of the Unperceived: Hegel, Dewey, and Their Place in Mainstream Classificatory Thought. InCID: Revista de Ciência da Informação e Documentação 2(1): 3-15. INVITED Martínez-Ávila, Daniel, Hope A. Olson and Margaret Kipp. (2012). New roles and global agents in information organization in Spanish libraries. Knowledge Organization 39(2): 125-136. REFEREED. Mehra, Bharat, Hope A. Olson and Suzana Ahmad. (2011). Integrating diversity across the LIS curriculum: An exploratory study of instructors’ perceptions and practices online. IFLA Journal 37(1): 39–51. REFEREED.
INFORMATION our focus INTERNATIONAL our scope INTERDISCIPLINARY our mindset
Fox, Melodie J, and Hope A Olson. (2012). Feminist Epistemologies and Knowledge Organization. In Richard P. Smiraglia and Hur-Li Lee (eds.), Cultural Frames of Knowledge (pp. 79-97). Würzburg, Germany: Ergon. INVITED Olson, Hope A, and Melodie J. Fox. (2011). Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: Deconstructionist, Marxist, feminist, postcolonialist. Gloria J. Leckie, Lisa M. Given, and John E. Buschman (eds.). Critical Theory for Library and Information Science: Exploring the Social from Across the Disciplines (pp.295-309) Santa Barbara, Calif. : Libraries Unlimited. INVITED Beak, Jihee and Hope A Olson. (2011). Analysis of metadata schemas for children’s libraries. In Smiraglia, Richard P., ed. Proceedings from North American Symposium on Knowledge Organization, Vol.3 (pp.112). Toronto, Canada, pp. 1-12. Av a i l able: http://journals.lib.washington.edu/ index.php/nasko/article/view/12785/11266 REFEREED Beak, Jihee and Hope A Olson. (2011). Comparison of metadata schemas: AACR2+ vs. ICDL’s metadata schema. In World Library and Information Congress : 77th IFLA General Conference and Assembly,. 13-18 August, San Juan, Puerto Rico. Available from http://conference.ifla.org/ past/ifla77/80-beak-en.pdf REFEREED Smiraglia, Richard P., Lee, Hur-Li, & Olson, Hope A. (2011). Epistemic presumptions of authorship. In the proceedings of iConference 2011, Inspiration, Integrity, and Intrepidity (pp. 137-143), February 8-11, 2011, Seattle, WA. Available: http://dl.acm. org/citation.cfm?doid=1940761.194078 REFEREED Olson, Hope A. (2012). Foreword. In Richard P. Smiraglia and Hur-Li Lee (eds.), Cultural Frames of Knowledge (pp. ix-x). Würzburg, Germany: Ergon. INVITED
Olson, Hope A (2011). Distilling Essence, Enforcing Shibboleth. One of two keynote speakers at the 1st Brazilian Conference on Knowledge Organization and Representation in Brasilia October 22. INVITED Martínez-Ávila, Daniel, Melodie J. Fox, Hope A. Olson. (2011). Intersectionality in users of library Knowledge Organization Systems: Lessons learned from the misrepresentation of Latina lesbians. Presented at I Congresso Brasileiro de Organizaçao e Representaçao do Conhecimento, October 22nd 2011, in Brasilia - DF, Brasil, REFEREED Olson, Hope A. (2011). Librarians: Women Inexorably Gaining Power The US/Canadian Experience and Beyond. At the Information Science and Documentation Program, USP, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil, October 17. INVITED Olson, Hope A (2011). The Ubiquity of Classification in Western Culture and Some of the Consequences. At the Depto. de Ciência da Informação (Information Science Department) UNESP - Universidade Estadual Paulista (São Paulo State University) October 14. INVITED Martínez-Ávila, Daniel, Hope A. Olson, Margaret Kipp. (2011). Nuevos roles y agentes globales en la organización de la información en bibliotecas. Presented at the X Congreso del Capítulo Español de ISKO, June 30th 2011, in Ferrol, Spain. REFEREED Peekhaus, Wilhelm. (2012). The enclosure and alienation of academic publishing: Lessons for the professoriate. tripleC - Cognition, Communication, Co-operation, 10(2), 577-599.
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Peekhaus, Wilhelm. (2012, June). Rethinking the capitalist academic publishing model. Canadian Communication Association 2012, Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences Annual Congress: Crossroads: Scholarship for an Uncertain World. University of Waterloo/ Wilfred Laurier University, Waterloo/Kitchener, ON, Canada. Peekhaus, Wilhelm. (2012, May). Conceptualizing and subverting the capitalist academic publishing model. Society for Socialist Studies 2012: “Critical Theories in an Uncertain World”, Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences Annual Congress: Crossroads: Scholarship for an Uncertain World. University of Waterloo/ Wilfred Laurier University, Waterloo/Kitchener, ON, Canada. Peekhaus, Wilhelm. (2012, May). Resisting agricultural biotechnology and promoting sustainable agriculture in South Africa: Lessons from the field. Environmental Studies Association of Canada 2012: “Environmental Knowledge: People and Change”, Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences Annual Congress: Crossroads: Scholarship for an Uncertain World. University of Waterloo/Wilfred Laurier University, Waterloo/Kitchener, ON, Canada. Peekhaus, Wilhelm. (2012, May). How malleable is the ‘gold standard’? A case study of South Africa’s access to information regime. Canadian Association for Information Science 2012: “Information in a Local & Global Context”, Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences Annual Congress: Crossroads: Scholarship for an Uncertain World. University of Waterloo/Wilfred Laurier University, Waterloo/ Kitchener, ON, Canada.
Peekhaus, Wilhelm. (2012). [Review of the book Information markets: A strategic guideline for the I-Commerce, by F. Linde & W.G. Stock]. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 63, 1477-1479.
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SCHOOL OF INFORMATION STUDIES | UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - MILWAUKEE
Faculty/Staff UPDATES Peekhaus, Wilhelm. (2012, May). The alienated labour of academic publishing: A modest proposal to reclaim the information commons. The Fourth Annual ICTs and Society-Conference: Critique, Democracy and Philosophy in 21st Century Information Society. Towards Critical Theories of Social Media. Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden. Wolfram, Dietmar. (2012). An analysis of Canadian contributions to the information science research literature: 1989-2008. Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science, 36(1-2), 52-66.
General Updates Professor Mohammed Aman participated in a national radio program from Portland, Oregon titled “Voices of the Middle East” to discuss the Egyptian elections and current situations and the direction the country is moving toward (www.voicesofthemiddleeast.com). He was elected to the Executive Board of the Association for Middle Eastern Public Policy and Administration (AMEPPA), the first professional association for public governance in the Middle East. He edited a special issue of the Digest of the Middle East Studies (DOMES) which includes scholarly articles dealing with the Arab Spring. He co-chaired the Third Middle East Dialogue (MED) held in Washington, DC, Feb. 25, 2012, and was named Co-Chair of the MED 2013.
Associate Professor Tom Haigh won a competitive process to be the first Jean Tague-Sutcliffe Visiting Scholar at the University of Western Ontario. This involved spending six weeks in residence at the Faculty of Information and Media Studies, where he taught a doctoral course “Histories of the Information Age” and delivered a public lecture on “The Secret History of Open Source.” Assistant Professor Jessica Moyer presented the main talk for the Adult Reading Roundtable Spring Symposium on Ebooks and Readers to a packed room in April. She was appointed columnist for Public Libraries, along with Kaite Mediatore Stover, for the “Under the Radar” column. Their first column will debut in the August/September issue. Professor Hope Olson received the 2012 “Distinguished Alumna Award” from the School of Library and Information Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Teaching Academic Staff Steven Miller served as a member of the DC-2012 Program Committee: International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia, September 3-7, 2012. He taught a two-day Metadata Workshop by invitation to the staff of the Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, Georgia, June 28-29, 2012. He developed and taught a new MLIS course, “RDF, Ontologies, and the Semantic Web.” Shana Ponelis was chosen as a fellow for the UW System OPID’s Wisconsin Teaching Fellows and Scholars program. She recently completed her PhD in Information Technology at the University of Pretoria in South Africa.
Adjuncts Bell, S. (2012). Librarian’s guide to online searching (3rd ed.). Santa Barbara, CA: Libraries Unlimited.
Professor Dietmar Wolfram was a panelist at the 2012 iConference held in Toronto, Canada in February, where he debated with an international team of presenters on “Emerging Web Metrics of Scholarship: Future or Fad?” He also presented “Who are the Disciples and Admirers of an Author?” at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada in February.
SOIS Receives $40,000 Grant
By Jeremy Simon
For Improvements and Additions To Online Course Offerings UWM’s Department of Academic Affairs has awarded funding for New and Refreshed Online Programs Grant to The School of Information Studies. Along with support from UWM’s Learning and Technology Center, this award will enable SOIS to update three existing courses, and to develop and launch five new courses into the online environment. This includes plans to develop a new post-graduate concentration area in Information Technology that will be available entirely online. Students will experience an improved interface within Seminar in Intellectual Freedom, will have access to new learning resources in Digital Libraries, and will explore new content that students find critical, relevant, and exciting within Information Marketing. In addition to the courses for the Information Technology concentration, SOIS will launch two new courses, Infoprenuership and Mobile Web Design and Application Development, which address two exciting, emerging topics in Information Studies.
28 | Inside SOIS
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4th ICTs and Soc Conference Uppsala, Sweden
D r. W i l h e l m P e e k h a u s S h a r e s A R e c e n t Conference Experience As anyone who has attended an academic conference knows, it can be a roll of the dice whether the intellectual stimulation of the offered content justifies the sometimes painful logistics of rearranging schedules, classes, and familial obligations. So, for me at least, travelling over 12 hours to reach a conference venue engenders a relatively high set of expectations. Happily, my expectations were exceeded at the fourth annual ICTs and Society Conference entitled “Critique, Democracy and Philosophy in 21st Century Information Society: Towards Critical Theories of Social Media,” which took place from May 2-4, 2012 at the University of Uppsala in Uppsala Sweden. I would like to acknowledge the Center for Information Policy Research for providing a travel grant that helped defray the costs of attending this conference. With seven plenary sessions and 15 parallel sessions, the conference provided three very busy days of stimulating intellectual engagement among approximately 160 people from a variety of academic disciplines, including communication and media studies, sociology, political science, journalism, and information studies. Although at first glance I thought the high number of plenaries to be quite ambitious, it turned out to be a true joy to hear from some of the greatest critical thinkers of our time – e.g., Vincent Mosco, Graham Murdock, Nick Dyer-Witheford, Andrew Feenberg, Christian Fuchs, Charles Ess, and Trebor Scholz. In order to ensure some logical connection between the papers presented in various sessions, the organizers, led by Dr. Christian Fuchs, were rather strict in their acceptance rate (57%) and even stricter in time-keeping for actual paper and plenary presenters; something other conference organizers might consider. This helped lend almost all of the sessions I attended a sense of coherence and, more importantly, direct engagement with the role of critique, critical theory, and philosophy with respect to the information society (itself a challenged concept), the internet, and social media. But what I found perhaps most stimulating and hopeful was the application of rigorous theoretical frameworks, sometimes in very novel ways, demonstrated by both seasoned academics and a great many scholars-in-training (i.e., Ph.D. students).
Although space precludes an enumeration of every critical theorist whose work informs much of the scholarship discussed at this conference, there is one whose name merits mention – Marx! Yes, you read that correctly. Karl’s work was back with a vengeance, as demonstrated by the multiple papers (including my own) that invoked and, in some cases, reworked several of his major theoretical formulations, including exploitation, alienation, and commodification. Although I am very cognizant of the fact that many of these scholars are European and even fewer are from Library and Information Science (although a few other LIS colleagues did attend, including from here at SOIS, GSLIS at Urbana Champaign, and FIMS at the University of Western Ontario), for me this was a hopeful sign. Hopeful because it will only be through renewed and deep engagement with critical theory and philosophy (something oftentimes and rather unfortunately in short supply in our discipline) sufficient to the task of interrogating the cultural, political, social and economic implications of new information and communication technologies that we will be able to make sense of both the turbulence and the liberatory pathways of possibility of our current conjuncture.
Dr. Wilhelm Peekhaus Dr. Wilhem Peekhaus presented his paper, The alienated labour of academic publishing: A modest proposal to reclaim the information commons at The Fourth Annual ICTs and SocietyConference: Critique, Democracy and Philosophy in 21st Century Information Society. Towards Critical Theories of Social Media in Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden.
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PO Box 413 Milwaukee, WI 53201
Save the Date! Oct. 9-11, 2012 • Illinois Library Association Conference Peoria, IL
Sept. 12, 2012 • Fall Welcome Back Celebration 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm NWQB 3550 2025 E Newport Ave, Milwaukee, WI 53211
Oct. 14, 2012 • Panther Prowl UW-Milwaukee Campus Join Team SOIS!
Sept. 25, 2012 • WI Distinguised Lecture in LIS featuring Dr. Marcia J. Bates 12:30 pm - 2:30 pm NWQB 3511 2025 E Newport Ave, Milwaukee, WI 53211
Oct. 23-26, 2012 • Wisconsin Library Association Conference LaCrosse, WI Oct. 24, 2012 • WLA / SOIS Student & Alumni Reunion 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm Radisson Hotel, LaCrosse, WI
Oct. 2-5, 2012 • Minnesota Library Association Conference St. Paul, MN Oct. 10, 2012 • MLIS Virtual Open House 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm - Live Online
Stay Informed! There are many ways for you to stay informed and up to date with the news and events at the School of Information Studies.
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