Volume 35 Number 2 Fall 2013

SLIS Welcomes Instructional Communication and Research

The School of Library and Information Science has wel-comed the Division of Instructional Communication and Research (ICR) as a unit within the School. When the Uni-versity developed a new general education program sev-eral years ago, a significant role emerged for the College of Communication and Information, and ICR was estab-lished as the unit responsible for developing and imple-menting the College’s role in the general education pro-gram. ICR has 21 full time and 12 adjunct faculty. The unit’s Web site has the following information: “We play an extremely important role in serving under-graduate students by delivering cutting-edge education in integrated communication skills (which are among the top skills sought by employers of college undergraduate stu-dents in all fields of study). Our research is valuable for improving pedagogy within traditional classroom settings within the college and across the university, as well as beyond them when we collabo-rate with colleagues studying, for example, risk and crisis communication, interpersonal communication, mass com-munication, health communication, agriculture, business, education, and engineering.” SLIS Director Jeff Huber told the newsletter that, in conversations he, Dean Dan O’Hair, and ICR Director Deanna Sellnow had, advantages to housing ICR within SLIS became clear. He presented the opportunity to SLIS faculty members to house ICR within the School, and the vote was unanimously in favor. As Jeff explained, the School’s new undergraduate In-formation Communication Technology (ICT) program strengthened the case for housing ICR within the School. “The three programs, LIS, ICT, and ICR, emphasize the application of technology to information in various ways. Bringing the three units together allows for the greatest de-gree of synergy possible. This is especially important to support the QEP.” Jeff’s reference to the QEP is to the University’s Quality Enhancement Plan, which, the UK web site explains, “is one of 12 core requirements the university takes on to

reaffirm its accreditation through the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). SACS reaffirmation of accreditation is mandatory for the university.” ICR Director Deanna Sellnow is QEP committee co-chair. Jeff continued: “Housing LIS, ICT, and ICR under the same administrative unit brings together resources to fully support UK’s QEP, ‘Presentation U,’ which is very much focused on information literacy, applied technology, and effective communication.” When the newsletter asked about resources, Jeff replied: “ICR retains/maintains its own budget, so there was no cost to the School. Also, the University has to fund the QEP; that’s a SACS requirement. As a result, there is the potential for new resources to come to SLIS.” In addition to the potential for new resources, Jeff said he sees numerous benefits to the School from housing ICR within SLIS. “I see one of the major benefits as strength-ening the research culture of the School. Each of the ICR tenure-track/tenured faculty members manages an active research agenda. The ICR lecturers are PhD-prepared and many of them also manage active research agendas.” He continued: “Housing ICR will help us promote ICT. SLIS becomes a larger unit (and one with a stronger em-phasis at the undergraduate level without detracting from our graduate level mission). Housing ICR provides addi-tional opportunities to explore how the School might ex-pand further its undergraduate initiatives. I also believe that housing ICR within SLIS helps better position the School to be recognized as the campus leader in eLearn-ing.” He said, finally, “Although ICR does not award degrees, it has been approved to offer a graduate certifi-cate. Another benefit is the real possibility of becoming an active partner [with ICR] in the Distance Education Graduate Certificate Program.” Concerning the decision to house ICR within SLIS, Dean O’Hair told the newsletter: “I think it’s a very nice fit with all of the innovative work going on in LIS. The fact that LIS was, by most ac-counts, the first fully online degree program at UK makes them innovators from way back, and ICR has demon-strated similar characteristics, that is, to be innovators in pedagogy and instructional research. I think it’s a very good match. We have high expectations for this merger.”

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Fall Enrollment 2013: 242 Students; 33 States and District of Columbia

Fall 2013 enrollment in the School’s master’s degree pro-gram is 242, with 33 states and the District of Columbia represented. Table 1 has additional information about the fall student body.

Table 1 Student Body Fall 2013 Residence during fall semester Kentucky 160 Ohio 9 Virginia 8 Georgia 6 Illinois 5 Tennessee 5 Other 49 Enrollment status Part time 142 Full time 100 Ethnicity White (or undeclared) 229 Black 4 Hispanic 3 Other 6 Gender Female 192 Male 50

SLIS Credit Hour Production

Credit hour production (credit hours of each class multiplied by number of students in the class) has grown in importance as state appropriations have declined. Table 2 shows the School’s growth in credit hour production in recent years.

Table 2 Credit Hour Production Undergraduate Graduate Total

Fall 2013 558 1731 2289 Fall 2012 216 1752 1968 Spring 2013 324 1668 1992 Total, FY 2013 3960 Fall 2011 204 1518 1722 Spring 2012 120 1539 1659 Total, FY 2012 3381 Fall 2010 * 1416 1416 Spring 2011 * 1323 1323 Total, FY 2011 2739 Fall 2009 165 1455 1620 Spring 2010 165 1242 1407 Total, FY 2010 3027 *The School offered no undergraduate courses.

In Table 2 the substantial increase in undergraduate credit hour production fall 2013, relative to fall 2012, is largely due to registration in the School’s Information Studies courses.

UK SLIS Among Leaders in Enrollment Growth

Information in Table 3 shows percent change in enrollment in a number of ALA-accredited master’s degree programs between fall 2008 and fall 2011. Assistant Director of Stu-dent Affairs Will Buntin told the newsletter the information was taken from the ALISE annual reports, and fall 2011 information was the most recent available at the time he prepared the analysis. He added: “The selection of 2008 was somewhat arbitrary. We wanted to see the change over sev-eral years, and, with 2011 the most recent year available, I simply went back three years.” Concerning the programs chosen for the analysis, he explained: “Jeff [SLIS Director Jeff Huber] and I both selected schools, and we tried to pay attention to programs that Jeff felt were peer schools, some programs of similar size to us, some programs in a similar geographic region.”

Table 3 Percent Change in Enrollment ALA Accredited Programs

Fall 2008 – Fall 2011 University of Illinois + 19.77%University of North Carolina Chapel Hill + 18.46%University of Kentucky + 11.82%University of Wisconsin Milwaukee + 5.78%University of Alabama + 2.71%Drexel University + 2.13%University of Oklahoma + 1.70%University of Wisconsin Madison ̶ 1.36%Louisiana State University ̶ 4.57%Wayne State University ̶ 6.17%All Programs in Table ̶ 10.48%Indiana University ̶ 11.71%Kent State University ̶ 12.17%University of South Carolina ̶ 13.90%Florida State University ̶ 19.97%UCLA ̶ 20.22%University of North Texas ̶ 21.09%University of Arizona ̶ 21.50%University of North Carolina Greensboro ̶ 24.59%Rutgers University ̶ 24.90%Texas Woman’s University ̶ 27.37%University of South Florida ̶ 34.52%Source: ALISE annual reports.

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Eight Join SLIS Faculty The School of Library and Information Science welcomed eight new faculty this fall, including three who are the first to be hired for the Information Communication Technology (ICT) undergraduate and graduate programs. Wisconsin native Dr. Melissa A. Adler, Assistant Professor in the School’s Library and Information Science program, completed her Ph.D. in May 2012 at the University of Wis-consin-Madison School of Library & Information Studies, with a Ph.D. minor in Gender and Women’s Studies. Her dissertation title is For SEXUAL PERVERSION See PARAPHILIAS: Disciplining Sexual Deviance at the Li-brary of Congress. She earned an M.L.I.S. at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2004 and a B.S. in English at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh in 2000. Prof. Adler’s peer-reviewed journal articles include: • Toward a Taxonomy of Harm in Knowledge Organiza-

tion Systems, Knowledge Organization, v.40, no.4, 2013 (co-authored with Joseph Tennis at the University of Wash-ington); • Disciplining Scholarship at the Library of Congress,

Knowledge Organization, v.39, no.5, 2012; • Transcending Library Catalogs: A Comparative Study

of Controlled Terms in LCSH and User-Generated Tags in LibraryThing for Transgender Books, Journal of Web Li-brarianship, v.3, no.4, 2009. Her paper, PARAPHILIAS: The Perversion of Meaning in the Library of Congress Subject Headings, presented at the SIG-CR Meeting at ASIS&T 2011, appears in Advances in Classification Online, Dec. 2011. A version of the paper will be included in Feminist and Queer Information Studies Reader, published this fall by Litwin Books. Dr. Adler has received a number of fellowships and awards: • COMM-B Teaching Assistant Fellowship, University

of Wisconsin Writing Across the Curriculum Program, spring 2012; • Vilas Conference Presentation Grant, University of

Wisconsin Graduate School, fall 2011; • Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship, Social

Science Research Council, summer 2010; • Linda B. Richardson Travel Scholarship, School of Li-

brary & Information Studies, fall 2009. While at Wisconsin, Dr. Adler taught LIS 853 Metadata Standards and Applications and LIS 654 Information Agency Management. She was a Teaching Assistant for the undergraduate courses LIS 202 Information Divides and Differences in a Multicultural Society and LIS 201 The In-formation Society. In the School of Library & Information Studies continuing education program, she taught RDA: What You Need to Know, and Fundamentals of Cataloging. She has taught both face-to-face and online. Her profes-sional positions include Project Assistant-Cataloging, Uni-versity of Wisconsin-Madison School of Library & Infor-mation Studies Laboratory Library, 2007-2010; and Librar-ian/Archivist, Marian College of Fond du Lac, 2004-2007.

In 2012 Dr. Adler was inducted into Beta Phi Mu, the international library and information studies honor society. She is also a Communications Officer for ASIS&T’s Classi-fication Research SIG. The link to Dr. Adler’s academia.edu account is http://uky.academia.edu/MelissaAdler Dr. C. Sean Burns, Assistant Professor in the LIS program, completed a Ph.D. in May of this year at the University of Mis-souri School of Information Science & Learning Technologies. His dissertation, Free or Open Access to Scholarly Documenta-tion: Google Scholar or Academic Libraries, “is a bibliometric examination of the impact that decentralized scholarly content and diverse scholarly information-seeking practices have on academic libraries.” Dr. Burns earned an M.A. in Information Science and Learning Technologies, with an emphasis in li-brary science, in May 2009, also at the University of Missouri. He earned a B.A. in Philosophy & Religious Studies and Eng-lish in May 1996 at Monmouth College, Monmouth, IL. Dr. Burns’ research interests include academic libraries, scholarly communication, library and information science eth-ics, library and information science history, and research meth-odologies and methods. He is particularly interested in how academic librarians respond to the actions of those they serve or potentially serve. He collaborated with Dr. Denise Adkins to follow up a survey she had conducted of Arizona public librar-ies in 1999. Dr. Burns explained to the newsletter:

Dr. Adkins wanted to follow up and see how librarians were faring in light of the recent political environment con-cerning Mexican immigration in Arizona. We looked at Spanish language collections, including adult and children, and forms of access to the library and its collection, includ-ing Spanish speaking staff and Spanish language web inter-faces. We found that while librarians are facing some chal-lenges in growth in these areas, they are faring well despite the political climate. The research highlights the importance of professional values and shows how political the profes-sion can be.

For their findings, see Adkins, D., & Burns, C. Sean. (2013). Arizona Public Libraries Serving the Spanish-Speaking. Refer-ence and User Services Quarterly, 53(1), 60-70. At the University of Missouri, Dr. Burns taught ISLT 7314 Reference Sources and Services, ISLT 9420 Information in the Disciplines, a scholarly communication course, and ISLT 9443 Academic Libraries. He has additional experience as a Teach-ing Assistant, which includes courses in managing collections and access, foundations of library and information science, in-formation storage and retrieval, metadata, and ethics and in-formation. Dr. Burns has professional library experience at Stephens College, Columbia, MO, as Technical Services and Cataloging Assistant Librarian and Evening and Weekend Reference Li-brarian. He has numerous refereed articles and proceedings papers and has made a number of international presentations. He has also received a number of scholarships and national awards. Two of his recent awards are the TA Choice Award, Missouri Students Association, 2013, and the Eugene Garfield Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, Beta Phi Mu, 2012. For more information see his web site http://cseanburns.net/journal/

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Assistant Professor Dr. Maria Claire Cahill, who admin-isters the UK SLIS school library media program, earned a Ph.D. in 2009 at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her principal interest while in the doctoral program was literacy education, and her dissertation title is Administra-tors’ Literacy Beliefs and Leader-ship Behaviors as Reflected in Early Childhood Practice. She completed an M.L.I.S. degree at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, in 1998, and she earned a B.S. in history and sociology at East Tennessee State University in 1993. At the time Dr. Cahill ac-cepted the UK SLIS offer, she was Assistant Professor at Texas Woman’s University School of Li-brary & Information Studies. She was School Library Media Spe-cialist in the Beaufort County School District, Beaufort, SC, from August 1998 to August 2004. Dr. Cahill has published numerous scholarly articles and many book reviews and has made a number of presenta-tions. Her grant awards and honors include: • Primary Investigator on The Sound of an Odyssey:

Content Analysis of Audio Book Award Winners, a Texas Woman’s University College of Professional Education (COPE) Research Development grant 2012; • Primary Investigator on Literacy Matters: Educating

Librarians to Serve Families with Young Children, in the amount of $469,999, in the Laura Bush 21st Century Li-brarian Program, Institute of Museum and Library Services, 2012; • Co-Primary Investigator on Professional Development

for School Library Leaders: Achieving the Leadership Goals Described in Empowering Learners: Guidelines for School Library Media Programs through Regional and State Confer-ence Offerings, a DEMCO Research Grant in the amount of $2,000 by the Texas Library Association, 2011; • Primary Investigator on Moving Picture Books Re-

search Study, a Texas Woman’s University COPE Research Development grant in the amount of $1,000, 2010; • Recipient of Hazel Taylor Spitze Fellowship in the

amount of $8,000, Department of Child and Family Studies, University of Tennessee, 2004 and 2005. Dr. Cahill has a substantial record of national and institu-tion-based professional service. She currently serves on the editorial board of School Library Research and is a member of the ALA Literacy and Outreach Services Committee. She was recently elected to serve as Secretary for the Educators of School Librarians section of the American Association of School Librarians division of the American Library Asso-ciation. In addition, Prof. Cahill is a member of the Asso-ciation of Library Services to Children, Managing Chil-dren’s Services Committee. In 2011-2012 she served on the American Association of School Librarians Distinguished School Administrator Award Committee.

Dr. Youngseek Kim, Assistant Professor in the School’s LIS program, completed a Ph.D. at Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies in June 2013. His dissertation title is Institutional and Individual Influences on Scientists’ Data Sharing Behaviors. He completed an M.S. in Infor-

mation Management at Syracuse in August 2008. In 2006 he was awarded a B.A. degree (summa cum laude) in Religious Studies and Information and Multimedia Culture Studies at Seoul National University, Korea. While an undergraduate, Dr. Kim was a visiting stu-dent at the School of In-formation Science & Learning Technologies, University of Missouri –

Columbia, January-December 2005. Dr. Kim’s honors and awards include: • Best Paper Award, “Education for eScience Profession-

als: Integrating Data Curation and Cyberinfrastructre,” with Benjamin Addom and Jeffrey Stanton, International Digital Curation Conference, Chicago, 2010; • Certificate in University Teaching in Recognition of

Excellence in Professional Preparation for an Academic Career, Future Professoriate Program in the Syracuse Uni-versity Graduate School, 2010; • Master’s Prize in Information Management in Recogni-

tion of Excellence in Scholarship and Research by the Syra-cuse University School of Information Studies, 2008; • Graduation with Top Honors from Seoul National Uni-

versity, 2006; • Excellent Thesis Award from the Writing Center at

Seoul National University, 2006; thesis title: “Korean Re-ligious Communities’ Changes Developed by the Internet Technology.” His scholarships and fellowships include: • eScience Fellowship from the Institute of Museum and

Library Services, Producing Library Faculty to Educate the Next Generation of eScience Professionals. The award was obtained by the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University, 2011-2013; • Jeffrey Katzer Doctoral Fellowship from the School of

Information Studies at Syracuse University, 2010-2011, in the amount of $10,000; • Korean Honor Scholarship from the Embassy of the

Republic of Korea in the United States, 2010; • Governmental Fellowship from the Korean Culture and

Content Agency to support study abroad, 2005, in the amount of $9,000; • Three-Year Full Scholarship and Stipend from Cho-

Sun Daily Newspaper, awarded in 1999. While at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies, Dr. Kim taught IST449 Human Computer Interac-tion, IST649 Human Interaction with Computers, IST614

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Fall 2013 Page 5

New faculty at SLIS, left-to-right, back row: Youngseek Kim, Melissa Adler, Maria Cahill; front row: Michael Pennell, Michael Tsikerdekis, Sherali Zeadally, Sean Burns, Jasmine McNealy.

Management Principles for Information Professionals, and IST621 Introduction to Information Management. Dr. Jasmine E. McNealy, Assistant Professor in the Infor-mation Communication Technology program, completed a Ph.D. in August 2008 at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. Her program of study was mass communication, and her dissertation title is The Press Behaving Badly: First Amendment Freedoms for News Me-dia and Limitations on Lawful Newsgathering. In August 2006 Dr. McNealy was awarded a J.D. degree by the Uni-versity of Florida Levin College of Law and an M.A. at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communi-cations. She earned a B.S. at the University of Wisconsin in 2002, with majors in journalism and Afro-American Studies. Dr. McNealy’s publications include: • “Who owns your

friends?: PhoneDog v. Kravitz and business claims of trade secret in social media informa-tion,” Rutgers Computer & Technology Law Jour-nal, 39, 30-55 (2013); • “A Textual Analysis

of the influence of McIn-tyre v. Ohio Elections Commission in cases involving anonymous online commenters,” First Amend-ment Law Review 11, 149-171 (2012); • “The Emerging Conflict between Newsworthiness and

the Right to be Forgotten,” Northern Kentucky Law Review 39(2), 119-135 (2012); • “The Privacy Implications of Digital Preservation: The

Library of Congress Twitter Archive and the Social Net-works Theory of Privacy,” Elon Law Review 3(2), 133-160 (2012); • “Balancing Privacy and the Public Interest: A Review

of State Wiretap Laws as Applied to the Press,” Law/Technology Journal, World Jurist Association 44(1), 1-45 (2011); • “Plaintiff’s Status as a Consideration in Misrepresenta-

tion and Promissory Estoppel Cases against the Media,” Media Law & Ethics 2(3/4), 215-241 (2010); • “Angling for Phishers: Legislative Responses to Decep-

tive E-Mail,” Communication Law & Policy 13(2), 275-300 (2008). Dr. McNealy brings considerable teaching experience to UK SLIS. At the time of her appointment she was Assis-tant Professor at the Syracuse University S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication, where she taught the re-quired senior level communication law class as well as the graduate level communication law courses. Prior to going to Syracuse, she was Assistant Professor at Louisiana State University’s Manship School of Mass Communication. As Adjunct Lecturer and Teaching Assistant at the University

of Florida College of Journalism and Communication, Prof. McNealy taught “Public Relations Writing,” a required course for all public relations majors; “Law of Mass Com-munication,” a required senior level course in the College; and assisted for “TV in American Society.” For more in-formation, please see her web site at: http://unmaskingdoe.com Dr. Michael C. Pennell joined the School of Library and Information Science faculty this fall as Associate Professor in the Instructional Communication and Research program. He earned a Ph.D. in English at Purdue University. His primary area was Rhetoric and Composition, and his secondary areas were Digitality and Technology, and Writing Program Ad-

ministration. The title of his dissertation is English in the “Hurricane Winds of Change”: Labor Mar-ket Intermediaries and Literacy in Two Indiana Counties. Dr. Pennell earned an M.A. in Eng-lish, also at Purdue, and a B.A. in English at Eastern Michigan University. At the time Dr. Pennell accepted the offer to join

the University of Kentucky faculty, he was Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at

the University of Rhode Island, Kingston and Director of Graduate Studies in the program. While at URI, Dr. Pennell taught a variety of courses, face-to-face and online, includ-ing WRT 227 Business Communications, WRT 235 Writing in Electronic Environments, WRT 645 Seminar in Rhetoric and Composition, WRT 104 Writing to Inform and Explain, and WRT 201 Argumentative and Persuasive Texts. Also while at the University of Rhode Island, Prof. Pen-nell received numerous awards and grants, which include: • Sabbatical Leave Award, project title: “Tweet that

fish”: Social Media and the Local Food Movement, spring 2013; • Technology Innovation Grant, “Online Peer Review,”

Provost’s Office, 2012; • Career Enhancement Grant, URI Council for Research,

2012. Dr. Pennell has written a number of refereed articles, book chapters, and book reviews; and he has made a sub-stantial number of conference presentations. While at URI he established an impressive record of departmental and campus service. He was a member of the Graduate Council, the Graduate Curriculum Committee, and the Graduate Awards and Fellowships Committee. For several years he was Webmaster, Writing & Rhetoric. His professional and extramural service includes: • Editorial Associate, Literacy in Composition Studies; • Proposal Reviewer, 2010 and 2011 Computers & Writ-

ing Conference;

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• Member, Town of Charlestown, RI, Juvenile Hearing Board, spring 2008-2010; • Member, Cengage Learning’s Technology Advisory

Board, 2009-present; • Editorial Board Member, Enculturation: A Journal of

Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture, spring 2008-present. Prof. Pennell also has been a manuscript reviewer as well as a textbook reviewer. For more information, please see his web site at: https://ci.uky.edu/icr/users/mcpe225 A native of Greece, Dr. Michail Tsikerdekis, Assistant Professor in the School’s ICT program, completed a Ph.D. in Informatics at Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Repub-lic. His research field for the Ph.D. was information society and human-computer interaction. In his CV he explains: “My research develops a framework for social interaction design through which designers can develop social media software and proactively inhibit, promote and control social attitudes, behaviors, and phenomena of interest. For exam-ple, designing software for better decision-making in teams while inhibiting negative effects such as conformity or groupthink.” He also holds a five-year degree in Forestry and Natural Environment from Aristotle University, Thessa-loniki, Greece. At Masaryk University Dr. Tsikerdekis received a number of honors and awards: • Top seminar presentation award. Received a

scholarship for top seminar presentation in the informatics seminars held at the Department of Informatics. Academic year 2010/2011. • Doctoral student support scholarship. January 2011 -

September 2011. • Top seminar presentation award. Received a

scholarship for excellence in seminar presentations for informatics seminars held at the Department of Informatics. Academic year 2009/2010. • Doctoral student support scholarship. January 2010 -

December 2010. Dr. Tsikerdekis’ peer-reviewed publications include: • The Effects of Perceived Anonymity and Anonymity

States on Conformity and Groupthink in Online Communi-ties: A Wikipedia Study. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 64(5) (May 2013): 1001-1015; • Pro/Con Lists and their Use in Group Decision Support

Systems for Reducing Groupthink. INFOCOMP Journal of Computer Science. 11(3) (September 2012); • The Choice of Complete Anonymity Versus Pseudo-

nymity for Aggression Online. eMinds International Jour-nal on Human-Computer Interaction, 2(8):35-57. While at Masaryk University, Dr. Tsikerdekis taught courses in English and Czech, in classes of local as well as international students. Some of the courses he taught are research methodology, human-computer interaction: social interaction design and social media, statistical data analysis, and introduction to social media. Prof. Tsikerdekis’ current research interests revolve around developing efficient collaborative social media soft-

ware by understanding how people use the software and how its design affects the way users interact and exchange information within these virtual social spaces. Dr. Tsikerdekis summarized his teaching philosophy: “I believe that learning, especially when it comes to informa-tion technology, should be easy. Questions such as ‘why?’ and ‘how?’ are what I expect from my students when learn-ing new concepts. With the proper encouragement, people not only ask such questions but are even willing to draw on personal experience.” Dr. Tsikerdekis explains his teaching philosophy more extensively in his personal web site at: http://tsikerdekis.wuwcorp.com Dr. Sherali Zeadally joined the UK SLIS faculty this fall as Associate Professor, with tenure, in the ICT program. He earned a doctoral degree in Computer Science at the Uni-versity of Buckingham, England, in 1996, and a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science at the University of Cambridge, England, in 1991. At the time he accepted the offer to join the UK SLIS faculty, he was a tenured Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Information Technology, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, University of the District Columbia, Washington, DC, where he also served as the Graduate Program Director from 2007 to 2010. Dr. Zeadally was the Founder and Director of the Net-work Systems Laboratory in the Department of Computer Science and Information Technology, where he also was Lead Scientist at the Assurance Research Center for Trusted Information Computing. While at the University of the Dis-trict Columbia, he taught several undergraduate and gradu-ate courses in information security, network security, data communication and computer networks, and computer net-work architecture and protocol. Dr. Zeadally has also been a faculty member at Wayne State University and University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Prof. Zeadally is the author/co-author of nearly 200 peer-reviewed technical publications in refereed international academic journals, books, and proceedings of conferences, symposia, and workshops, including over 90 refereed jour-nal papers. He has won three best paper awards, including the prestigious IET Communications Premium Award for the best refereed journal paper in 2011. While he was at the University of the District of Columbia, he received two Out-standing Research Awards, one in 2008 and another in 2013. Dr. Zeadally received two College of Science Teaching Awards at Wayne State University and the University-wide Annual President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, in 2004. To date he remains the only professor in the Depart-ment of Computer Science at Wayne State University to have won the prestigious President’s Award. He has re-ceived several other highly competitive fellowships nation-ally and internationally, including the Boeing Welliver Fac-ulty Fellowship (from Boeing), the Fulbright Specialist Award (Sweden), the Erskine Fellowship (University of Canterbury, New Zealand), a visiting fellowship at Stellen-bosch University (South Africa), as well as Visiting Profes-sorship Awards to University of Paris 12 (France) and Pa-

Fall 2013 Page 7

risTECH University (France). He received the annual, uni-versity-wide Distinguished Alumnus Award from Univer-sity of Buckingham, England, in June 2013. Prof. Zeadally currently serves on the editorial board of over 20 peer-re-viewed international journals. He is a Fellow of the British Computer Society (FBCS) and a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (FIET). Dr. Zeadally’s research and teaching interests include: computer networks (including wired and wireless networks), network/system/cyber security, mobile computing, ubiqui-tous computing, energy-efficient networking, multimedia networking and protocols, and performance evaluation of networks and systems. For more information, please see his web site at: http://www.uky.edu/~sze223/

SLIS Faculty Activities In the spring of this year Prof. Donald Case traveled to Australia and Brazil to work with information scientists in those countries. His account of the trips appears elsewhere in the newsletter. Prof. Lisa O’Connor this summer taught a course at Queens University, Belfast, Northern Ireland. She has writ-ten an account of the experience, which appears elsewhere in the newsletter. Prof. Namjoo Choi provided the newsletter with informa-tion about four articles that have been published or are forthcoming: • Huang, K.-Y., Chengalur-Smith, I., Uzuner, Ö., Nam-

bisan, P. & Choi, N. (2012) Supporters in Deed: Studying Online Support Provision from the Perspective of Social Capital, Proceedings of the 33rd International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2012), Orlando, Florida, De-cember 16th – 19th. • Pruett, J., & Choi, N. (2013). A comparison between

select open source and proprietary integrated library sys-tems. Library Hi Tech, 31(3), 3-3. • Choi, N. Information Systems Attachment: An Empiri-

cal Exploration of its Antecedents and its Impact on Com-munity Participation Intention. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. (forth-coming) • Palmer, A., & Choi, N. The current state of library open

source software research: a descriptive literature review and classification. Library Hi Tech. (forthcoming) Prof. Namjoo Choi Discusses His Research When the newsletter learned that Prof. Namjoo Choi’s arti-cle, Information Systems Attachment: An Empirical Explo-ration of its Antecedents and its Impact on Community Par-ticipation Intention, would appear in Journal of the Ameri-can Society for Information Science and Technology, we asked him to discuss the research the article reports. “This article evolved from my dissertation work in which I examined the impact of loyalty, ideology, and identifica-

tion on users’ contributory behaviors (e.g., online commu-nity participation) in the context of Open Source Software (OSS).” Dr. Choi said he “identified a research gap, that attachment is a largely unexplored concept in both informa-tion systems [IS] research and practice, although, with the increasing use of IS in our everyday lives, people may feel an attachment to their software applications beyond simply perceiving them as a tool for task performance.” Using web browsers as the target information system, Prof. Choi conducted an online survey. Approximately 12,000 University of Kentucky students were invited to par-ticipate in the survey, and a total of 1,081 completed sur-veys were used for data analysis. “I found that expressive visual aesthetics (e.g., creativity and originality) is the strongest antecedent of IS attachment, and that personaliza-tion is the second strongest antecedent of IS attachment, followed by task performance. I also found that IS attach-ment has a strong positive impact on users’ community par-ticipation intention.” Concluding, Dr. Choi suggested that “although superior performance is a necessary condition for any IS, improving users’ experience through expressive visual aesthetics and personalization is becoming more criti-cal.” While Prof. Choi intends to further probe the phenome-non of IS attachment from various angles, such as adaptive or creative IS use resulting from attachment, he continues to conduct research on OSS. That research is the basis for two articles that he coauthored: • A comparison between select open source and proprie-

tary integrated library systems, Library Hi Tech, 31(3); • The current state of library open source software re-

search: a descriptive literature review and classification, Library Hi Tech (forthcoming).

Prof. Anthony Limperos’ Fitness Gaming Interview Airs on WKYT

On August 22 Lexington TV station and CBS affiliate WKYT aired an interview with Dr. Anthony Limperos, Assistant Professor in the School’s Instructional Communi-cation and Research unit, in which he discussed his research into the health benefits of exercise games. In her introduction, reporter Kristen Kennedy noted that “Video games have had a bad reputation over the years. Health experts claim they contribute to sedentary lifestyles, and can be factors of childhood obesity. In a WKYT Reality Check, we take a look at how some games could be consid-ered healthy choices.” Replying to Ms. Kennedy, Dr. Limperos conceded: “Video games do have a negative stigma attached to them, and in fact the bulk of the research that we've seen -- psy-chology, communication, and other fields -- has suggested there are negative effects.” In his research, Prof. Limperos told Ms. Kennedy, he “is taking a closer look at the stereotypes weighing down the gaming industry.” He continued: “Exercise games more than any other type of video game available are actually healthy to play so you're actually up, you're moving around,

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it's different than the sedentary button pushing that we're used to.” Ms. Kennedy added: “The UK professor is looking at the social aspects of gaming -- can they teach you how to exer-cise? Do they keep you active? What is it about the games that keep you playing?” Prof. Limperos replied: “In the short term the research that I've done has shown that games can keep people moti-vated toward continuing playing, actually exercising outside the gaming environment.” After noting that “a lot of the exercise games teach good health habits,” he concluded: “These systems if you have them playing the right games do have the potential to be something that is pro-social or posi-tive for us.” The newsletter asked Dr. Limperos how he became inter-ested in gaming research and if the research continues. He explained: “I originally became interested in video games research because I play games and was concerned about the potential link between violent games and aggression. After researching that topic for roughly two years, I became more intrigued with the idea that games could help teach and en-courage prosocial behaviors. My research is ongoing and I have plans to research the effects of both exercise games and other more traditional video games.” The WKYT interview is at http://www.wkyt.com/news/headlines/WKYT-Reality-Check-Fitness-gaming-220729261.html

Prof. Sean Burns Explores ‘Wealth of Material’ from Ralph Halstead Parker

“In 1936,” SLIS Prof. Sean Burns explained to the news-letter, “Ralph Halstead Parker published the first article on library automation.1 This article is important for two rea-sons. It described his work to develop a punched card sys-tem for the circulation department at the University of Texas Libraries, and is, in this sense, the first of its kind. Second, it inspired Frederick Kilgour to work on his own punched card system at Harvard. Thirty years later, the two would coauthor a report that led to the founding of OCLC.” According to Dr. Burns, “Parker has been referred to as ‘the father of library automation in the United States,’2 but, despite his contributions, not much has been written about his work to promote and develop library automation. Fortu-nately, since Parker was the Library Director at the Univer-sity of Missouri from 1947 through 1969, he left behind a wealth of material now held at the University of Missouri Archives, which I was able to access and explore as a Ph.D. student at MU. The exploration turned into a research project about the history of library automation and that history's relevance to today's discussions about information technology in librar-ies. Specifically, this involves a historical reflection on how technology not only serves library users but, as importantly, the library profession. The resulting paper will appear in portal: Libraries and the Academy, in January 2014.”

1 Ralph Halstead Parker, “The Punched Card Method in Cir-culation Work,” Library Journal, December 1, 1936, 903-05. 2 Judith Hopkins, "The Ohio College Library Center," Li-brary Resources & Technical Services 17(3) (1973): 309.

Prof. Jasmine McNealy Is Inaugural Kopenhaver Center Fellow

The Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver Center for the Advancement of Women in Communication announced in early August that SLIS Prof. Jasmine McNealy was selected as an inau-gural Fellow. Dr. McNealy, who was chosen from more than 40 applicants, joins 23 other Fellows in the inaugural group. The Kopenhaver Center conducted its first workshop for the 24 Fellows at the 2013 Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) convention, held in Washington, DC, on August 7. According to the press release, “The Kopenhaver Center Fellows were se-lected through an application process that included the more than 1000 AEJMC member institutions.” The Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver Center for the Advance-ment of Women in Communication was established in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Florida International University through a gift by SJMC Dean Emerita and Prof. Dr. Lillian Lodge Kopenhaver. The Ko-penhaver Center’s mission

is to empower women scholars and professionals in the field of communications in order to develop visionaries in both the academy and the industry who will become lead-ers in the society and make a difference in their com-munities.

The release announcing creation of the Center explains: The Center will engage females in a series of work-shops, lectures, advisory boards, panel discussions and other activities, to further prepare them for successful communication careers – encouraging them to be future influencers and distinguished leaders of the profession.

Prof. Sherali Zeadally Discusses Threat of Cyberattacks on Nation’s Infrastructure

Prof. Sherali Zeadally, recruited for the School’s Informa-tion Communication Technology programs, has a particular research interest in system/network/cybersecurity and in-formation assurance. In early September ABC News Chan-nel 36 interviewed him about the possibility that hackers would attack the nation’s power grid and other critical infra-structures. The September 3 interview can be seen here. Many critical infrastructures are managed by “critical control systems,” and, in a recent article, Prof. Zeadally and Cristina Alcaraz discuss “the fundamental architectural components of these critical control systems, identify vul-nerabilities and potential threats, and describe protection solutions that can be deployed to mitigate attacks.” See C. Alcaraz and S. Zeadally, “Critical Control System Protec-tion in the 21st Century”, IEEE Computer, October 2013.

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Prof. Sean Burns presents an overview of altmetrics. Photo courtesy of Heather Burke

Prof. Sean Burns Participates in Altmetrics Panel Discussion

Over the past decade or so, “Open Access” has emerged as an alternative to traditional scholarly communication, in which commercial publishers have exerted ever more con-trol, and subscriptions to many scholarly journals have be-come ever more expensive. A few years ago, “Open Access Week” was introduced:

Open Access Week, a global event now entering its sixth year, is an opportunity for the academic and re-search community to continue to learn about the potential benefits of Open Access, to share what they’ve learned with colleagues, and to help inspire wider participation in helping to make Open Access a new norm in scholarship and research.

University of Kentucky Libraries celebrated Open Access Week 2013 (October 21-27) with a panel discussion:

#Altmetrics: Demystifying the Link between Research Impact and Social Media

The program was arranged by UK Libraries faculty member Adrian Ho, Director of Digital Scholarship. In information about the panel discussion, he explained:

More scholars have turned to the Web to share ideas and comment on research studies through social media. Although these online interactions may contribute to re-search assessment, they are not accounted for by tradi-tional impact metrics. To address this new scholarly communication landscape, some academics have asserted the importance of alternative metrics.

“Altmetrics” has emerged as the term to refer to the alterna-tive metrics. Before beginning his presentation, SLIS Prof. Sean Burns, who was the member of the altmetrics panel assigned the task of providing an overview, informed the audience that he does not endorse altmetrics. He began his presentation by quoting Pritchard on the purpose of bibliometrics:

to shed light on the processes of written communication and of the nature and course of development of a disci-pline (in so far as this is displayed through written com-munication).

To that end, bibliometrics is: the assembling and interpretation of statistics related to books and periodicals … to demonstrate historical move-ments, to determine the national or universal research use of books and journals, and to ascertain in many local situations the general use of books and journals.

After reminding the audience of the seminal work of Eugene Garfield that resulted in the Journal Impact Factor, which came to be regarded by many as the principal metric for establishing the prominence of a journal in its field, Prof. Burns noted the crucial role that communication plays in science and the need to: evaluate science, in which peer re-view is central; communicate and disseminate good science, which involves publishing, organizing, filtering, and re-

trieving; and identify important work, i.e., to determine the impact. According to Prof. Burns, many hold the view that “schol-arly communication is broken because it is a system that: • Is largely based on a slow, issue-based, print publica-

tion model. • Involves a peer review system that is prone to bias, er-

ror, overload. • Contains content that is insufficiently described and

hinders reproducibility. • Leaves out important supplementals, such as raw data

and source code. • Uses citations as a measure of impact. This is slow and

narrow.”

Some see in the web a “fix” for the broken system, be-cause: “The web has enabled: • Greater interaction with text • Not limited by page length • Dissemination of raw data and code • Faster dissemination • Faster impact • Broader impact • Open peer review”

“The basic idea is to capture more than citations when assess-ing research impact.” Examples are the number of times an article has been mentioned in places such as Twitter and Facebook, and the number of times an article has been men-tioned or discussed on blogs, news sources, etc. Prof. Burns provided examples of the data used for alt-metrics as well as an example of article-level metrics. He concluded his remarks by noting that, whereas the term “bibliometrics” was coined in a journal article, the term “altmetrics” was introduced in a tweet, by Jason Priem: “I like the term #articlelevelmetrics, but it fails to imply *diversity* of measures. Lately, I’m liking #altmetrics.”

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At the Charles Sturt University reception.

Dr. Donald Case Works with Information Scientists in Australia and Brazil

When the newsletter learned that Prof. Donald Case had traveled to Australia and Brazil in the spring to work with information scientists in those countries, we asked him to write an account for the newsletter, and he agreed. In late spring of 2013, I took advantage of two wonderful opportunities to work with foreign information scientists. The first trip was sparked by an invitation to lecture at the library and information science school of Charles Sturt Uni-versity (CSU), in Australia. CSU is located in the rural, Riverina valley of eastern Australia, in the town of Wagga Wagga (a place so nice, they named it twice). They call the Riverina “the fruitbowl of Australia,” as it is something like

California’s great central valley in terms of agricultural pro-duction. By coincidence (I say that because I was invited by a completely different set of Aussies at the time), I made a similar trip to Australia 22 years before: A flight to Sydney, with a lecture there, then a trip to Wagga, with other lectures at CSU. This time I knew what the effects of 23 hours of travel would be, and arranged to arrive a couple days before I was expected to address an audience at the State Library of New South Wales. The Library itself is a stately old building on the edge of a large park in downtown Sydney—surely one of the prettiest cities in the world—however the lecture hall itself was in a lovely, new annex, with a café, gift shop and Internet hotspot, all of which attracted a lot of visitors. My evening lecture was attended by about 60 people, generated a lively discussion, and was followed by a reception with local wine (which I sorely needed, after nearly 90 minutes of talking). The only hiccup was that CSU had sent several cases of wine produced on their campus, but these bottles had mysteriously disappeared (even though all the other materials sent with them arrived on schedule). The general thinking was that CSU had made some delivery person very

happy. We managed to substitute vino from elsewhere in Oz—which makes huge amounts of wine these days—and the reception was a great deal of fun. After traveling from Sydney to Wagga with the three CSU faculty who came to my address at the State Library, I spent the next 3 days meeting with faculty and delivering four other lectures on various research topics. I was just one of a series of scholars who have been brought in during 2013 to talk to CSU faculty, as they strive to improve their numbers of publications and projects. I’m not sure how ef-fective I was in that regard, but the CSU faculty were all delightful people and we had many good conversations and dinners. I should add that some of these faculty were visit-ing the CSU campus simply to meet me: CSU’s LIS courses are entirely online, so they allow their faculty to live in other parts of Australia (including Perth, roughly 2,000 miles away). Given that Wagga is a small, agricultural town “in the back of beyond,” one can easily imagine that some faculty would rather live in the larger cities. I only came to appreciate this after quickly exhausting what little there was to see and do in Wagga, and then visiting Melbourne—“Australia’s New York City”—at the end of my trip. There I met with another of the CSU faculty, but was mainly there to see a city I had missed on my first visit two decades ear-lier. And what a great city it was: dozens of live theaters, several great museums, hundreds of restaurants, one of the largest man-made harbors in the world, and lovely beaches not far from downtown (although, it being late fall there, I did not attempt to swim in the ocean). I had a fascinating—yet exhausting—time in the land down under. After such a long trip, I was glad to get back to the lovely spring in Lexington—which, unlike Australia, is not home to “100 creatures that can kill you stone-dead.” About four weeks later I was on the road again, to another school south of the equator: The University of São Paulo, Brazil. This time I was invited to lecture at a conference in Information Systems Management (CONTECSI). When the organizers first contacted me I thought perhaps they were confused, because I could see that a big part of this confer-ence had to do with business accounting. But, they assured me that information scientists also attended, and indeed that was true. I gave two speeches at the 3-day conference, and arranged for another 4 days to explore another city I had never seen before (despite two previous visits to many parts of Brazil). What I found was a sprawling metropolis of some 25 million people, which I was able to explore quite extensively via a fairly new subway system, supplemented by a few scary bus rides. I saw enormous contrasts between the wealthy and poorer neighborhoods, and this is partly why, shortly after my arrival, enormous demonstrations broke out in São Paulo and quickly spread to other parts of the nation. While I was never in danger, I could see thou-sands of protestors right outside my hotel almost every night. It was quite an impressive show of political action. Perhaps we ought to try it here. I feel very fortunate to have been invited on these two foreign trips, especially as I was able to spend a few extra days in both countries, sampling the local culture and mak-

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Prof. Lisa O’Connor (third from left) and the students in the course that she taught in Belfast, Northern Ireland, photographed while on a visit to the celebrated Linen Hall Library. Librarian John Killen is shown with a volume from the collection.

ing new friends. In fact, as a result, I have been invited back to Brazil this December to speak at a conference on health information. Now if I can just get those Aussies to pay for another trip….

Prof. Lisa O’Connor Teaches Summer Course in Northern Ireland

Prof. Lisa O’Connor taught a course in Northern Ireland in summer 2013, at Queens University in Belfast. Students in the course read an extensive bibliography of literature on information services in Northern Ireland prior to the trip. Prof. O’Connor told the newsletter:

I designed a four credit hour course to examine the or-ganization and delivery of information services in Northern Ireland. We considered how technology is employed to offer reference, instructional and other user services across a wide variety of information organizations, including rural and urban public libraries, university libraries, law libraries,

corporate and industry information centers, and archives. Critical questions considered in the course were: • How is technology employed to meet users’ informa-

tion needs in a variety of information services contexts? • What are the relevant digital/cultural divides in who is

served, underserved and not served, and how are Irish in-formation professionals attempting to address them? • How is information literacy conceptualized and imple-

mented across the various information contexts studied? • How are cross-cultural variations in information seek-

ing and communication within Ireland accommodated? • How are information professionals prepared to deliver

information services? Under Prof. O’Connor’s guidance, students developed original research projects and engaged in independent re-search throughout the trip. Referring to the research pro-jects, Dr. O’Connor said the students “produced some amaz-ing presentations on topics such as professional LIS educa-tion in Northern Ireland; copyright law in Northern Ireland; the preservation of traditional Irish music; and the history of the only remaining Carnegie Library in Northern Ireland, the Falls Road Library (which serves the Catholic side of the center of the Troubles).”

Reflecting on the experience, Prof. O’Connor told the newsletter: Having never been to Northern Ireland, I learned as much or more than the students did. Since 2009, Northern Ireland has had a nationalized public library system called Libraries, NI. This has had many implications for library services in the country, but the most profound, at least in my view, is how much more political clout they seemed to be gaining than US libraries have had. A tide of library closures in the early 2000’s seems to have been stemmed by joining libraries under one national organization. In-creased cooperation and resource sharing was also a clear outcome of this change. Invest, NI, for example, offers an impressive array of business information and services to encourage and support entrepreneurship for the entire country without charge. Northern Ireland is a largely rural country and has re-cently lost ground in their efforts to close the digital divide and offer wide-spread broad band access. It was clear to us

that rural public libraries have significant technological bar-riers to offering the quality access services they would like to. These same rural libraries, however, play a fundamental role in their communities by offering the best access to the Internet and by preserving local culture. I saw an absolutely amazing traditional story teller named Declan Forde at the Lisburn Public Library. How libraries continued to serve their patrons in volatile areas during the Troubles was a constant theme for us as well. We visited libraries on both sides of the Peace Walls, and while the Troubles are officially over, the political ten-sion is still quite visceral. Maintaining neutrality is a signifi-cant commitment for the library professionals there. Many libraries in Northern Ireland are now participating in the preservation of Irish culture and language, an activity that was formerly seen as political in Northern Ireland and had, to some extent, been left to libraries in the Republic of Ire-land. The role that libraries and other information organiza-tions play in preserving or suppressing culture given the political climate is a theme I want to explore in the next iteration of this course (in June 2015). Then we will divide the course between the Republic and Northern Ireland to get contrasting experiences.

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Japanese researchers visit UK SLIS. Left-to-right: Dr. Kenji Kawana, Dean Dan O’Hair, SLIS Prof. Ning Yu, Dr. Daisuke Kawashima, translator Mahoko Iwagami.

It was exciting to meet with Libraries, NI staff while I was there to discuss opportunities for increased collabora-tion. In the next iteration of this course, students will have the opportunity to participate in actual working internships in libraries around Northern Ireland.

The newsletter asked Prof. O’Connor what activities the class undertook that were not directly a part of the course:

We visited the Giant’s Causeway, saw a Billy Play at the Lyric Opera, visited the Titanic Museum, and took day trips to Dublin to, among other things, visit Trinity College library that holds the Book of Kells. We also vis-ited small towns around Belfast.

Seven students in the UK MSLS program enrolled in the course. According to Prof. O’Connor, “Several of them were distance learners who had never met their fellow classmates in person, so, for them, it was a great to have some real time, pre-professional interaction. One student even ended up moving to Lexington after the program so that she could have more face-to-face interaction as she completes her coursework.”

Prof. Ning Yu, Japanese Researchers Discuss Possible Collaboration

SLIS Prof. Ning Yu was host in early August to Japanese researchers studying suicide and suicide prevention, to dis-cuss possible collaboration on several cross-culture studies. The visiting researchers were Dr. Kenji Kawana, chief of the Suicide Prevention Support Center of the Japanese Na-tional Institute of Mental Health in Tokyo, and Dr. Daisuke Kawashima, Associate Professor of Education at Hokkaido

University. They were accompanied by a translator, Ma-hoko Iwagami, of Tokyo. “The project I would be mainly involved in,” Dr. Yu told the newsletter, “aims to examine the cognitive frameworks which are unintentionally used when people talk about suicide.” Applying text mining technologies on social media data, Dr. Yu said, “I would look for the metaphoric phrases (e.g., ‘Death is coming,’ ‘I welcome death’) people use when talking about suicide.” According to Dr. Yu, “both English and Japanese texts would be compared in an attempt to ascertain the similari-ties and differences in the cognitive frameworks of each culture.” Elaborating, she said: “By finding the conceptual

metaphors for suicide used in American and Japanese cul-ture, we would gain a better understanding of public atti-tudes towards suicide, and hopefully be able to develop sui-cide prevention programs that adapt to the local culture.” Prof. Sherali Zeadally, Co-authors, Receive

2013 IET Networks Premium Award Recently, SLIS Prof. Sherali Zeadally and his co-authors won the 2013 Institution of Engineering and Technology Networks Premium Award. for their paper entitled “Per-formance comparison of media access control protocols for vehicular ad hoc networks”, M.J. Booysen, S. Zeadally, G.-J. van Rooyen, IET Networks, Volume 1, issue 1, 2012 , p. 10 - 19. The IET has one Premium Award available per journal to recognise the best research papers published dur-ing the last year. The IET is Europe's largest professional body of engineers with over 150,000 members in 127 coun-tries. For more information, visit www.theiet.org. In addition to a monetary award in the amount of £500, Dr. Zeadally and his co-authors are to receive a certificate, to be presented at the 2013 IET Achievement Awards in London on November 20th. Prof. Zeadally told the newsletter:

We won the best journal paper award at the interna-tional level for the research I did with a bright PhD stu-dent I have been co-advising at Stellenbosch University, South Africa since 2010.

Prof. Youngseek Kim, Co-author, Receive ASIS&T Best Conference Paper Award

SLIS Prof. Youngseek Kim and Syracuse Prof. Jeffrey Stanton have received the 2013 ASIS&T Best Information Behavior Conference Paper Award. The title of the paper is “Institutional and Individual Influences on Scientists' Data Sharing Behaviors: A Multilevel Analysis”. The award is a certificate and $200. The Best Information Behavior Conference Paper Award was established in 2005 and is administered by the ASIS&T Special Interest Group Information Needs Seeking and Use (SIG USE). The purpose of the award is

to recognize the best paper presented at the Annual ASIST Conference that falls within the scope of informa-tion behavior. Information behavior is broadly defined to include how people construct, need, seek, manage, give, and use information in different contexts.

In order to be eligible for the award: • At least one author of the winning paper must be a

member of SIG USE at the time of application. • The paper must fall within the scope of information be-

havior (how people construct, need, seek, manage, give and use information in different contexts). The behavior of real people engaged in information activities (in contrast to imagined or presumed users) must be a central part of a pa-per for it to be considered for the award. Papers that report the results of empirical research, theoretical papers, and methodological papers are all eligible for consideration.

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Prof. Ning Yu Chosen for Teaching Program at Shanghai University

Prof. Ning Yu was among 29 UK faculty chosen to teach during summer 2013 in China, in a program that was in its second year. The newsletter asked Dr. Yu to discuss her ex-perience for readers, and she agreed to an interview.

What is the program that you participated in? I taught in the UK Faculty China Short-Term Teaching Pro-gram at Shanghai University. Faculty in the program had to teach their courses during the month of June, because at universities in China summer break usually starts in July.

What was the course that you taught? I taught a one credit undergraduate course on “Search Pat-terns: Design for Discovery.” It covers user search behav-iors (e.g., browse) and user interface design patterns (e.g., auto query complete). Lots of class exercises revolved around the comparison of U.S. search sites and Chinese search sites (e.g., Google vs. Baidu). The course was taught in English.

How did the opportunity come about? The Faculty China Short-Term Teaching Program is spon-sored by the UK Confucius Institute, which is described as “the conduit for UK’s China initiatives.” I saw the an-nouncement of UK Faculty Summer Teaching Opportunity in Shanghai back in late February on the college mailing list and applied immediately. I was going back to China in the summer anyway and thought it would be an interesting ex-perience to teach undergrads in a Chinese university. I was a little worried that I wouldn’t get in because I am not a native English speaker, so I emphasized my advantage of being able to speak both languages, which allows me to explain difficult English terms and give examples that reflect the local culture.

Can you tell readers of the newsletter something about the UK Confucius Institute? The Institute web site has this information:

Established in 2010, the Confucius Institute at the Uni-versity of Kentucky is a center for Chinese language, culture, art and business. A gateway to China for the university and the Commonwealth, the Confucius Insti-tute serves as the conduit for UK’s China initiatives, fa-cilitating a range of China exchange programs across the campus and beyond. In addition, the Institute works to strengthen China Studies within the university, while at the same time providing leadership and support for Chi-nese language programs in Kentucky’s K-12 classrooms, and forging important community relationships through Chinese cultural outreach to people in the Common-wealth.

I know this Institute is very active in connecting UK with universities and high schools in China. Both UK students and faculty members have been generously sponsored to study or teach in China. As for this summer teaching program, there were a total of 50 faculty members from all over the world

including U.S. and some European countries. The UK Confu-cius Institute seemed to bring the most faculty members.

Did you have an opportunity, while in China, to do things not directly related to the Short-Term Teaching Program? While teaching in Shanghai, I tried some local food (fried dumplings are my favorite!) and got to travel a little over the weekend to HangZhou via fast train! On this trip, I also vis-ited several universities in China. I gave a presentation at the Information Resource Management Department of the Business School in NanKai University and met with their faculty as well as PhD students. I also had a short meeting with researchers in the Suicide Prevention Research Center of the School of Public Health in Shandong University (where I got my undergraduate degree) to learn about sui-cide research in China, which is my current research topic. Overall, this trip has been really exciting and rewarding. Information about UK’s Confucius Institute is at http://www.uky.edu/international/confucius_institute

Prof. Shannon Oltmann Appointed to Certification Board

Gov. Steve Beshear has appointed Prof. Shannon Oltmann to a four-year term on the Kentucky State Board for the Certification of Librarians. The Certification Board web site has this information:

Certification Program for Kentucky Public Libraries The Kentucky State Board for the Certification of Librari-ans, created by the Kentucky General Assembly in 1938, is required by KRS 171.250 to issue certificates to qualified library staff. Under the terms of KRS 171.260, public li-braries in Kentucky are required to be administered and staffed by appropriately certified personnel. The Certifica-tion Board believes that library staff must increase their skills and knowledge through continuing education in order to keep abreast of developments in the information age. This, in turn, upgrades the library profession, enriches the individual librarian, and promotes quality library service.

Prof. Oltmann told the newsletter: I think continuing education is especially important for librarians in the current age of rapid change and diverse technology. I look forward to meeting more librarians and helping ensure that Kentucky's public libraries are ad-ministered by competent, well-trained, and passionate li-brarians.

Lunch-N-Learns Introduce New Faculty

The popular Lunch-N-Learns, which were introduced in 2009, were the vehicle to introduce new LIS faculty fall semester 2013. Profs. Sean Burns and Maria Cahill were introduced on September 17, as were Profs. Melissa Adler and Youngseek Kim on October 14. After each told the audience, of faculty, students, and staff, something about her/himself, questions were invited.

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Profs. Melissa Adler and Youngseek Kim at the October 14 Lunch-N-Learn.

Photo courtesy of Heather Burke

Prof. Burns told the audience, “when I was about 12 years old, I read a lot of science fiction and novels, and a charac-ter in one book was an archivist, and so when an aunt asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said an archivist.” In college he majored in philosophy and religious studies and English, and because of those majors he “developed an in-terest in trying to understand how to bridge disciplines, and librarianship is good about bridging disciplines.” That prompted him to go to graduate school in library science. He initially thought he would pursue a career in academic li-brarianship, although comments of a friend, who worked in a public library, caused him to consider a career in that field as well. However, while in the master’s-degree program he was asked if he wanted to enter a doctoral program, and he said yes. From the outset he focused on academic libraries and became especially interested in scholarly communica-tion.

Prof. Cahill, who administers the SLIS school library media program and who did her doctoral work in literacy educa-tion, explained that she was working as a school librarian in South Carolina when the federal No Child Left Behind law was enacted. There was considerable interest in early literacy and reading. The U.S. Department of Education Read-ing First program was introduced, and federal grant money was available for reading education. Experience as a school librarian led her to conclude that “as librarians we called ourselves literacy people, but with the Reading First project, with all the decisions that were being made and the money that was being spent, librarians weren’t really called to the table. I found that interesting, that although we think of ourselves as literacy people, maybe others don’t see us that way.” And so, when she entered a doctoral program, it was in the field of literacy rather than libraries.

Prof. Adler told the audience that, at the University of Wis-consin-Madison School of Library & Information Studies, where she did her doctoral work, students working on a PhD were required to have a minor. Her minor was in gender and women’s studies. “My research all has to do with issues around classification of gender and sexuality. I’m particu-larly interested in how categories take hold and what we do with groups that don’t fit into categories or our existing sys-tems.” She teaches LIS 602 Information Representation and Access, a course whose content she finds especially interest-ing. “This is a fun and interesting time to be in this field because so much is happening in the area of library meta-data.” When asked what she likes about Lexington, she said that she is happy to see a thriving arts community, and that the Living Arts and Sciences Center provided her with a great sense of the appreciation for the arts here. She is also

enjoying working in SLIS, where she is finding the people to be supportive and engaged.

Prof. Kim told the audience that, while an undergraduate majoring in religious studies in his native South Korea, he had the opportunity to spend a year as a visiting student at the University of Missouri School of Information Science & Learning Technologies. As a result, he developed an interest in information science and decided to pursue a master’s degree in information management at Syracuse University School of Information Studies. Following receipt of the master’s degree, he entered the Ph.D. program in informa-tion science and technology, also at Syracuse. His main re-search area today, he said, is eScience or data science, and he has undertaken research in curriculum development for eScience professionals. “You may have heard about big

data,” he told the audience. “There are many programs that are developing curriculums focusing on this area, and I think this is a very interesting phenomenon. I believe the library science program can produce the new information professionals who can work in this field.”

Heather Burke Is Student Affairs Officer Heather Burke (’13), who was a research assistant at the School while enrolled in the

MSLS program, has been appointed to the position of Stu-dent Affairs Officer at the School of Library and Informa-tion Science, following the resignation of Anthony Ubelhor to accept a position elsewhere. A Lexington native, Heather earned a BA at Salem Col-lege, Salem, NC. When the newsletter asked in what ma-jored, she replied:

This is tricky for me: I had a minor in French and pur-sued a double major in English and Art History. How-ever, although I have more credits in Art History than in English, I was unable to get the second major. I don't consider myself an English major (though I have the de-gree) because my focus has always been arts and art his-torical research (and arts librarianship while here), so I say I “studied English and Art History” so people don't get the wrong impression about my area of expertise. But technically, I'm an English major with an Art His-tory minor.

While she was enrolled in the MSLS program, Heather participated in the Library of Congress Alternative Spring Break program. She also worked at the UK Spe-cial Collections Library in both archives and reference services. She served as co-President for the Society of American Archivists Student Chapter during the spring semester 2013.

Fall 2013 Page 15

Turn Appreciated Assets into a Secure Life Income Stream

Thoughtful Advice from J. Ford Stanley UK Director of Gift and Estate Planning

I am pleased to present information in each issue of this newsletter on ways that gifts can be made to benefit the Li-brary School through gift and estate planning. I hope the following will be useful to you. If you own appreciated assets – such as real estate or stocks – that are producing little or no income, you can transfer those underperforming assets to create a life income agreement at the University of Kentucky. Benefits can in-clude: • Secure, increased income for life • A charitable income tax deduction • Reduction or even bypass of capital gains tax • Tax-free income • A future gift to UK supporting a program you select

such as the Library School There are multiple life income agreement options avail-able. For example, a charitable gift annuity funded with your low performing stock or certificates of deposit can pro-vide you with a charitable deduction and fixed income for life. Rates are based on your age, and could be as high as 9.0 percent. A portion of your payment could also be tax free. Creating a charitable remainder trust is another way to re-ceive a tax deduction and income. When you transfer your appreciated stock or real estate to fund a charitable remain-der trust, you can also avoid capital gains tax on the sale of your assets. The trust will sell the assets tax free and then use the invested proceeds to pay you income for your life. And your income could potentially increase with growth in the trust assets. To learn more about charitable life income plans and their benefits, please contact me at no obligation. It would be a pleasure for me to assist you in customizing the plan that will be most advantageous for your unique situation. I can also provide you with a personalized illustration with your rate and potential income. Sincerely,

J. Ford Stanley ’91 Director of Gift and Estate Planning University of Kentucky Sturgill Development Building Lexington, KY 40506-0015 Phone: 800-875-6272 (toll-free) or 859-257-7886 Email: giftandestate@uky.edu Web site: http://www.uky.edu/development

McConnell Conference Takes a Break in 2014

Greetings… So that everyone can prepare their 2013-2014 professional development plans, I wanted to pass along the information that the McConnell Conference will take a break in 2014. We will be in touch to ask for your feedback on possibly redesigning the Conference and plan to be back in 2015. In the meantime, if you have any questions, please let me know. The McConnell Newsletter will continue, but will be quarterly. Other McConnell Center events, such as the book club and a slightly reformatted Connecting with Characters Contest, will continue. Thank you to all who attended the 2013 McConnell Conference. We are so happy you could join us and look forward to seeing you at future conferences. With best regards, Stephanie Reynolds stephanie.reynolds@uky.edu

Mallory Marshall Receives ALA Century Scholarship for 2013-14

Student Mallory Marshall has received ALA’s Century Scholarship 2013-2014, for study at UK SLIS. The June 25th press release reads in part:

American Library Association CHICAGO — The American Library Association (ALA) Scholarship Program is announcing the scholarship re-cipients for 2013-2014. Recipients were selected for the following categories: General, Support Staff and Spe-cialty or Practice area, in children’s services, new media and federal librarianship.

Mallory’s scholarship is in the Specialty or Practice area, and the press release has this information:

ALA Century Scholarship - established by the Associa-tion of Specialized and Cooperative Library Agencies (ASCLA) and the Library Service to Special Populations Section (LSSPS) and the Library Service to People with Visual or Physical Disabilities Forum. Recipient: Mallory Marshall, Louisville, Ky. Marshall will be attending Uni-versity of Kentucky.

The release also discusses the bases for selecting scholar-ship recipients:

Applicants for the ALA Scholarships must be a U.S. or Canadian citizen or permanent resident, must attend an ALA accredited master’s program; must not have com-pleted more than 12 semester hours or one-third of the re-quired hours toward a MLS/MLIS/MIS prior to June 1st of the awarded year, and must submit a complete applica-tion. Criteria for the scholarships include academic excel-lence, leadership, and evidence of commitment to a career in librarianship.

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Rebecca Freihaut Wins Award to Attend MLA Midwest Chapter Annual Meeting

SLIS student Rebecca Freihaut won a National Network of Libraries of Medicine, Greater Midwest Region Library Student Outreach Award to attend the Midwest Chapter of the Medical Library Association Annual Meeting 2013, held October 5-7. According to the call for applications:

The purpose of this award is to allow students to partici-pate in meetings, conference sessions and other activities designed for them to learn about the importance of health information outreach and services conducted by librarians in the Greater Midwest Region.

Students enrolled in a graduate program in library and in-formation science in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin were eligible to apply for the award.

The call for applications included the evaluation criteria, listed in the order of importance:

• Applicant's demonstrated interest and/or experience in health information outreach. • Applicant's description of how this award could impact

future career goals. • Strength of the applicant's letter of recommendation.

The letter should describe why the applicant is well-suited for this award. • Inclusion of a well-defined plan to use the information

gained from the conference with fellow library students, colleagues or by performing future outreach activities.

Rebecca participated in the School’s Alternative Spring Break program 2013; her internship was at the National Li-brary of Medicine.

Alternative Spring Break 2013 As readers of the newsletter know, a meeting in summer 2010 between SLIS Director Jeff Huber and Deanna Marcum (’71), who was then Associate Librarian of Congress for Library Services, opened the way for stu-dents in the School’s LIS program to participate in the Library of Congress Alternative Spring Break Intern-ship Program, beginning in 2011. The first year five SLIS students spent the week of March 14-18 in Library of Congress internships, with financial support from the School. Spring 2012 there were again five LC interns. In addition, two students had internships that spring at the National Library of Medicine, which joined LC as a site for internships. The School once more provided financial aid. In spring 2013 the internship program expanded fur-ther, in two ways: The National Archives joined the program, and the number of interns at the Library of Con-gress doubled, to ten. After launching the program, the School applied to the Women & Philanthropy Network at UK for funds to support the program, and in January of last

year Director Huber learned SLIS had been awarded $10,000 in scholarships for that purpose, for spring 2013. The award enabled the School to double the number of LC interns. The 2013 Alternative Spring Break interns discussed their experiences at a Lunch-N-Learn on April 19, and several agreed to write about their experiences for read-ers of the newsletter. Rebecca Freihaut, whose Alternative Spring Break place-ment was at the National Library of Medicine, lives in Lou-isville and is taking advantage of the availability of the School’s master’s degree program online. She graduated from the University of Louisville with a BA in fine arts, and while an undergraduate she worked in U of L’s Ekstrom (main) Library, in media and periodicals. In the essay to accompany her application to the School’s program, she wrote: “Over the course of the four years I worked at U of L’s Ekstrom Library as an assistant, the same scene played out countless times: A patron would stumble into the Media and Current Periodical Department looking out of breath, slightly lost, and with that deer-caught-in-the-headlights look. Needless to say he/she had waited until the last minute to complete a research paper, had no idea where to start, how to use the databases, or how to locate materials in the stacks. While every other work-study student was trying to avoid eye contact with the unfortunate patron, I felt a sense of excitement. It was during those years that I began to dis-cover my love for Library Science.”

“a potentially life changing experience” This past March I was chosen to take part in UK's Alterna-tive Spring Break Program. Through the program I was given a stipend to travel to the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to complete a one week internship. I was fortunate to be able to coordinate with other SLIS students who were participating in the Alternative Spring Break Program. Together seven of us planned our travel, housing, and activities. We flew into D.C. the weekend be-fore our internships began, and remained the weekend after our internships in order to do some sightseeing together. We were able to rent a condo for the week, and that both cut down on costs and allowed us to get to know one another better. I spent my week in the Digital Manuscripts division of the History of Medicine that is housed at NLM. I was given the project of researching the topic of collecting health related web content during times of disaster. My work was part of a larger, ongoing project created to secure funding for general web collecting/archiving at NLM. I began my project by completing training for the pro-gram, Archive-It, which is a subscription web archiving service that allows institutions the ability to collect, manage, and preserve online content. I then created a test case in which I used Hurricane Katrina to explore current archived content, and to compare the archived content to what is now available online. I found that much of the content from 2005 is no longer available online. Organizations generally

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At the April 19 Lunch-N-Learn (left to right): Interns Edna Fugate and An-drew Adler; Myra Tobin, Co-Chair, Women & Philanthropy Network; In-terns Daniel Naas, Ashley DeWitt, and Heather Burke.

removed sites completely or replaced the original content with new content. This only strengthened the argument that web collecting is vitally needed in the field of library science. During the week, I had the opportunity to interview Di-anne Babski, the Head of the MEDLARS Management Sec-tion (MMS) at the National Library of Medicine. Ms. Bab-ski oversees three Unit Heads and over 25 professional, paraprofessional and contract staff. She was part of a work-ing group exploring the possibility of archiving both physi-cal and Web content about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. She shared her group’s process and also gave information about the potential usages of archived content in the future. In addition to having educational and historical significance, Ms. Babski also predicted that this content could be benefi-cial in legal areas as well. I also had the opportunity to meet with Cindy Love, who is a MLS Technical Information Specialist through the Disaster Information Management Research Center (DIMRC), Division of Specialized Information Services (SIS), National Library of Medicine. Even though Ms. Love’s work is more focused on disaster management through training librarians and providing information to NLM patrons, versus archiving Web content for the historical record, she provided a plethora of information. We discussed the benefit of archiving SIS’s LISTSERV archives for future research into how medical librarians communicate and plan during times of disaster. We also discussed how SIS makes a determination about what constitutes a disaster, and what type of content they track. I ended my week by creating web collecting strategies for NLM to consider and compiling a sample web collecting checklist that could be used in future web collecting during times of disaster. Even though my internship was only a week long, it allowed me to develop an ongoing relationship with NLM. I was recently granted special volunteer status through NLM to have access to the Archive-It program at UK to continue my project through an Independent Study this summer. I also am planning on applying to NLM's Associate Fellowship program, and if chosen will be moving to D.C. to work at NLM for a whole year! The Alternative Spring Break Program has been a potentially life changing experience for me. I went to D.C. with the knowledge that I wanted to pursue medical librarianship, and left with a new excitement for the world of web collecting, countless professional connections, and a direct path toward a career! I am very grateful for SLIS

providing these types of opportunities for their students, and for all the organizations who provide funding for stipends.

Rebecca Freihaut Edna Fugate’s Alternative Spring Break placement was at the Library of Congress. Edna graduated from Pikeville College, Kentucky, in 2002 with majors in psychology and religion. She then enrolled in the Southern Baptist Theo-logical Seminary, Louisville, “but,” she writes in her library school application essay, “after having my first child, I lost my desire to finish this degree. I knew where I wanted to be in life, and I did not feel that this degree would get me there. In 2008, I began a job that would set me on the proper path. I was employed by the Pike County Public Library as a li-brarian. It was an amazing experience.” Because the School’s program is available online, Edna was able to en-roll, fall semester 2011. She is now employed by the Uni-

versity of Pikeville as the Archivist and Reference Technician for Allara Library. Edna, who once was introduced, incorrectly, as “Edna Fugate, an activist for Allara Library” told the newsletter: “I am not an activist, though I do encourage the students and teachers to make use of Special Collections.”

“the universality of librarianship” What can one learn in a week? When I applied for the Al-ternative Spring Break, I found myself wondering how this experience could impact the way I look at librarianship. After all, a week is a small amount of time. How could one have a true library experience in a week? The first day at the Library of Congress was a tourist's dream. We were able to tour the facilities and learn the basic history of the institution in the first half of the day. The sec-ond half was spent meeting with supervisors and learning what would be expected of us during the week. The group of three interns which I was a part of was assigned to the African and Near East Division. We were responsible for the organization of ephemera from 13 African countries. This uncataloged material was stored in boxes and had to be separated from material related to other African countries. Once separated, we had to determine if other libraries around the country also owned the material, and then de-velop a searchable finding aid for use by patrons. In addition to this finding aid, we made a finding aid template for use with the department's African language material. In my week at the Library of Congress, I did notice that the librarians were highly compartmentalized. Though this may be typical for a large institution, this was a unique envi-ronment for me. Our supervisor was the area specialist for

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only a small part of Africa. There were five different librari-ans that each specialized in separate African countries. Ad-ditionally, the African and Near East Reading Room had five librarians in the Hebraic division, and eight in the Near East section. All of them had cubicles, and with the excep-tion of reference desk work, there was no overlap in duties. There appeared to be little, if no, interaction in relation to tasks for their sections. In contrast, my work at a small academic library is di-verse. With our limited staff, we must all be prepared to do various tasks that may not fall within our standard job de-scription. Being used to a work experience that varies, it was easy, if a little tedious, to do the same thing every day. However, my typical work experience meant that I had a general background in most of daily tasks in the African and Near East Reading Room. The main thing that the Alternative Spring Break taught me was the universality of librarianship. The entire staff of the library where I am employed totals eight. While entering the Library of Congress, with its 3,200 employees, was ini-tially intimidating, by the end of the first day, I was com-fortable in the environment. Large libraries, despite size and budget, operate in the same manner as their smaller cousins. No matter the size of the institution, problems with staffing, technology issues, and patron relations must all be dealt with. Even with the hugeness of the environment, there was a comforting familiarity in the daily tasks. Small or large, librarians have a sameness of task and overarching goals that tie individuals in our field together. We have a common drive to share with others, to help people know and under-stand. This drive made it easy for a librarian from Eastern Kentucky to work successfully with the African and Middle East department of the Library of Congress to make material available to those who need it. In a week, I learned that the size of the library is not what is important. No matter what library we find ourselves in, how we deal with the daily tasks is essential to librarianship. Whether we are helping individuals across the world, or our neighbor who cannot get the public computer to work, our task is to help others learn and grow. In doing so, we are also able to learn. My week at the Library of Congress was filled with people from different backgrounds and world-views. This in no way hindered our ability to work together. If anything, the diversity of views provided a greater experi-ence and a richer final product. My week at the Library of Congress was not really about the task the supervisor assigned, though it was useful prac-tice for my job. The greatest value came in talking with the employees and understanding how the Library of Congress works. My week with them increased my respect for the job they do. However, it also helped me to see the commonal-ities with my own place of employment. It also reinforced my love of librarianship and its universal nature.

Edna Fugate Throughout the time she has been enrolled in the School’s program, Amanda Kessler has lived in Colorado, which the availability of the School’s program online makes possible. She graduated from Louisiana State University with a BA in

English and then completed an MA in international relations at the University of Indianapolis. The school year 2007-2008 she was a middle school language arts teacher in the Dallas Independent School District, Texas, and between 2008 and 2010 she was a middle school language arts teacher in the Jefferson Parish Public School System, Lou-isiana. “For the last two years,” she writes in her library school application essay, “I have had the privilege of stay-ing home with my 2-year-old son, and I have had time to consider what I love, why I love it, and what I truly want in a career. The answer has become clear as I have reflected on all of my experiences. I am confident that a career in Li-brary and Information Science seamlessly combines my love of books, appetite for knowledge, and comfort in an academic setting. I see becoming an information profes-sional as the culmination of my education and experience, and I am excited to embark on this career at the University of Kentucky.” Amanda’s Alternative Spring Break place-ment was at the Library of Congress.

“an incredible opportunity” When I first learned about UK's Alternative Spring Break Program in Washington, D.C., I was intrigued and excited to consider such an incredible opportunity. As such, it was both an honor and a thrill to learn that I had been selected to attend Alternative Spring Break, and I set my expectations for the experience quite high. However, despite a pretty vivid imagination (and several viewings of National Treas-ure), my experience in D.C. proved to be even better than I could have anticipated. For my internship experience, I was assigned to the Li-brary of Congress Newspapers and Periodicals Division, and my task for the week was to measure and catalog Civil War-era maps as part of LOC's Civil War Newspaper Maps Collection. As a history buff, this was a dream assignment, and I was happy to spend the week elbow-deep in rag paper. I uncovered hand-drawn maps of the Battle of Shiloh, dia-grams of Fort Pillow, and even a sketch of a Confederate floating battery used in defense of the Mississippi River near Memphis. Working with these newspapers was indeed gratifying, but it was also illuminating, given the ability to view the events depicted in maps and articles at a distance of more than 150 years. History afforded me clarity and interpretation of these events, but the newspapers them-selves offered both immediacy and emotion that cannot be entirely related through modern accounts. For me, this as-signment proved to be a real treat. However, my time in D.C. wasn't just about a single (al-beit amazing) assignment. It was also about the larger ex-perience. Walking the halls of LOC, I was acutely aware of my surroundings; this wasn't just any library. I spent a week breathing in the history of our country (and its libraries), and the feeling of purpose within the walls of LOC was almost tangible. Of course, I found myself in awe of the Gutenberg Bible in the Great Hall, but I was equally moved – standing in the carefully controlled vault of the Newspaper Division – to see the front page of an original 1787 newspaper which bore the public's first view of the U.S. Constitution.

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The city itself offered much in the way of entertainment and convenience. Well-known (and some relatively obscure) attractions, including great history, food, and museums, provided welcome diversions during my time away from the library. The Metro, coupled with a comfortable pair of shoes, afforded me with access to the whole city within just a few blocks. For a car-loving suburbanite like me, it was an enjoyable change of pace. In the end, the Alternative Spring Break Program exceeded each of my lofty expectations. Although my time at LOC was short, the program was filled with experiences that I will re-member fondly, and many of them will prove useful once I find a library to call my own. UK and LOC were able to pack quite a punch into a single week, and I hope that the program will continue to grow and expand so that more students can share in such an amazing opportunity.

Amanda Kessler

Karl Benson Retires after 35 Years as Boyle County Library Director

Karl Benson (’75) retired the end of May after 35 years as Director of the Boyle County Public Library in Danville, KY. According to an article in The Advocate-Messenger newspaper, Karl did not set out to be a librarian. After teaching English and Spanish at Boyle County High School for two years, he went to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to teach English, having taught previously for two years in Uganda. The school in the Congo, with about 600 students, had what Karl describes as “a modest sized li-brary,” and when the librarian left during the school year, Karl was asked to take over the library. He agreed, and, he told the reporter, “that’s when I first started thinking about libraries, as a school librarian in the Congo.” Back in the U.S. and enrolled in the UK library school, Karl at first had in mind a career in school librarianship; however, he told the reporter, he “realized that would be a difficult position to secure in Kentucky and changed his focus to public libraries.” Following completion of the mas-ter’s degree program, he accepted a position at Mercer County Public Library, Harrodsburg, KY. After only a year there, he was offered the position of director of the public library in Danville in 1978. During the past 25 or 30 years, many public libraries in central Kentucky – and indeed throughout Kentucky – have completed construction projects, either new buildings or renovations and additions. During Karl’s tenure, Boyle County Public Library completed two major construction projects: in 1988, more than doubling the size of the origi-nal building, and in 2008, more than doubling again. The recent project was unusual in that the expansion incorpo-rated two historic buildings, the 1988 modern addition, and 24,000 square feet of new construction into a single, integrated facility. Although reference to incorporating “two historic buildings, the 1988 modern addition, and 24,000 square feet of new construction” into a single facil-ity may create a mental picture of a result that is unattrac-tive externally and unworkable internally, the result at

Boyle County Public Library is a very attractive building, both externally and internally, that functions well, “thanks,” Karl emphasized, “to the firm of Pearson & Pe-ters, Architects of Lexington.” The construction project was also unusual in another way; almost $3 million was privately raised for the nearly $10 million undertaking, an accomplishment all the more im-pressive given the population of Danville and Boyle County, approximately 16,200 and 28,400, respectively, in 2010. Several considerations – Karl’s lengthy experience as director during a period of considerable change in what con-stitute public library services; his reporting to two boards throughout that period; the unusual arrangement to provide library services in Boyle County; and the strong financial support for the library throughout its service community – prompted me to ask Karl to agree to an interview to be pub-lished in the newsletter.

Dennis Carrigan

What is the history of library service in Danville and Boyle County? Library service began in 1893 as a subscription library. Dues-paying members were entitled to borrow from a col-lection of 300 books housed in a local drugstore. In the early 20th century the Library Association incorporated as The Danville Library, Inc. Twelve trustees were responsible for overseeing a small endowment and managing the operation and growth of the library. What is the basis today for library service in Danville and Boyle County? The Boyle County Public Library is the basis for library service in Danville and Boyle County. It is a joint venture between both a private library board and a public library board. The basis for service remained a private subscription library until the late 1960s. The private Danville Library, Inc. board saw the need for countywide services but didn’t have the financial resources, and so they led in establish-ment of a public library taxing district with its own board. The Boyle County Public Library District was established by petition in 1971. With taxing authority, the district board thus had revenue, but it had no building, collection or staff. The private board had these but very little income. So, a contractual arrangement between the two boards was bene-ficial to both, and enabled library service to be provided countywide, with the additional help of a bookmobile and materials provided by the Kentucky Department for Librar-ies and Archives. What is the arrangement or agreement for Library operat-ing costs? The contract between the two boards continues to this day, with a review and renewal of terms every five years. The District, from its tax revenues, contracts for the provision of library services countywide for a sum agreed upon by both boards each year. Tax revenues also are allocated each year for the retirement of bonds issued for the recent expansion.

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Kentucky Poet Laureate Frank X. Walker with Karl. Frank visited the library and drove the Bookmobile in May.

Photo courtesy of Tim Thornberry

Today’s Boyle County Public Library building is a long way from space in a local drug store. What is the history of li-brary buildings in the community? The private board of Danville Library, Inc. received a large bequest in the 1930s which funded construction of a “clas-sic” Federal Revival style library building of 7000 square feet in 1937. Public tax revenues and a small capital cam-paign paid for the 1988 expansion of 10,000 square feet, owned by the Library District board. The two buildings were “wedded” and fully integrated as one, but were legally owned by separate boards, with the property line running through the middle of the joined halves. The recent con-struction project totally integrated the 1937 and 1988 struc-tures with a 3,000 square feet historic house of 1870 and 24,000 square feet of new space.

How was the money raised for the 2010 building? There was a $5.8 million bond issue; $2.8 was raised pri-vately; and $1.2 million in tax revenue previously set aside for the project. To help with the retirement of the bond is-sue, the Library District was awarded a grant from the Ken-tucky Department for Libraries and Archives of $105,000 a year for 20 years (dependent upon continued funding by the State Legislature). Is there an endowment with Danville Library, Inc? Yes, currently about $2.67 million. The annual earnings are used for library operations. Total membership of the two boards is 17. How was it to have 17 “bosses”? Although legally there are two separate boards, they oper-ate jointly as one, and members serve on all committees without distinction. However, certain legal distinctions must be maintained. Only the 5 members of the public district board may set the tax rates and buy/sell assets held in the District’s name; only the 12 members of the private board may control the endowment fund and buy/sell assets held by Danville Library, Inc. The contract between the two boards clearly spells out the responsibilities and limi-tations of each.

Finally, I have several future-oriented questions. How do you see public library services evolving, particularly with regard to print-versus-electronic resources? I think electronic resources will become more prevalent but will not totally displace print. Down-loadable and streaming formats are being used by more people every day, but the “feel” and “smell” of print materials will still have an appeal to many people and will always meet a perceived need. I see libraries becoming more and more a social gathering place, a community “commons”. Libraries have always played this role to some degree, but now our public seems to desire this even more. Boyle County Public Library has good financial support from the community. Is there a generational aspect to financial support from individuals – older men and women providing more financial support than younger men and women – and, if so, are you optimistic that, a generation from now, those who are younger today will be the strong financial supporters that their parents and grandparents are now? Yes, it’s usual that older people have more resources avail-able for civic causes, but I’m pleased that our FRIENDS of the LIBRARY group, which raises support for extra library programs and materials, has many members of all genera-tions. In the future our library will still be well supported by our community. Finally, what plans do you have for retirement? I want to oversee the completion of the renovation of my 1792 log home. I want to continue helping install water pu-rification systems in Mexican villages in partnership with local Presbyterian churches. I will travel to India and Nepal and to Bolivia and Peru. Both trips are already in the plan-ning stages. Also, I intend to travel to many other places, as health permits. I will consider short-term volunteer teaching in developing countries.

John Collins Comments on Efforts to Change Harvard Library Structure

Alumnus John W. Collins (’75) is Director of the Monroe C. Gutman Library at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education and a member of the GSE faculty. The Harvard library system is vast and decentralized, and, when I learned it had been decided to impose a new, more centralized organ-izational structure on the library system, I asked John if I could interview him for the newsletter, about the changes to the library system, and he agreed. First, though, some back-ground information. Several years ago Harvard Provost Steven Hyman ap-pointed a Task Force on University Libraries, “to examine our library system and make recommendations that would put it on a footing that could sustain and ideally enhance its ex-cellence into the future.” According to the Provost, the “li-braries’ organizational chart is truly labyrinthine in its com-plexity, and in practice this complexity impedes effective collective decision-making.”

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In its report, after noting that “The Harvard library structure is unique among great universities for its degree of decen-tralization and its often internally incompatible modes of op-eration,” the Task Force asserts: “Perpetuation of the current administrative structure promises to hold the University cap-tive to frozen accidents of history.” Elsewhere the report stresses: “The Task Force believes that it is critical and urgent for Harvard to boldly address the effectiveness – and the cost-effectiveness – of its existing library structure. A failure to do so will risk a decline in the library system that could have extremely negative effects on Harvard’s academic mandate.” Following receipt of the Task Force report, the Provost appointed an Implementation Work Group. In its report the implementation group “recommended creation of a coordi-nated management structure for the entire University Library system. A new position, executive director of the University Library, will report to a board of directors” chaired by the Provost. Helen Shenton was appointed to the new position, and, in a meeting with library employees to discuss the new organizational structure, she said, “the Library workforce will be smaller than it is now.” In February 2012 the university offered an early-retirement package to the 275 library em-ployees who qualified for the package, and it was announced that layoffs might follow, if too few people accepted the offer. And finally: “The August 1 [2012] launch of a shared-ser-vices organization … within the Harvard Library involved the redeployment of 430 library staff members, as well as six layoffs and 65 early retirements.”

Dennis Carrigan According to the Report of the Task Force on University Libraries, “Harvard’s library system now includes 73 sepa-rate libraries,” which are listed in the Report. In addition to referring to “Harvard’s library system,” the Report also refers to the Harvard University Library and to the Harvard College Library. Would you explain to newsletter readers the nature of the “Harvard’s library system”? Prior to the restructuring, the Harvard Library represented a highly decentralized organization. All of the Libraries were autonomous within the various Harvard faculties. For ex-ample, as Director of the Library at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, I reported to the Dean of the School. Similarly, the Medical Librarian reported to the Dean of Medicine, the Business Librarian to the Dean at Harvard Business School, etc. The structure was organized by school, or the faculties, as we say. That is the Harvard model. This structure holds true for HR, Admissions, Finan-cial Aid, IT, and so on. By far, the largest of the faculties is the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The libraries within FAS, of which there are dozens, encompass the sciences, arts, humanities and social sciences. FAS also includes Harvard College, Harvard’s undergraduate program. Prior to the transition each library operated independ-ently, maintaining their own budgets, HR, operations, etc. but collaborating on large efforts such as automation, re-mote storage, system-wide policies, etc. The organization was governed by a University Library Council, chaired by the Director of the University Library (a position similar to the Librarian of Congress – a public intellectual, senior

scholar, and spokesperson) and composed of the Directors of the faculty libraries and a few senior library administra-tors, about twelve of us in all. We’d meet monthly and agree to collaborate on mutually beneficial projects. You have described a very decentralized system. It seems to me the changes challenge the culture of decentralization. Is that an accurate assessment? That would be an understatement, particularly when you consider the tradition-bound nature of Harvard. At the out-set, the challenges for change were daunting. Staff felt threatened. At library-wide library transition meetings it was announced that layoffs were coming. The great unknown demoralized everyone. The reorganization of the Harvard Library “involved the redeployment of 430 library staff members, as well as six layoffs and 65 early retirements.” Was your library affected directly? Every Harvard library was affected. The reported layoffs did not materialize but there was a great deal of attrition. The University offered library staff early retirement incentives and, in addition to those who took the buyout, many other senior librarians left for positions at other universities due to the environment that crept through the system as the re-structuring began to unfold. In the case of my library, half of the staff no longer report to me. They became part of what is called “Shared Services”, which are run centrally now, and include Circulation, Reserves, ILL, document delivery, cata-loging, acquisitions, conservation and preservation, etc. All that remains under local control is research services, refer-ence, instruction, and the other RTL functions. If it’s possible to generalize, would you say there has been buy-in of the new organizational structure throughout the Harvard library system staff? Generally, there has not been buy-in to the new organiza-tional structure. While no one within the libraries denies the need for change, the need to capitalize on efficiencies and economies of scale and the elimination of redundancies, the way the restructuring has occurred has generated mistrust. The transition has been plagued by a lack of transparency, extremely poor communication, and has not included cur-rent staff in the development of the new system. The new structure was developed, for the most part, through the use of outside, non-library consulting firms. Do you have a sense of the degree of acceptance of the new structure by the Harvard faculty? Apart from a few vocal faculty members concerned about the diminishing strength of the collections, the faculty has been largely silent. A faculty advisory committee is in place, but mainstream faculty is largely disengaged. Since faculty members interact most closely with their local library, they have as yet not experienced diminished services and are content. How have Graduate School of Education faculty reacted to the changes?

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The Graduate School of Education is a close-knit commu-nity, and the faculty has expressed concern for the librarians and staff. The librarians and staff have continued to offer great support, and the faculty are grateful for that. I am sure that if the new system results in diminished services, our faculty will be responsive and very supportive of the library. The new organizational structure introduced five “affinity groups,” and each of the libraries at Harvard was assigned to one of the five. The directors of libraries would continue to report as they had been. However, each director would also report to the head of the affinity group to which the library had been assigned. Has a dual reporting structure created problems for you? The affinity group structure was introduced to provide an opportunity for libraries to interact and collaborate along disciplinary lines. The five affinity groups represent Social Sciences, Sciences, Arts, Archives and Professional Schools. The Graduate School of Education’s affinity group includes the libraries of Law, Business, and Government. These libraries have collaborated for years and this new structure has caused no problems. The reporting, as you describe it, is collegial, not hierarchal, and, in fact, the di-rectors of our affinity group have developed a leadership model where we each serve a term as Affinity Group Head, on a rotating basis. The new organizational structure includes new positions, at least one new board, and the five new affinity groups. It seems inevitable one result would be to slow down decision making. Has that been the case? The decision making process is mired in bureaucracy. There are several boards that must approve each and every deci-sion, and this has slowed progress greatly. For example, the Affinity Group Heads have been meeting for over a year trying to develop a University-wide Collection Develop-ment Policy. Progress has been painfully slow and secretive on all fronts. The Task Force Report discusses the Harvard Depository and calls for revising the “funding model” for the Deposi-tory. Would you explain to newsletter readers what the Har-vard Depository is? The Harvard Depository is our remote storage facility. The prior funding model was based on each library using the facility paying for the storage and retrieval of their materi-als. A new cost sharing model is being developed. Does Gutman Library store materials in the Harvard De-pository? We do now. It is a recent phenomenon for us. A little over a year ago we put one third of our collection into storage to make room for a large-scale renovation of the library. We sent out long runs of older journals to which we have elec-tronic access. It was a no brainer, low hanging fruit really, and the resulting renovation, complete with a café and fire-places, has transformed the library. This had nothing to do with the restructuring but was, rather, a local decision by the

Graduate School of Education designed, financed and con-structed independent of the Harvard Library. It’s too soon for a final assessment of the new organiza-tional structure – on balance whether it achieves the goals that brought it about – but what is your assessment at this point? My assessment is that we have a long way to go. The Har-vard Library system is vast, the largest academic library in the world. To change it will require time. The original goals set out by the Task Force have not been realized. To my knowledge, there has been no cost savings, there are many bugs to be worked out, and some of the initial structural changes need to be reviewed. Low staff moral needs to be addressed, and librarians need to be included in the decision making process if they are to buy in to the new structure. I also believe that the leadership structure in the new organi-zation needs to be reexamined. The Provost appointed the Task Force on University Li-braries in fiscal year 2009, the year the value of Harvard’s endowment declined 29.5 percent, or $10.9 billion. Do you believe efforts would have been made to change the organ-izational structure for Harvard’s libraries even without the dramatic decline in the endowment’s value? Yes, I believe that libraries everywhere are, or should be, reas-sessing their role, their services and their operational principles. The old models of service are being challenged. Libraries, if they are to remain relevant, need to rethink everything. The economics of scholarly publishing, the growing number of online course opportunities, open access initiatives, libraries as physical spaces, and other discovery and information-related innovations are just a few of the issues facing libraries. It cer-tainly is an exciting time to be a librarian.

Alumni Activities

The end of May Karl Benson (’75) retired as Director of the Danville-Boyle County Public Library, KY. He had held the position for 35 years. An interview with Karl appears elsewhere in the newsletter. Melissa Moore (’75) is Research Coach at Union Univer-sity, Jackson, TN. She elaborated: “My main responsibili-ties at Union University include helping students learn research skills, either individually or in a class. I also teach classes for the School of Education, including Young Adult Literature, for people who want to become school librarians. I am an avid reader and book reviewer for VOYA and Booklist.” Alan Barrish (’85) has retired after 25 years as Director of the Ethelbert B. Crawford Public Library, Monticello, NY. Alan and his wife have bought a home in Lexington. Georgia de Araujo (’85) has been named Director of the Boyle County Public Library, Danville, KY.

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We were pleased to hear from Mike Flannery (’89) this summer. He wrote:

I’ve been pretty remiss about keeping in touch. Since 1999 I’ve been at the University of Alabama at Birming-ham as Associate Director for Historical Collections at the Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences. Since about 2005 I’ve been full professor. I’ve enjoyed it here because I’ve not only been able to serve as an administrator for a very fine special collections, but I’ve held adjunct ap-pointments with the history and sociology departments where I’ve taught the history of medicine course and some graduate courses on the social history of medicine, medical sociology, etc. I’ve been able to write quite a bit too.

Ben Graves (’90) is Dean, Anne Parish Markham Library, Mid-Continent University, Mayfield, KY. The newsletter thanks Steven Edscorn (’98) for passing along the news that, as of July 1, 2013, he had a new posi-tion, as Executive Director of Libraries at Northeastern State University, with campuses in Tahlequah, Broken Arrow, and Muskogee, Oklahoma. Stephanie Warrix (’98) is Social Media Marketing and Information Resources Manager, Pediatric Associates, Pike-ville, KY. This fall ABC-CLIO published Handbook for Community College Librarians by Mike Crumpton (’03) and Nora Bird. The book is described as “An in-depth understanding of the complexities, dynamics, and emerging trends in community college libraries today.” Mike is Assistant Dean for Administrative Services, University Libraries, The Uni-versity of North Carolina - Greensboro. Jennifer Rouse Chase (’05) is Research Librarian at Givaudan Flavors Corporation, Cincinnati. Leslie Farison (’08) is Assistant Professor/Business Li-brarian at Appalachian State University, Boone, NC. Jackie Hawes (’11) informed the newsletter that she was appointed Director of the Washington Public Library, MO, effective October 1. Meredith Nelson (’11) has been appointed to the Lexington Public Library Advisory Board. In her day job she is Clerk of the Urban County Council, Lexington Fayette Urban County Government. In August, Heather Battenberg (’12) joined the library staff at Bainbridge State College, GA. Also in August, SLIS Student Affairs Officer Anthony Ubelhor (’12) accepted a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor of Library Services at Columbia Basin College in Pasco, WA. He wrote: “They've hired me to develop a pro-gram to integrate library instruction across their distance

learning curriculum. I'm thrilled about the challenges and opportunities this new job presents.”

Among Recent Graduates

In October, Mariam Addarrat wrote: “I've recently been hired by the Lexington Public Library, Tates Creek Branch. I love my work at the reference desk and meeting a diverse group of patrons.” Andrew Adler is Outreach & Instructional Librarian, Emily W. Hundley Library, St. Catharine College, KY. Allison Albert is Director of Academic Library Affairs, Morthland College, West Frankfort, IL. In September, Crystal Allen-Daniel made a presentation, “Elmwood: The Lives Behind the Mystery,” at the quarterly meeting of the Madison County Historical Sociecy, Rich-mond, KY. While enrolled in the School’s MSLS program, Crystal processed the Elmwood papers for Eastern Ken-tucky University Department of Special Collections & Ar-chives. Elzena Anderson is Assistant Reference Librarian, Staunton Public Library, VA. Amy Bessin is Financial Analyst Sr., Department of Chemisty and Physics, University of Kentucky. Arthur Boston is Circulation Manager, Calloway County Public Library, Murray, KY. Heather Burke is Student Affairs Officer, University of Kentucky School of Library and Information Science. Pamela Edwards is Marketing Specialist, Dining Services Administration, University of Kentucky. Amber Faris is a teacher at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School, Lexington. Brenda Franz is Assistant Librarian, Sacred Heart Academy, Louisville. Scott Horn is Server Programmer II, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Kentucky. Robin Jeffrey is Administrative Assistant/Office Manager, Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, Inc., Bothell, WA. Geneva Jewell is Library Coordinator, Jefferson Community and Technical College, Louisville. Karen Letendre is a seventh grade teacher at North Oldham Middle School, Goshen, KY.

Pamela Marks is on the staff at Anderson County Public Library, Lawrenceburg, KY.

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Bethany Nummela-Hanel is Circulation Assistant and Electronic Resources Cataloger, Salmon P. Chase College of Law, Northern Kentucky University. Aaron Palmer is on the staff at Lexington Public Library, assigned to the Tates Creek Branch. Dinah Paul is Head School Librarian, St Peter School, Washington, DC. Sheli Walker Saltsman informed the School in May she had accepted an adjunct position as an archivist at Cincin-nati State Technical and Community College. Kara Schroader is on the staff at Daviess County Public Library, Owensboro, KY. Jason Souders is on the library staff at the University of Kentucky College of Law.

Adam Southern is Reference Librarian, Maury County Public Library, Columbia, TN. Ellen Stevens is School Library Media Specialist, Burgin Independent Schools, KY. Cynthia Thornley is Branch Manager, Charles County Public Library, Waldorf, MD. Sheli Walker is Adjunct Archivist, Cincinnati State Technical and Community College, OH. Stephanie Warden is Admissions Coordinator, Strayer University, Lexington. Rodney Watkins has been hired as an instruction and tech-nology librarian at Morehead State University's Camden-Carroll Library.