SLIS News

July 9, 2013

Kirchmyer & Verbit win National Awards

 

Congratulations to Ginger Kirchmyer, current SLIS student in the Fifth Regional Cohort, who has received the Frederic G. Melcher Award from the Association of Library Services for Children, a division of the American Library Association (ALA).

The Frederic G. Melcher Scholarship provides financial assistance for the professional education of men and women who intend to pursue an MLS degree and who plan to work in children's librarianship. This work may be serving children up to and including the age of 14 in any type of library.

The Library and Information Technology Association (LITA), a division of ALA, has announced the winners of annual scholarships it sponsors jointly with three organizations:  Baker & Taylor, LSSI and OCLC, Inc.   These scholarships are for master’s level study, with an emphasis on library technology and/or automation, at a library school program accredited by the American Library Association.

 

This year’s winner of the LITA/Christian Larew Memorial Scholarship sponsored by Baker & Taylor is Daniel Verbit, currently studying online at The University of Alabama, a member of the Eighth National Cohort. 

June 20, 2013

Blum Defends MLIS Thesis

David Blum, the first SLIS student to complete a thesis under the new thesis option, successfully defended his work on June 12, 2013.  David completed a Bachelor of Arts at American University focused on Comparative Politics prior to beginning the MLIS program at UA.  Titled:  “Management of Intelligence Archives of Fallen Authoritarian Regimes,” his thesis study explores the management of intelligence archives in Germany, Russia, and South Africa. Committee members were Elizabeth Aversa (chair), Bob Riter, and John Beeler (History). 

 

 

June 19, 2013

SLIS Assistant Professor Awarded Leadership Development Grant

SLIS Assistant Professor Melissa Johnston was awarded the Ken Haycock Leadership Development Grant from the International Association of School Librarianship (IASL). The $1,000 grant is awarded to first time attendees of the IASL annual conference, which will be held in Bali in August 2013. The purpose of this grant is to assist leaders to share their needs and aspirations, to learn from other conference participants, to develop contacts to further their work and to identify strategies that can be used in their home country.

The award is funded through the generosity of IASL members and friends. The first award was named in 1995 in honor of Dr. Jean E. Lowrie, the first president and first executive secretary of the International Association of School Librarianship. The second award was named in 2000 in honor of Dr. Ken Haycock, executive director of the IASL from 1995-2000.

June 18, 2013

Perrault/ Aversa’s Book published by Libraries Unlimited – with Miller & LeComte

Information Resources in the Humanities and the Arts, 6th edition, by Anna H. Perrault and Elizabeth S. Aversa, has been published by Libraries Unlimited.  SLIS alumna Cynthia Miller is contributing author on music, while alumnus Richard LeComte co-authored the theatre chapter. The book, widely used by libraries as a bibliographic guide and as the standard text for courses in information resources in the humanities classes, has been positively reviewed to date. 

 

 

 

June 17, 2013

SLIS folks receive national recognition from ALA affiliates

Jamie Naidoo shared insights on how librarians can provide a welcoming space for LGBTQ families in an interview for the Association for Library Services to Children’s June 1st blog post.  Read all about: Gettin’ Subversive: Welcoming LGBTQ Families at Your Library

 

SLIS alumna Jill Mendle Lewis is the 2013 recipient of the Francis Joseph Campbell Award—an annual honor presented by the Association of Specialized and Cooperative Library Agencies (ASCLA). 

 

Congratulations to both Jill Lewis and Jamie Naidoo for receiving national recognition for work well done!

May 21, 2013

Sweeney appointed as SLIS Assistant Professor

The School of Library and Information Studies at The University of Alabama is proud to announce the appointment of Miriam E. Sweeney to a tenure-track position beginning August 16, 2013.   

Sweeney’s research explores how cultural values about gender and race inform the design, use, and meaning of information and communication technologies. Her research program will explore anthropomorphized virtual agents and interface design across platforms from a feminist critical informatics perspective.  She will defend her dissertation at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in fall, 2013. Her dissertation, entitled “Servants of Cyberspace: A Critical Analysis of Microsoft’s Ms. Dewey,” is supervised by Dr. Linda C. Smith.

Other research currently underway includes a paper written with collaborators (Changing Course: Collaborative Reflections of Teaching/Taking “Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Information Professions”), which is in revision for the Journal of Education in Library and Information Science.  Sweeney is currently active as a reviewer with New Media & Society, and is a member of the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T), the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR), the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE), and the International Communication Association (ICA). 

Sweeney, who was an IMLS Information in Society Fellow at UIUC, holds an MA from The School of Library and Information Science at the University of Iowa and a Certificate in Book Studies from the University of Iowa Center for the Book as well as a BA in Anthropology from Indiana University. 

Miriam Sweeney is welcomed by an energetic group of scholars at The University of Alabama. 

From:   The School of Library & Information Studies, The University of Alabama
            Contact: Dr. Steven L. MacCall, Interim Director, smaccall@slis.ua.edu
            May 21, 2013

May 20, 2013

YATES appointed as SLIS Instructor

The School of Library & Information Studies (SLIS) at The University of Alabama is pleased to announce that Steven Yates has accepted an appointment as Instructor, effective August 16, 2013.  Mr. Yates has been teaching classes for SLIS as an adjunct professor, both face-to-face and online, since 2008.

Yates holds an Ed.S. in Library Media from the University of West Alabama, an M.L.I.S. and an M.A. in Communication Studies from The University of Alabama, and a B.A. in History and Geology from the University of Alabama. In 2005, he received a fellowship through an Institute of Museum and Library Services grant awarded to the UA Libraries and SLIS, and completed his library degree in 2006.  Since graduation, Mr. Yates has been employed as a public and a school librarian, most recently at Mountain Brook High School in Birmingham, AL.  In addition to his adjunct teaching for SLIS, Mr. Yates has taught at Jefferson State Community College and at Shelton State Community College.

Yates’ research interests include information literacy, and library outreach, programming and administration.  His most recently published article can be found in Knowledge Quest, volume 41.2, Nov./Dec. 2012, titled “Help is Here! Building PLNs Across Local, State, and National Professional Organizations.”  Yates initiated a number of successfully funded proposals for library resources and services as well as professional development opportunities.  In addition to service on school- level technology committees, Yates is professionally active at the state and national level.  Following a term as moderator of the Young Adult Services Roundtable for the Alabama Library Association, he served as President of ALLA from 2011-12.  As a member of the American Association of School Librarians for the past 6 years, Yates has served on the Knowledge Quest Editorial Board, the AASL Annual Program Committee, the Virtual Conference Subcommittee Chair, and the Professional Development Advisory Group. He was awarded Emerging Leader by the American Library Association in 2010.
Welcome aboard, Steven Yates!

From:  The School of Library & Information Studies, The University of Alabama
            Contact: Dr. Steven MacCall, Interim Director, smaccall@slis.ua.edu
            May 17, 2013         

May 17, 2013

Cherry Pendley awarded first annual OTCSA Outstanding Staff Award

SLIS Administrative Specialist Cherry Pendley was awarded the first annual Outstanding Staff Award recently established by The University of Alabama Office, Clerical, and Technical Staff Assembly (OTCSA). This award recognizes exceptional staff members on campus. Cherry was nominated by two SLIS faculty members for her dedicated, prompt, efficient, and accurate service in her role as financial administrator for the School. Cherry’s role in the SLIS office is indispensable to ensuring that students receive payments for assistantships and scholarships, to ensuring that SLIS events are catered, and that the School operates within all University and state policies and laws. Cherry was honored at a reception held by the OTCSA on Thursday, May 16th with Interim Provost Joe Benson presenting the award. Congratulations Cherry, and we thank her for her important and highly valued contributions!

May 14, 2013

Naidoo’s book released by ALA Editions

Diversity in Youth Literature: Opening Doors Through Reading, edited by

Jamie Naidoo and Sarah Park Dahlen, was just published by ALA Editions.   In addition to editing the book, Naidoo also contributed a chapter.  Jamie is Associate Professor at the University of Alabama’s School of Library and Information Studies and founder of the National Latino Children’s Literature Conference.

Find the book description here:  
http://www.alastore.ala.org/detail.aspx?ID=3545.

Congratulations, Jamie!

 

May 4, 2013

SLIS Graduates, May 2013

SLIS is proud to announce the names of the 46 students who will graduate this month.

MFA Book Arts:
Michelle Ray, Tallahassee, FL
Suzanne Sawyer, Tuscaloosa, AL
Timothy Winkler, Montevallo, AL

MLIS:
Kristen Bailey, Birmingham, AL
Rebecca Baltrusaitis, Prattville, AL
Bruce Bianchetta, Bellevue, NE
Michael Bingham, Tuscaloosa, AL
David Blum, Tuscaloosa, AL
Thomas Alexander Boucher, Tuscaloosa, AL
Valerie Bourgeois, Kennesaw, GA
Phillip Burgess, Southside, AL
Jamie Burke, Keithville, LA
Amanda Campbell, Huntsville, AL
Melissa Clegg, Batavia, IL
Natalie Coady, Quincy, MA
Jessica Crowe, Tuscaloosa, AL
Louise Daileigh, Tuscaloosa, AL
Christine Daniels, Huntsville, AL
Jill Deaver, Birmingham, AL
Caroline Elizabeth Dobson, Acworth, GA
Krysten Griffin, Birmingham, AL
Christopher Kendrick Hare, Hoover, AL 
Stephanie Jacobs, Tuscaloosa, AL
Kristynn Johnson, Eugene, OR
Genna Jones, Havelock, NC
Jillian Keith, North Waterboro, ME
Allon Kesselman, Phoenix, AZ
Rebecca Long, Clanton, AL
Michelle Mather, Lorain, OH
Kate McCabe, Bishopville, MD
Shannon Merillat, Lakeville, MN
Cathy Morris, Tuscaloosa, AL
Gary Morris, Tuscaloosa, AL
Lisa Motschke, St. Cloud, MN
Anthony Paganelli, Bowling Green, KY 
Kara Riley, Phenix City, AL 
Amanda Shelburne, Amarillo, TX
Joel Shields, Montgomery Village, MD
Callie Starkey, Tuscumbia, AL
Misty Stewart, Scottsboro, AL
Richard Stewart, Birmingham, AL
Rebecca Tischler, Nashville, TN
Mary Elizabeth Watson, Huntsville, AL
Clayton Wisner, Boaz, AL
Rebekah Wood, Lafayette, AL 
Stephen Zary, Hattiesburg, MS

May 3, 2013

SLIS Administration Changes

 
Dr. Steven MacCall has been appointed SLIS interim director.  Dr. MacCall has served on the SLIS faculty for fifteen years and was coordinator of the successful distance education program at SLIS from 2006 through 2011.  He has held  leadership positions in health sciences and library education organizations and currently serves as treasurer of the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE). As you know, SLIS is a top-twenty, nationally ranked program and we all look forward to the continued success of SLIS, its faculty, students and alumni.

Dr. Heidi Julien, who served as director of the School of Library and Information Studies (SLIS) since August 2011, has joined the SLIS faculty as a full time research and teaching professor.  Under her leadership SLIS instituted an international research series, engaged in a strategic planning process, and celebrated the School’s 40th anniversary. 

April 29, 2013

 

 

L to R: Samory Pruitt (V-P, Communtiy Affairs), Dr. Laurie Bonnici, Jackie Brodsky, Joe Benson (Interim Provost).

 

 

 

 

 

April 26, 2013

SLIS Doctoral Candidate Recognized for Community-Based Partnership

Doctoral candidate Jackie Brodsky, along with her supervisor Dr. Laurie Bonniei, were recognized today at the 7th Annual Center for Community –Based Partnerships (CCBP) Engaged Scholarship Awards Program.  Ms. Brodsky and Dr. Bonnici won the award for Outstanding Student-Initiated Engagement Effort, for Project ALFA (Accessible Libraries for All), funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. More information about Project ALFA is available at http://projectalfa.slis.ua.edu/. Project ALFA grew from a CCBP seed fund grant that enabled students to engage with community agencies to facilitate information technology use for a local group of older adults. Ms. Brodsky also won the Distinguished Achievement in Engagement Scholarship (Student) Award, for her work helping senior citizens become fluent in IT, for her work with Project ALFA, and for initiating the God’s House Accessible Materials Project, which makes weekly workshop materials accessible to congregants with visual difficulties. Congratulations to these two engaged SLIS scholars!

April 25, 2013

Doctoral Student Ann Bourne Successfully Defends Thesis

Congratulations to Ann Bourne, doctoral student in the College of Communication and Information Sciences, and LIS concentrator, who successfully defended her thesis on Tuesday April 23, 2013. Ann’s thesis, an oral history, is titled “Enriching the Collective Resources: An Historical Analysis of The Network of Alabama Academic Libraries, 1984-2009." Ann will graduate at the August commencement in Tuscaloosa. She was supervised by Dr. Elizabeth Aversa (chair), Dr. Charles Osburn, Dr. Margot Lamme, and Dr. Jeff Weddle from the College, and Dr. Andrew Huebner from the Department of History. Ann Bourne is a familiar member of the library community, and is the manager of the College of Communication and Information Sciences library.

April 22, 2013

SLIS Alumni Career Updates

 

 

Braegan Abernethy, MLIS 2010, pictured at left, is Public Services Librarian at the Huston-Tillotson University, Austin, TX.

 

 

 

 

• Michelle Beck, MLIS 2012, and Project ALFA Fellow, is Director of the Pilgrim Library and Learning Commons at Defiance College in Defiance, OH.
• Lourdes “Luly” Castro, MLIS 2012, and Project ALFA Fellow, is Executive Director of the Southwest Florida Library Network, the Multi-type Library Cooperative serving Charlotte, Collier, DeSoto, Glades, Hendry, and Monroe counties. 
• Samantha Boardman, MLIS 2012, is Cataloging Library Assistant at the Alaska State Court Law Library.
• Cindy Huskey, MLIS 2011, is Library Media Specialist at Bob Jones High School, Madison AL.
• Brandee Idleman, MLIS 2012, is Adjunct Faculty Librarian at Irvine Valley College, CA, responsible for reference and collection development work.

 

 

Dutcha Lawson, MLIS 2006, pictured at left, is Columbiana Public Library Director in Shelby County, AL. 

 

 

• Audrey (Taylor) Mickle, MLIS 2012, is Web Resources Integration Analyst at The University of Alabama.
• Jason Phillips, MLIS 2006, is Reference & Instruction Librarian at Boreham Library, University of Arkansas in Fort Smith, AR.
• Kara Riley, MLIS 2012 and Project ALFA Fellow, is Customer Development Librarian with the Florida Department of Education, Braille and Talking Books Library in Daytona, FL.

April 17, 2013

Embree Receives Teaching Excellence Award from Student Advisory Committee

 

At Honors Day April 5th, 2013, the first annual Student Advisory Committee Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence was awarded to Anna Embree, SLIS Associate Professor in the Master of Fine Arts in the Book Arts program.

Congratulations, Anna, on this special recognition, which is initiated by student nomination. 

 

 

SLIS Demonstrates Commitment to Diversity

Yesterday marked the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail, and thus provided an opportunity to reflect on the importance of Dr. King’s legacy, and the continuing struggle for justice for many people. Thank you to Dr. Laurie Bonnici, SLIS Assistant Professor, who took the initiative to organize a reading of Dr. King’s letter in collaboration with the Tuscaloosa Public Library. Thank you to SLIS students who attended the reading! You may have caught some local TV news coverage of the event, and you’ll also find a great story in the April 17, 2013 Tuscaloosa News: http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20130417/NEWS/130419785?p=1&tc=pg.

SLIS is committed to the principle of diversity in all of its manifestations, and this is an excellent example of that commitment.

April 10, 2013

Congratulations to Dr. Elizabeth Aversa for winning the 2013 Beta Phi Mu Award. This is a very prestigious honor, and is an appropriate tribute to such a distinguished leader in the field. More information is available at: http://www.americanlibrariesmagazine.org/news/ala/elizabeth-aversa-receives-2013-beta-phi-mu-award.

Danilo M. Baylen, MLIS Candidate DE Cohort 7 and Project ALFA Cohort 1, was elected Executive Board Chair of the Southern Regional Faculty and Instructional Development Consortium (SRFIDC) for a three-year term at its annual meeting in Jacksonville, Florida. The Consortium membership includes personnel from faculty and instructional development programs (teaching centers, instructional technology centers, faculty development committees) in two- and four-year degree-granting institutions in the greater South. In this role, he provides leadership to the Consortium's activities including the annual sharing conference held during early spring that includes workshops, major speakers, and member sharing sessions.

April 9, 2013

Recognition for Steve Miller, Book Artist and Educator

The New York Center for Book Arts, located at 28 West 27th Street, 3rd Floor. New York, NY 10001, is the oldest Center for the Book Arts in the country.  Their Annual Benefit program held this year on April 5th, 2013, is an occasion to celebrate accomplishments over the past year, and pay tribute to individuals who have made a lasting contribution to the practice or interpretation of book arts.  This year Steve Miller, book artist and educator at The University of Alabama, was one of the individuals recognized for his achievements and commitment to furthering the field of book arts.

 

 

Congratulations, Steve, and thank you for continuing to bring recognition to the Book Arts program at SLIS!

April 8, 2013

Honor’s Day 2013

SLIS celebrated Honor’s Day on April 5, 2013, by recognizing the following students with awards: Cathy Morris (Bethel Fite Endowed Scholarship), Catherine DiCristofaro and Lara Wrightson (Corr Scholarship), Louise Daileigh (Faculty Scholar, M.L.I.S. Program), Shannon Merillat (Florine Oltman Award), Laura K. Rowley (Raymond F. McLain Book Arts Award), Crissie E. Johnson (Student Paper Award), and Matt Griffin (Online Innovation Award). Graduate Assistants at the School were also acknowledged, and 23 students were nominated for induction into the Beta Phi Mu Honor Society; an induction ceremony was held for those nominees attending. Congratulations to all of you! Honor’s Day was capped by an excellent presentation by guest speaker and SLIS doctoral alumnus Dr. P. Toby Graham, who currently is Deputy University Librarian at the University of Georgia and director of UGA’s Hargrett Rare Book & Manuscript Library, director of Digital Library of Georgia, and co-director of the award-winning Civil Rights Digital Library. His talk was entitled “Telling Stories around the Digital Campfire: History, Culture, Community, and the Virtual Library."

Dr. Toby Graham

SLIS Awards Winners

 

Annual Edible Book Festival

The SLIS Annual Edible Book Festival held on April 4 was, once again, a big success!  MLIS and MFA-Book Arts students contributed edible representations of favorite books to share!  Some were sweet, some were cheesy, some were salty, spicy or just cute. Special thanks go to Louise Daileigh and the Student Advisory Committee for promoting and coordinating the event. 

April 4, 2013

Cherry Pendley Nominated for OTCSA Staff Award

The University of Alabama Office, Clerical, and Technical Staff Assembly (OTCSA) recently established the OTCSA Staff Award to recognize exceptional staff members on campus. This year, SLIS Administrative Specialist Cherry Pendley was nominated by two SLIS faculty members for her dedicated, prompt, efficient, and accurate service in her role as financial administrator for the School. Cherry’s role in the SLIS office is indispensable to ensuring that students receive payments for assistantships and scholarships, to ensuring that SLIS events are catered, and that the School operates within all University and state policies and laws. Cherry has been invited to a reception for award nominees in May, where the award will be made. Regardless of that outcome, we thank Cherry for her important and highly valued contributions!

April 1, 2013

SLIS Professor Re-elected as UA Senate President

Professor Steve Miller has been re-elected as University of Alabama Senate President, for the third time in his career. This re-election follows his term as president in the 2012-13 year. Professor Miller’s service in the role this past year was marked by his participation in the search committee for a new University President, as well as important contributions on a number of important campus issues.

March 22, 2013

Dr. Doug Boyd Speaks at SLIS

On March 20, SLIS hosted Dr. Doug Boyd to speak on “Search, Explore, Connect: Enhancing Access to Oral History Online” in our Research Colloquia Series, and to give an informal digital oral history workshop. The talk discussed new models for engaging and empowering archivists, librarians and users of oral history in a digital environment. Dr. Boyd also discussed OHMS (Oral History Metadata Synchronizer), an open source, web-based system he created to inexpensively and efficiently enhance access to oral history online. Dr. Boyd is Director of the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History at the University of Kentucky. He is currently directing the IMLS National Leadership Grant “OHMS: Enhancing Access and Discovery of Oral History Online” to create OHMS compatibility with popular systems such as Omeka and CONTENTdm. Dr. Boyd’s recent publications include the book Crawfish Bottom: Recovering a Lost Kentucky Community, published in August 2011 by the University Press of Kentucky.

March 20, 2013

Two Newly Tenured SLIS Professors!

 

We are very pleased to announce that Dr. Dan Albertson and Dr. Laurie Bonnici have just received word that they will be tenured and promoted to the rank of Associate Professor, effective August 16, 2013. Congratulations, Dan and Laurie! SLIS is extremely fortunate to benefit from the energy, vision, and leadership of these two young scholars, both of whom are known for their outstanding teaching and research records. We anticipate that they will continue to contribute to the fine reputation of SLIS for many years to come.

 

 

More details about their work are available at http://www.dalbertson.slis.ua.edu/ and http://www.slis.ua.edu/files/Bonnici%20CV%20full_August2011.pdf.

 

 

 

 

 

SLIS Hosts Senior Australian Researcher

SLIS was honored to host Maureen Henninger, Senior Lecturer, Information and Knowledge Management Program, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney. Maureen has had extensive academic and professional experience in the storing and retrieval of digital information, particularly database design, and in information design. She consults widely in industry, government and for non-government organizations in these areas and has been invited to speak at many conferences on digital information retrieval in wide range of topics, including competitive intelligence, biomedical technology and government information. While at SLIS, Maureen presented in our Research Colloquium series on March 6; her talk was titled “The Reuse of Data: Design, Visualization and New Knowledge.” In addition, she consulted with Drs. Dan Albertson and Jennifer Campbell-Meier. All three are part of an international group of researchers collaborating on a project tentatively titled “From the Mud to the Museum.”

March 19, 2013

 

Alumni Passings:  Kate Ragsdale and Kari Davidson

 

Kate Ragsdale, our 2012 Distinguished Alumna Award winner, recently died at her home in Tuscaloosa. Kate was a dear friend and colleague to the School, and was unfailingly professional, courteous, and kind. She impressed us with her sense of adventure, her wry sense of humor, her dedication to the welfare of others, and her sincere concern for the School. Kate was very involved in the Tuscaloosa community, and will be missed deeply and widely. We have lost a lovely woman whose grace and positive nature touched many lives.

 

 

 

Kari Brooke Swann Davidson, 44, a 1999 MLIS graduate from SLIS, died on Friday, March 15, 2013, after a long battle with brain cancer.  SLIS fellow students may have known her as Kari Dowdy during those years.  Kari’s work as an educator endeared her to students and families in her community, and many colleagues will remember her with affection.

 

 

 

March 14, 2013

Trish Vlastnik to present at AASL conference

 

SLIS alumnus Trish Vlastnik (2011) will present Nothing Like the Real Thing:  Meeting Common Core's Call for Primary Sources in K-12 Classroom Instruction, as part of the concurrent lineup at the American Association of School Librarian’s 16th National Conference & Exhibition, November 14-17, 2013 in Hartford, CT. 

 

 

 

March 12, 2013

SLIS Moves to #18 in Nation!

SLIS has moved up 5 spots in the latest U.S. News & World Report Best Graduate Schools (Library and Information Studies) Ranking, to #18 in the nation! This is an extraordinary achievement, which belongs to each member of our School community. The terrific work of our faculty members through strong research and teaching has significantly enhanced the profile of SLIS in the eyes of our sister schools across the U.S. The ranking is based on reputation, as reported by MLIS program directors and deans, as well as select senior faculty members in the field. For the full rankings, please see: http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-library-information-science-programs/library-information-science-rankings.

March 4, 2013

ALFA Fellows Trip to Atlanta, February 24-27

Fifteen IMLS Project ALFA Fellows from the University of Alabama, SLIS and Wayne State University, SLIS) traveled with Project co-PIs Dr. Laurie Bonnici (UA SLIS) and Dr. Stephanie Maatta (Wayne State University SLIS) to Atlanta, Georgia in late February.  The trip is part of the ALFA project where Fellows learn about information accessibility for people with disabilities.  While there, the Fellows spent a day at the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library, with presentations by the Atlanta Metro Library for Accessible Services (AMLAS) and the Alabama Public Library Service Regional Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped.  The visit to the library included a tour of the AMLAS facility and the children’s interactive learning area.  ALFA Fellows also visited the Alternative Media Access Center (AMAC) at the Georgia Institute of Technology, which converts textbooks into accessible electronic and Braille formats.  While in Atlanta, Fellows also invoked vision- and auditory-impairing items contained in their Project ALFA Mobile Experiential Sensory Learning Laboratory kits and traveled in pairs and small groups to various locations in downtown Atlanta to experience information seeking with a vision or auditory impairment.  The Fellows blogged about their experiences for their LS 590 class, Accessibility for Information Technologies taught by the project principal investigator, Dr. Laurie Bonnici.

February 27, 2013

Kudos to recent MLIS graduates on career achievements

• Meredith Allison (2012), Knowledge Analyst for the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta, Georgia as of March 11, 2013.  

• Erica Calvert (2012), pictured at left, Director, Warrior Public Library in Jefferson County Alabama.

• Autumn Faulkner (2011), Cataloger at Michigan State University Libraries.

• Lindsay Harris (2011), Adult Services Librarian I, Bartow County Public Library in Cartersville, Georgia.

• Elaine Henry (2012), Library Director, Cherokee County Public Library in Centre, Alabama.

• Mallory Martin (2012), Children's Librarian, Helen Keller Library in Tuscumbia, Alabama.

• Emma O'Hagan (2010), Reference Librarian and School of Nursing Liaison, Lister Hill Library, University of Alabama at Birmingham.

• Rachel Renick (2011) pictured at left, Public Services Librarian, Millsaps-Wilson Library at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi.

• Ruth Rowell (2012) is an assistant editor with INALJ (I Need a Library Job) for the State of Georgia.

• Dana Stanley (2010) is currently on an 18-month deployment as a Quality Assurance Specialist for services contracts in Seoul, Korea with the Department of the Army.

• Debbie Stanton (2012), Library Director of the Washington Public Library in Washington, Iowa. She has also been appointed by Iowa Governor Terry Branstad to serve on the Southeast Iowa STEM board to represent librarians and their work in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (http://www.iowastem.gov/southeast-iowa-stem-region).

February 19,2013

Jackie Brodsky Successfully Defends Proposal

Today, Jackie Brodsky, Communication & Information Sciences doctoral student and LIS concentrator, successfully defended her dissertation proposal titled “Social Supportive Interactions that Older Adults Seek When Learning to Use Information and Communication Technologies: A Case Study.”  Committee members are SLIS faculty members Laurie Bonnici (Chair), and Heidi Julien, Communication Studies faculty members Mary Meares and Carol Mills, and Pat Parmelee from the Center for Mental Health and Aging (Psychology). Congratulations to Jackie who is now ABD!

February 18, 2013

SLIS at the iConference 2013

Several SLIS faculty members participated in the iConference 2013 last week in Fort Worth, Texas. This conference is quickly becoming an important venue for intellectual exchange in the discipline of library and information science.  Dr. Melissa Johnston participated in the Digital Youth Workshop and gave a lightening talk on her research on how school librarians can serve to meet the needs of digital youth. The digital youth workshop at iConference 2013 was the first in a three-event sequence. It brought together a diverse initial community that will further comprise a steering group to help plan the second event, a Digital Youth Summit 2014 (in Seattle) that will be sponsored and attract participants from industry, government, non-profits, education, and media. The third event will return to the iConference 2015 to report out on research efforts. Dr. Heidi Julien also attended that event. Dr. Dan Albertson presented a presenting a poster titled, “When Thumbnails Are and Are Not Enough: Factors Behind Users’ Requests for Information From a Video Digital Library.” Dr. Bonnici and Dr. Julien presented a poster with co-author Dr. Kathy Burnett from Florida State University, titled “The Globalization of the iSchools Movement.”  Dr. Bonnici also attended the pre-conference workshop:  Sociotechnical Systems Research: Defining, Converging, and Researching as a Community.

February 14, 2013

Recent MLIS Graduates Land Jobs

MLIS graduates in recent cohorts have landed a diverse range of positions. Congratulations to:

• Leah R. Allison (2012), Director of Library Services at St. George's Independent School, Collierville, TN.
• Dennis A. Borden (2010), Media Resource Center Manager, Strayer University.
• Jake DaSilva (2010), Strategic Researcher, International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers Union.
• Sarah (Thornburg) Dauterive (2011), Assistant Librarian, East Mississippi Community College in Scooba, MS.
• Violet Jaffe (2012), Collection Specialist, Arlington Heights Memorial Library in Arlington Heights, IL.
• Clay Kriese (2011), YA Librarian, Clarksburg-Harrison Public Library in Clarksburg, WV.
• Tamar Miller (2011), Cataloging Librarian, Denver Public Library.
• Erin T. Mumford (2012), Library Assistant, Las Vegas-Clark County Library District.
• Jeremy Myntti (2011), Head of Cataloging and Metadata Services, University of Utah's Marriott Library.
• Catherine Oseas (2011), Assistant Archivist, Birmingham Public Library Archives.
• Brandon Rowland (2012), Digital Services Specialist, Auburn Public Library.
• Brittany Turner (2012), Records Manager/Special Projects Librarian, Shreve Memorial Library, Shreveport, LA.
• Lara Wrightson (2012), Assistant Branch Librarian, Spartanburg County Public Library, Spartanburg, SC.

If you have been successful in landing a position in the field, or if you’ve been promoted to a new position, please let us know.

February 12, 2013

Turner recognized for Outstanding Service with Award of Merit

Brittany Turner has been selected as a divisional winner for the University of Alabama’s Award for Outstanding Service by a Graduate Student, and has received an Award of Merit from Dean David Francko to recognize her superior work in activities that support school functions, service to the community and to the profession. 

When the disastrous tornado of April 27, 2011 struck our local community, Brittany was a leader among a group of SLIS students who developed an online mechanism for tracking SLIS students, faculty and staff.

Brittany presented original and award winning research as a student in several venues, and laid a solid foundation for work in professional associations that she now continues as a graduate.

Brittany led an effort to establish the Curt Clapper Memorial Scholarship Fund at SLIS for her colleague. The fund is accepting online donations.

Congratulations, Brittany, and thank you!

February 6, 2013

Hadley published in Oregon Library Association Quarterly

In an issue titled Adventures in Library Land: Stories and Advice for Those New and Those Needing to Renew, jump right on over to page 23 to read Jay Hadley’s article in the Oregon Library Association Quarterly linked here http://www.olaweb.org/assets/OLAQ/olaq_18no4.pdf.  Jay, a student in the 2012 online MLIS cohort, says of this issue, “it has tons of great advice for those on the LIS career path.”

Here is a brief teaser from the article:

“Informational interviewing has helped me learn more about librarianship as a career. I have interviewed directors of public and academic libraries, academic librarians at community colleges, medical librarians at hospitals, and several of the librarians at the Multnomah County Central Library. All those interviewed were happy to answer my questions about what librarians do in all these different kinds of libraries. Also, as I considered going back to school, they helped me think through what I wanted to gain from a degree in library and information studies.”
Congratulations, Jay!

February 5, 2013

UA Students selected as Kaigler Children’s Book Festival Ambassadors

The University of Southern Mississippi just announced today that four UA SLIS students were selected as student ambassadors at the Kaigler Children's Book Festival that will take place this spring.

Congratulations to the Ambassadors from UA:

Justin Banger
Danilo Baylen
Callie Ann Starkey
Rebecca Tischler

The Ambassadors program, now in its sixth year, selects graduate students in LIS or an allied field to receive free registration and housing at the Fay B. Kaigler Children's Book Festival in exchange for volunteer service during the festival. Ambassadors have the opportunity to meet and work with people of significance in the field of children's literature, hear speakers, and attend workshops relevant to the field.

Read more about the Ambassadors program: http://www.usm.edu/childrens-book-festival/ambassadors-program.

February 4, 2013

SLIS Hosts Visiting Scholar Dr. Lisa Given

During the week of January 28-February 1, 2013, SLIS hosted Dr. Lisa M. Given, Professor of Information Studies at Charles Sturt University in Australia. Dr. Given is also an Adjunct Professor in Humanities Computing (University of Alberta) and an Adjunct Professor in Educational Policy Studies (University of Alberta). A former Director (and now a Distinguished Scholar) of the International Institute for Qualitative Methodology, Lisa holds research grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, and other agencies. She has received numerous research awards and has published widely on topics related to individuals' information behaviors and qualitative inquiry. She also serves on the Board of Directors for the Canadian Institute for Research in Computing and the Arts. Lisa received her Ph.D. in Library and Information Science from the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada.

During her visit, Dr. Given gave a presentation on January 30 in the SLIS Research Colloquia Series, titled “Using iPads in Mixed Methods Research: Experiences from the Translating Emergency Knowledge for Kids (TREKK) Project.” She also spoke on ““Undergraduates, Affect and Academic Information Behaviors: Implications for Information Literacy Instruction” in the LS 527 (User Education) class.

Amanda Clark Defends Dissertation

SLIS student Amanda Clark (MLIS 2007) successfully defended her dissertation study,  “The Handmade Artists’ Book: Space, Materiality, and the Dynamics of Communication in Book Arts,” on January 14th.  Her doctoral committee, chaired by Jeff Weddle, also includes Steve Miller, Anna Embree, Janis Edwards, and Aaron Kuntz.  Amanda returned for this defense from her current residence in Beijing, China, where she has been studying and teaching.  Amanda is currently working on a book she is co-authoring with Dr. Leland M. Roth.  

Amanda writes a blog [http://clarkchinalog.blogspot.com].  On January 26th, she said:
"Lately, I've been appreciating everything -- really, enjoying life. I've also been making good on my (Western) New Year's resolution to read an hour minimum (two is better) every day. It's lovely. And "screen-reading" doesn't count. Which reminds me . . . People always said that when I got to the end of my dissertation I would (1) hate the topic, and (2) feel terrible about it. Neither of these seem to apply -- I still love it and can't wait to do more with it!" 

January 18, 2013

SLIS Student Team Develops New Intranet and Student Forms

SLIS MLIS students Cathy Morris, Kara Riley, Penny Sebastiani, and Joel Shields, have been working with supervisor Dr. Laurie Bonnici to develop a SLIS intranet and interactive student forms which will help to streamline SLIS administrative processes. Additional contributions on usability analysis were completed in the LS 560 (Information Technology) course by students Shelley Bourgeois and Joseph Hudak. Support for this work has been provided by the Office for Information Technology, The University of Alabama. Thanks, team, for a terrific and practical project!

January 16, 2013

SLIS at ALISE

SLIS faculty members are very involved in this year’s conference of the Association for Library and Information Science Education, to be held in Seattle, WA from January 22-25, 2013. Dr. Jennifer Campbell-Meier is a co-author on a paper titled “I am a…How do Future LIS Professionals Identify Themselves.” Drs. Laurie Bonnici and Heidi Julien are co-authors on another paper titled “Cross-institutional Examination of Modality Delivery Preference for Online Course Delivery” (a Featured Presentation at the conference). Dr. Jamie Campbell-Naidoo is a panelist for the Youth Services SIG, titled “The Beauty of Subversion: Asking the Difficult Questions in Research, Teaching, and Practice,” and Drs. Elizabeth Aversa and Campbell-Meier are speaking on a juried panel titled “Addressing the Hard Questions on Library Planning, Services, and Evaluation: Collaborative Opportunities for State Library Development Agencies and LIS Programs.”

In addition, Dr. Jennifer Campbell-Meier served on the conference planning committee as Chair of the Works in Progress poster session, and Dr. Heidi Julien served as conference co-chair. More information about the conference is available at: http://www.alise.org/.

December 12, 2012

SLIS is proud to announce the names of the 49 students who will graduate this month.

MLIS graduates:
Leah Allison, Memphis, TN
Meredith Allison, Birmingham, AL
Jacquelyn Leigh Anderson, Nashville, TN
Erica Calvert, Crane Hill, AL
Gregory Carr, Tuscaloosa, AL
Lourdes Castro, Fort Myers, FL
Jennifer Collins, Tuscaloosa, AL
Ashley Crace, Satellite Beach, FL
Yuri Craig, Huntsville, AL
Patricia Crow, Birmingham, AL
Keith Darrock, Port Townsend, WA
Stephen Deloney, Pike Road, AL
Rebecca Doom, Franklin, TN
Joseph Famighette, Harvard, MA
Amy Ford, Great Mills, MD
Rorie Fredrich, Roanoke, VA
Greggory Gassman, Newark, OH
Karen Gwynn, Alpharetta, GA
Angela Hackstadt, Fayetteville, AR
Rhonna Hargett, Manhattan, KS
Elaine Henry, Collinsville, AL
Karlie Johnson, Gadsden, AL
Rachel Jones, Huntsville, AL
Rachel Key, Birmingham, AL
Christopher Kinney, Crozet, VA
Laura Krotzer, Parker, CO
Verna Madrid, Tuscaloosa, AL
Carey Massey, Trussville, AL
Melissa Maynard, Rome, GA
Timothy McGowan, Chicago, IL
Courtney Mims, Selma, AL
Jennifer Mustain, Hendersonville, TN
Katy Olson, Longview, WA
Kaitlyn Parker, Alexander City, AL
Anna Register, Nashville, TN
Sara Riddle, Tuscaloosa, AL
Ruth Rowell, Marietta, GA
Brandon Rowland, Auburn, AL
Michelle Blank, Topeka, IN
Melinda Smith, Wetumpka, AL
Kelley Tarpley, Demopolis, AL
Matthew Van Ess, Green Bay, WI
Karmecia Williams, Pleasant Grove, AL
Gina Wilson, Thomasville, AL
Melanie Wood, Reform, AL
Matthew Wooten, Birmingham, AL
Lara Wrightson, Flowery Branch, GA

MFA Graduates:
Mukti Cerio, Birmingham, AL
Stephanie Jacobs, Tuscaloosa, AL

Congratulations and best wishes to you all.

December 7, 2012

Matthew Layne, who graduated from SLIS with an MLIS in 2010, is featured in the December issue of B-metro, the Magazine of Birmingham Metro Living. Mr. Layne is the Young Adult Librarian at the Emmet O’Neal Library in Mountain Brook, AL and is also a well-known poet, especially in the Birmingham area. The article includes two of his poems, “In Eve’s Defense” and “In Absentia.” The article may be viewed at: http://b-metro.com/matt-layne/8778/

The SLIS Book Bonanza for the Black Belt Program
 For the past four years in December, The University of Alabama’s School of Library and Information Studies (SLIS) has awarded over $7600 in free books to elementary, middle, and high school libraries in the Black Belt region of the state via the SLIS Book Bonanza for the Black Belt Program. Organized and spearheaded by faculty member Dr. Jamie Naidoo, this program is just one of the many ways in which the School of Library and Information Studies gives back to the local community, region, and state.

School librarians in the Black Belt region were invited to apply for the book give-away program in mid-November. Applications were received from 35 highly deserving schools and SLIS chose 5 school libraries to receive over $1500 each in brand new children's and young adult books. The judging of the applications was rigorous, as every school exemplified a significant need. 
Please join Dr. Naidoo in congratulating the following winning schools for 2012:
Notasulga High School, serving grades K-12 (Macon County)
Akron Community School, serving grades K-12 (Hale County)
Pike County Elementary School, serving grades K-5 (Pike County)
Barbour County Jr. High School, serving grades 7-9 (Barbour County)
Russell County High School, serving grades 9-12 (Russell County)

Schools in the Black Belt region of the state are encouraged to apply again in November 2013 for a chance to receive free books for their school libraries during the 2013 SLIS Book Bonanza for the Black Belt Program. For additional information about the program, please contact Dr. Jamie C. Naidoo at jcnaidoo@slis.ua.edu or SLIS at 205-348-4610.

Danilo M. Baylen, MLIS student (Cohort 7 and Project ALFA fellow) made a poster presentation titled “Accessing Archives for All: Challenges, Guidelines and Recommendations” at the Society of Georgia Archivists annual conference in November. Also, he has been appointed as a member of the Education Committee  of the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA) for a two-year term (2012-2014). Well done, Danilo.
Jeff Weddle’s recent co-authored book “The Librarian’s Guide to Negotiation: Winning Strategies for the Digital Age” was named Book of the Week by Against the Grain (www.Against-the-Grain.com).   Congratulations to Jeff and his co-authors.

November 28, 2012

Kudos to Christina Golm, a Project ALFA fellow, whose project proposal, written in a class taught by Dr. Bonnici, resulted in a $5,500 grant for the Henika District Library in Wayland, Michigan. The project, to set up a laptop lab for seniors, was funded by the Robert C. Reinhardt Library Fund.

Congratulations to MLIS student Nicholas Pleasant who has been awarded the Southeastern Chapter of the American Association of Law Libraries (SEAALL) 2012-2013 scholarship.  
Student scholarships sponsored by SEAALL are designed to encourage library school students to pursue a career in law librarianship. The SEAALL Scholarship Committee awards grants to the student whom it determines has indicated a genuine interest in the profession of law librarianship and is likely to pursue a career in this exciting library specialty. In addition to their monetary award, recipients also receive a one-year membership to SEAALL.  Nicholas will have the opportunity to contribute an article to the SEALL newsletter as part of his award.

November 27, 2012

Dr. Laurie Bonnici has been elected as the Director for Membership Services of ALISE (Association for Library and Information Science Education) for 2013. Congratulations, Laurie.

November 26, 2012

Professor Steve Miller visited Mexico from Sept 23-29, 2012 on a multiple scouting mission. First he traveled to a remote Otomi Indian village of papermaking families, San Pablito, where he worked with the papermakers. Together they created an Amate spirit paper from Alabama fibers using their generations of expertise. Second, he spent time at La Ceiba, a print- and papermaking hacienda, where he explored opportunities for collaborative book projects between the hacienda’s artists and studios and the UA Book Arts students.

MFA students Mo Fiorello and Amy LeePard presented research on their experiments with bamboo husks for hand papermaking at the National Outreach Scholarship Conference held at The University of Alabama from October 1-3, 2012.

Professors Anna Embree and Steve Miller attended the Guild of Book Workers Annual Standards of Excellence Meeting in Salt Lake City from October 11-14, 2012. SLIS students Amy LeePard and Suzanne Sawyer also participated. Steve Miller was one of four presenters at the meeting.

Professor Anna Embree attended the annual Friends of Dard Hunter meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, from October 17-21, 2012. The Friends meeting is the largest gathering of individuals devoted to hand papermaking in the nation.

Six MFA in the Book Arts students attended the Chicago annual meeting of the American Printing History Association on October 12 and 13, 2012.

Steve Miller presented the annual Susan Swartzburg Lecture at Wells College, in Aurora, NY, on October 18, 2012.

All the Book Arts students participated in two demonstrations and in selling their work at Northport, Alabama's annual Kentuck Festival of the Arts on October 20th and 21st, 2012. One of the demonstrations was in both simple bookbinding and letterpress printing with many children visiting the festival and the Book Arts booth.

Steve Miller was Visiting Artist at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in Atlanta, GA, on October 24, 2012. He spoke with SCAD design students, and gave a public lecture.

Steve Miller gave a presentation on November 14, 2012 at "The Next Chapter: Rare Books in Modern Times" conference, held at The American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, PA.

MILLER MERGES MEXICAN, ALABAMAN SYMBOLS ON QUEST FOR DISTINCTIVE PAPER — A piece of handmade and hand-cut paper, made from the bark of a Tuscaloosa paper mulberry tree, unites through art the symbolic protector of a remote Mexican village with Big Al, thanks to an intrepid University of Alabama professor’s creative research. http://uanews.ua.edu/2013/03/ua-professor-merges-mexican-alabaman-symbols-on-quest-for-distinctive-paper/

Special congratulations to Anna Embree who will have a book included in an exhibition in The Netherlands from Dec. 8- Jan. 5. The exhibition is being sponsored by the Archive of the Dutch province of North Holland and the Dutch Hand bookbinding Foundation.  Anna will be attending the exhibition, which will feature hand bound copies of a book about the 17th Century Dutch bookbinder, Dirck de Bray, titled “Kort Onderweijs Van Het Boecken Binden (A Short Instruction in the Binding of Books)”, edited by Koert van der Horst and Clemens de Wolf. The exhibition will also feature the work of bookbinders from around the world and will take place in a reconstructed 17th century book bindery.  Also on exhibit will be an original bookbinding manual by Dirck de Bray from 1658, and other works of De Bray, such as woodblock prints and illustrations. 

Anna’s book is pictured here:

Jamie Naidoo’s recent book, “Rainbow Family Collections:…” has received a glowing review on page 13 at the following URL:
http://www.ala.org/glbtrt/sites/ala.org.glbtrt/files/content/newsletter/newsletters/2012Fall.pdf .
 
Dr. Naidoo presented two sessions at the Joint Conference of Librarians of Color at Kansas City, MO in September 2012. He also continued his consulting work with the Children's Defense Fund's Freedom Schools in October 2012. 
The annual SLIS Book Bonanza for the Black Belt Program is now in progress.  The brainchild of Dr. Jamie Naidoo, this program will result in at least five schools in the Black Belt counties of Alabama receiving the equivalent of over $5,000 in books for children and young adults.  The Tuscaloosa News has published an article on the program at http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20121124/NEWS/121129905/1007?Title=Program-supplies-books-to-needy-Black-Belt-schools. Deadline for applications is December 3, and Dr. Naidoo can be contacted for information at jcnaidoo@slis.ua.edu.

A popular annual event, the SLIS Children’s and Young Adult Book Sale, will be held in SLIS from Wednesday, December 5 through Friday, December 7. Times are as follows:
Wednesday: Noon to 8 p.m.
Thursday: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Friday: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Proceeds of the sale support the biennial UA National Latino Children’s Literature Conference, sponsored by SLIS.

There was a long line at the Thanksgiving/Booksgiving luncheon in SLIS on November 15, 2012.  Thanks go to SAC members Jessica Crowe, Kate Kotan, Lacee Nisbett, Nicholas Pleasant, Katie Shepard, Louise Daileigh, and others who helped with planning, publicity and set-up for today's potluck lunch, to all of the outstanding cooks whose talents were in evidence at tables laden with most delicious foods, and to the cleanup crew and Steve Zary.  What a wonderful feast. The sheer pleasure of the attendees is evident in this picture:

 

November 9, 2012

SLIS celebrated its 40th anniversary in style on November 1, 2012.  Faculty, staff, retirees, alumni, and friends gathered in Room 503 Gorgas Library for delicious hors d’oeuvres and dinner served at beautifully decorated tables.  Light jazz was played before dinner by students from the UA School of Music, and a video featuring scenes of campus and SLIS life was shown on the large screen throughout the evening.  Lists of graduates from the inception of the School to the present day were mounted around the room and a display featured books published by current SLIS faculty.  Dr. Julien recognized those who made the evening so successful and a number of special guests.  It was a most successful occasion, and a fitting introduction to the activities of the following day…
The LSA (Library School Association) and SLIS celebrated SLIS Alumni Day on November 2, 2012. Using the same venue as that used for the anniversary dinner, the occasion featured former Dean of the School, Dr. Philip Turner, whose luncheon address to the group was very well received. A number of sessions were offered for attendees in the morning, followed by lunch and awards. The LSA Board then met in the afternoon.

Kate Ragsdale, SLIS alumna, received the Distinguished Alumni Award on Alumni Day. Kate, a former associate professor in the University Libraries who retired in 2006, has contributed richly and selflessly to SLIS, the University, and the library community in Tuscaloosa, the region, and the nation. Congratulations to Kate on this well-deserved honor. 

On October 22nd, assistant professor Jennifer Campbell-Meier held a session at the University of Georgia titled Bridging the Gap: Examining Faculty Perceptions of Open Access Publishing and Repositories. The session focused on Dr. Campbell-Meier’s findings from her recent survey of faculty in the University System of Georgia about their perceptions of open access publishing and the use of digital repositories for teaching and research.

SLIS has received news of the passing of alumna Jeane Beaird in California in September 2012. Jeane earned her MLIS from UA in 1991 and had been working most recently as a librarian with the Riverside County Library System in California. SLIS sends condolences to Jeane’s family and friends.

October 12, 2012

Mike Selby, SLIS online student from the 2011 Lucky Seventh online cohort, has an article titled “Librarians as Leaders” in Feliciter, October 2012, Vol. 58 No. 5, p. 37.
http://www.cla.ca/feliciter/2012/58-5/index.html

Annie Herlocker, MLIS and MFA alumna is the Collection Development Coordinator for the Linebaugh Public Library System in Tennessee.  She also teaches as adjunct faculty at the Watkins College of Art & Design.  Her article “Shelving Methods and Questions of Storage and Access in Artists' Book Collections” was recently published by University of Chicago Press in the Spring 2012 issue of Art Documentation. The article is available through JSTOR, and the abstract can be read at http://www.arlisna.org/artdoc/index.html
  
Sonja Greentree-Rossow, recent SLIS MFA graduate, now teaches for the UA art department.  She has a recent blog at http://spousebuzz.com/blog/2012/09/friends-have-babies.html
that ties into the content of her MFA thesis.  Kudos to Sonja.  

September 27, 2012

Dr. Steven MacCall has been named a faculty fellow of a new program at The University of Alabama: the Program in Sports Communication.  Information on this program can be found at   http://sportscom.ua.edu.  Congratulations, Steven, on this wonderful appointment.

During her recent visit to Japan, Dr. Heidi Julien gave the following presentations:
Julien, Heidi. “The Role of Librarians in Higher Education.” Invited talk to librarians at Chiba University, Chiba, Japan, September 4, 2012.

Julien, Heidi, Lisa Given, and Anna Opryshko. “Photovoice: A Promising Method for Studies of Individuals’ Information Practices.” Presented at ISIC 2012 (Information Seeking in Context) Conference, Tokyo, September 4-7, 2012.

Julien, Heidi. “What is a Library's Potential in Information Literacy Instruction?” Invited talk to librarians at Kyoto University, Japan, September 11, 2012.

September 18,2012

Kudos to Dr. Steven MacCall for his very successful, collaborative work in the creation of the Tuscaloosa Area Virtual Museum (http://tavm.omeka.net). This project is the result of the combined skills of individual volunteers from The Tuscaloosa News, the Tuscaloosa Public Library, Tuscaloosa County Preservation Society, the Heritage Commission of Tuscaloosa County, the Jemison-Van de Graaf Foundation, the University of Alabama School of Library and Information Studies (MacCall and students), the city of Tuscaloosa, Friends of Historic Northport, Paul W. Bryant Museum, and individual historians and librarians.  It consists of photographs and images of documents with accompanying descriptions, and is fully searchable. The Virtual Museum was unveiled at the Tuscaloosa Public Library on September 16, 2012, where the primary contributors described the project from its inception.  Dr. MacCall’s contributions included the choice of software (Omeka) and the item descriptions, which, of course, comply with national standards.   This is an impressive resource and will be useful to schools, genealogists, researchers, faculty, students, and members of the community. Individuals are encouraged to share their photographs and background information to grow the museum and keep it alive.  Photographs do not have to be donated; they can be submitted to the Museum where they will be scanned or a digital copy will be made and the original returned to its owner.  Please email tavm@tuscaloosa-library.org if you are interested in volunteering or providing images. And tell your friends and family members about this wonderful new resource.  
Additional information may be found in the article published by The Tuscaloosa News at http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20120916/NEWS/120919829?p=2&tc=pg

This week we bid farewell to Marcia Barrett, Associate Professor and Special Collections Cataloger in the University Libraries, and a 1993 graduate and adjunct professor of SLIS.  Marcia is moving to California at the end of September to take the position of Head of Technical Services at the University of California, Santa Cruz.  Congratulations, Marcia, and best wishes in your new position.

We also have news of several graduates who have been successful in their searches for professional positions:
Katie McMillan Huffman, who has held the position of Reference and Adult Services Librarian at the Wilmington Memorial Library since 2008, has been hired as the Director of the Gleason Public Library in Carlisle, Massachusetts, starting on October 1, 2012.
Laura Gricius-West, who has worked as a cataloging assistant for 20 years at St Anselm’s College in Manchester, New Hampshire, has been hired into the new position of E-Resources Librarian at that library. http://geiselnews.wordpress.com/2012/09/05/new-e-resources-librarian/ 
Adelia Grabowski is the new Health Sciences Reference Librarian at Auburn University, AL.
Dorothy Smith has accepted the position of Public Services Librarian at the University of Mobile in Alabama.   
Hearty congratulations and good luck to all!

September 14, 2012

Congratulations to Vanjury Dozier, a May 2012 SLIS graduate, who has been hired at Stillman College in Tuscaloosa as the new Technical Services Librarian.  An article at the URL below describes her enthusiasm for her new position as well as the value of her education, experience and training.  We wish her well.
http://www.stillman.edu/new-librarian-vanjury-dozier-discusses-books-and-technology--.html

Preparations for the 40th anniversary celebration of the School of Library & Information Studies are underway. The celebration dinner will take place on Thursday evening, November 1, followed by the SLIS Alumni Day program on Friday November 2.  Invitations to the dinner will be sent out next week.  Kate Ragsdale will be the recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award, and Dr. Philip Turner, former Dean of the School, will be the speaker on Alumni Day.  Please save the dates on your calendars!

August 28, 2012

You will have noticed that we are missing our colleague, Dr. Naomi Gold.  Dr. Gold was made an offer she could not refuse, and has moved to New York to be the First Year Experience Librarian at the College of Staten Island, which is one of the eleven senior colleges in the City University of New York System. (See http://www.cuny.edu/about/colleges.html.)  Naomi is looking forward to returning to library practice, and we wish her the best of success.  All the best, Naomi.

Michelle Blank, a first-year cohort ALFA Fellow, was awarded an Indiana State Library LSTA grant totaling $2,106.00. The proposal was a required assignment for the LS 590 Accessibility for Technologies course offered in Spring 2012. Michelle wrote and submitted the proposal on behalf of her employer, The LaGrange County Public Library in LaGrange, Indiana. Titled “Serving the ELAC Population Across Indiana,” the grant focuses on training library personnel to better serve all patrons by applying principles of universal access as they specifically enhance the library experience for the extra-legally, ably-challenged (ELAC) population. The components included are: three (3) Library Education Unit (LEU) sessions offered through the Indiana State Library, two (2) webinars also offered through the Indiana State Library, one (1) presentation at the Indiana Library Federation Conference, and the compilation and distribution of 100 experiential empathy labs to libraries across the state of Indiana. Congratulations, Michelle.

On August 19, 2012, the Huntsville Times reported that Mary Moore of the Huntsville-Madison County Public Library was named Librarian of the Year 2012 by the Romance Writers of America.  Mary is an alumna of our School (Mary Wallace) and had an assistantship in the reference department in Gorgas Library.  The full story can be read at http://www.al.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2012/08/huntsville_librarian_wins_roma.html 
Well done, Mary, on this outstanding achievement.

August 20, 2012

The University of Alabama SLIS Annual Highlights 2011-2012.

August 7, 2012

The latest issue of American Libraries (July/August 2012) includes an article titled “What’s New in LIS Schools.“  Elizabeth Aversa and Laurie Bonnici are featured in the article; Aversa for her positive view of the positioning of schools within academia, and Bonnici for her work on Project ALFA. 

Dr. Bob Riter has been busy this summer and reports the following accomplishments in the form of a published article and four conference paper presentations:
“Archives, their Reception, and the Nature of Archival Reading,” The Primary Source 31:1 (2012).
“Archivists, Historical Editors, and the Representation of Original Sources,”   presented at the 6th International Conference on the History of Records and Archives (ICHORA6),  Austin, Texas (August 2012)
            “Roscoe R. Hill’s Archimon: A Discussion of Archival Concepts and Terms,” presented at the Archival Education and Research Institute (hosted by UCLA), Los Angeles, California (July 2012)
            "Boxed, Booked, and Scanned: Making Archival Books from Archival Texts," paper presented at From Text(s) to Book(s), Nancy-Universite- Nancy, France (June 2012)
            "Redefining Documania," presented at the PCAIACA Annual Meeting- Boston, Massachusetts (April 2012)
Well done, Bob!

Emily Gore, SLIS alumna and Associate Dean for Digital Scholarship and Technology at Florida State, has been appointed the Director of Content for the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) effective September 1, 2012. She will be responsible for the oversight of the DPLA’s hub infrastructure, including implementation of state and regional digital service hubs as part of the Digital Hubs Pilot Program supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as for the oversight of content provider relationships with digital library partners throughout the United States. A full announcement may be found at http://dp.la/2012/08/02/dpla-announces-new-director-for-content/ . Our congratulations to Emily!

Jeffrey Graveline, SLIS alumnus and adjunct professor, received the Achievement in Academic Business Librarianship Award from the College and University Business Libraries Section, Special Libraries (SLA) Association.  He accepted the award at the SLA conference in Chicago this summer, as well as an award for the Sterne Library at the University of Alabama at Birmingham: Jeffrey’s Business Research Certificate Program received the Springshare Innovation Academic Libraries Award.  Information on the awards may be viewed at http://blogs.mhsl.uab.edu/business/?p=939 and http://blogs.mhsl.uab.edu/business/?p=954 Awesome!

August 1, 2012

SLIS is delighted to announce that Sabrina Dyck, a current MLIS student, has been selected by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) to participate in the 2012–2014 Initiative to Recruit a Diverse Workforce (IRDW) as an ARL Diversity Scholar.  This program is highly competitive and those who are selected enjoy numerous financial benefits as well as leadership development provided through the annual ARL Leadership Symposium, a formal mentor program, career placement assistance, and a research library visit hosted by the Purdue University Libraries.  The program is funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and by voluntary contributions from 52 ARL member libraries. A complete press release is available at http://www.arl.org/news/pr/IRDW-26july12.shtml.  Well done, Sabrina! We look forward to hearing about your experiences as a diversity scholar.

Congratulations to Suzanne Sawyer and Amy LeePard, students in the MFA in the Book Arts program, who were selected to present their collaborative research at the annual conference for one of the letterpress professional organizations, Ladies of Letterpress Conference, in Asheville, NC on August 2 – 5, 2012. Information on their research can be viewed at http://www.paintedbuntingbooks.com/pulpdiction.html, and on the conference at http://www.letterpressconference.com/

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL OUR GRADUATES
Summer Commencement will take place this Saturday, August 4, 2012 at 9 a.m. in Coleman Coliseum.  Immediately following the ceremonies, graduates and their families and friends are invited to a brunch in SLIS (5th floor of Gorgas Library) from 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.  We look forward to seeing you on Saturday, and all the best to our 37 MLIS graduates who are listed below. 

Dana Blackburn
Samantha Boardman
Martha Brumfield
John Connolly
Leah Davies
Judith Bruce Campbell Evans
Elizabeth Carol Gladney
Karin Harms
Karen Horton
Brandee Idleman
Violet Jaffe
Karen King
Cynthia Lancaster
David Leone
Lianna Elizabeth Levkoff
Geeta Malik
Mallory Martin
Dasha Maye
Bill McCay
Samantha McNeilly
Jessica Montfort
Erin Thomas Mumford
Krysten A. Nevarez
Michael Lamont Pearson
Joanna Roberts
Christen Robichaud
Caitlin Rush
Gretchen Schweers
Ronald Schwertfeger
Audrey Taylor
Donna Thiessen
Kristie Thomas
Brittany Turner
Jana Hyde Watts
Amanda Westfall
William Wilson
Peijun Zheng

July 20, 2012

Jackie Brodsky, CCIS doctoral student, will present “Partnering with Community Agencies to Improve Information Access” at the National Outreach Scholarship Conference to be held at The University of Alabama from September 30 to October 3, 2012.

Danny Wallace and Connie Van Fleet’s book, “Knowledge into Action: Research and Evaluation in Library and Information Science,” has been published by ABC-CLIO.  The first sentence in the description reads “This is the only book currently available that comprehensively integrates research and evaluation for evidence-based library and information science practice.” See http://www.abc-clio.com/product.aspx?isbn=9781598849752

Jamie Naidoo along with K.T. Horning from the Cooperative Children's Book Center presented research on serving LGBTQ children and their families at ALA Annual 12 in Anaheim, CA at the end of June. The title of their presentation was “Exploring Rainbow Family Collections.”

Jamie Naidoo and Melissa Johnston presented a session at the 2012 Alabama School Library Association Conference in Mountain Brook in June titled "Using Print and Digital Latino Youth Literature to Promote Multiple Literacies and Intercultural Connections."    
  
Melissa Johnston, who will join the SLIS faculty in August, is the lead author of an article titled “Revitalization of the School Library Media Specialist Certification Program at the University of Kentucky: Preparing 21st Century School Library Technology Leaders.” The article can be found in the Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, Vol. 53, No. 3 (Summer) July 2012.

The first two visiting scholars in the SLIS Research Colloquia Series for 2012-2013 have been announced:  Thursday, September 27, 2012 - Dr. Jennifer Pecoskie, Assistant Professor, School of Library and Information Science, Wayne State University
Tuesday, October 23, 2012 – Dr. Ina Fourie, Professor, Department of Information Science, University of Pretoria, South Africa
Other speakers will be announced when confirmed.  Information on the series is available at http://blogs.slis.ua.edu/uaslis-researchcolloquiaseries/2012/07/05/slis-research-colloquia-series-fall-2012/

Heidi Julien, Beth Riggs, and Elizabeth Aversa attended the third and final Summer Social on July 18, in Spanish Fort near Mobile, AL.  The Summer Socials are hosted annually by alumni and sponsored by the LSA in various locations around the state.  A big “thank you” is due to all the alumni who were involved in organizing these events.

Anne Edwards, SLIS Associate Professor, has announced her retirement on January 1, 2013.

July 3, 2012

At the American Library Association Annual Conference in Anaheim, California, June 22-25, 2012:

Elizabeth Aversa, at the invitation of ALA's Office of Accreditation, provided insights on how external review panels can interpret Accreditation Standard 2 (Curriculum) at a training session for 30 panelists and chairs at the ALA annual conference in Anaheim. The program was planned by Karen O'Brien and staff of the Office of Accreditation.

As part of the combined LIS schools reunion, Heidi Julien, Beth Riggs, and Elizabeth Aversa hosted the SLIS alumni reunion during the conference, and, as always, enjoyed meeting with alumni and friends of SLIS.

Heidi Julien represented the School at the annual Doctoral Program Options Fair. This year the program included a panel of minority LIS faculty, doctoral students, library leaders, and recruiters who discussed the topic “Leaders Wanted: Is an LIS Doctoral Program Right for You?” and was followed by the fair, which allows potential doctoral students the opportunity to talk face to face with representatives from 23 LIS programs across the U.S.

Papers and presentations accepted for future conferences:

Danny Wallace will present a paper at the 2012 ASIS&T Conference, to be held in Baltimore MD from October 26-30, 2012, titled “Authorship Productivity in the Knowledge Management Literature.”

Laurie Bonnici will serve on a panel at the ASIS&T conference in October. The topic is “The Interdisciplinary Study of Information.”

Laurie Bonnici (with Stephanie Maatta) will present “Building Community Partnerships through the Lens of Social Exchange Theory” at the National Outreach Scholarship Conference to be held in Tuscaloosa from September 30 to October 3, 2012.

June 21, 2012

Great news! SLIS has received word of three new grant proposals accepted and funded:

Jennifer Campbell-Meier, Jamie Naidoo, and Jeff Weddle, with their partner, the Alabama Public Library Service, have received a 2012 IMLS Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian grant of $317,450. The "Sustainable Training for Alabama Public Library Employees" (STAPLE) initiative is a joint project between the School of Library & Information Studies at the University of Alabama and the Alabama Public Library Service. It will provide management training to sixty of the state’s public library administrators in two cohorts over three years. This project will help provide these library managers with enhanced planning, communication, and networking skills. The educational resources developed by the project will be made freely available on the web.

Danny Wallace and Jamie Naidoo have each received an ALA Diversity Research Grant for their respective projects:

Dr. Wallace’s project is titled “LIS Diversity: A Longitudinal Study of the ALISE Statistics,” and will analyze more than 30 years of data gathered for the annual Library and Information Science Statistical Report to determine and analyze trends in diversity among LIS students and faculty and examine diversity as it is reflected in LIS courses and curricula. This analysis will provide library and information professionals with much needed hard data to inform the essential ongoing discussion of diversity.

Jamie Naidoo and Lance Simpson, SLIS graduate student, will undertake the project ““Beyond Broken Borders: Examining Library Services to Latino & Spanish-Speaking Populations in New Latino South States with Anti-Immigration Laws.”   This project will investigate the connection between library services to Latino and Spanish-speaking residents and anti-immigration laws that promote racial profiling and negative community attitudes towards new and “foreign” residents.  In addition, the project will result in a current anti-immigration toolkit for librarians struggling to serve all the residents of their communities

Congratulations to these faculty and students for their success in grant seeking!
Also featured in the national LIS press this week is Project ALFA, which is highlighted on the IMLS Website at News and Events: Project Profiles.  Project ALFA is in its second year of funding from IMLS, and is a joint endeavor of The University of Alabama and Wayne State University. The primary investigator for Alabama is Dr. Laurie Bonnici.  http://www.imls.gov/june_2012_accessible_libraries_for_all.aspx

Robert L Burgess, a recent SLIS graduate, has accepted the position of Head of Acquisitions at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri.  We wish him the very best in his new professional life.

June 11, 2012

SLIS has a proactive internship program, placing student interns each semester in various library environments including academic, public, special, school, and archives.  These internships take place all over the United States and beyond. They offer the student the opportunity to gain library experience, valuable networking opportunities, professional development, and key professional contacts to act as references when the student begins seeking employment.   Occasionally, the internship results in a job offer. Professor Sybil Bullock is the coordinator of the internship program and has been very successful in placing students in excellent work situations.
During the fall and spring semesters of 2011-2012, fifty-one (51) LIS graduate students took advantage of the internship program; of these, 21 were distance education students. Some unique internship locations this academic year included the Ryerson & Burnham Libraries of the Art Institute of Chicago; the Alyne Queener Massey Law Library at Vanderbilt University; the Congressional Research Service at the Library of Congress; and the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC.  

Heidi Julien participated in two Canadian conferences in May 2012, as follows:
Heidi Julien and Maria Tan (MLIS graduate, University of Alberta), "Instructional Practices in Canadian Academic Libraries: Longitudinal Trends and International Comparisons" at the Workshop for Instruction in Library Use (WILU) (http://sites.macewan.ca/wilu2012/).
Heidi Julien and Maria Tan, " Plus ça change . . . Instruction for Information Literacy in Canadian University and College Libraries. "  The Canadian Association for Information Science conference in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada (http://www.cais-acsi.ca/CAIS2012_Program.pdf)

Dan Albertson's funded research project on autism and rural communities in Alabama was featured in the Tuscaloosa News on June 7, 2012: http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20120607/NEWS/120609853

Jackie Brodsky, doctoral student in Communication & Information Sciences, has been accepted as a participant in the 2012 Emerging Engagement Scholars Workshop, being held in conjunction with the 13th Annual National Outreach Scholarship Conference at The University of Alabama from September 30-October 3, 2012.  Participants were chosen from nominations only. The workshop will provide advanced graduate students and early career faculty with background literature, facilitated discussion, and presentations from national leaders and community partners designed to increase awareness and knowledge of community engaged scholarship.  Sponsors of the workshop include The University of Alabama, the National Outreach Scholarship Conference partner institutions, and the National Center for the Study of University Engagement (NCSUE) at Michigan State University. 
Robert Swain, a SLIS alumnus, is currently the Senior Knowledge Management Officer, Office of the Associate Director for Science, Office of Science Quality at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, GA. On June 20, 2012 he will present a Webinar titled "Beyond the SEA: Centers for Disease Control’s Public Access and Digital Repository Project." Information on the webinar can be found at http://nnlm.gov/sea/newsletter/2012/06/reminder-june-20-2012-beyond-the-sea-centers-for-disease-controls-public-access-and-digital-repository-project/

June 4, 2012

Melissa McRae, who is library media specialist at Boaz Middle School and a SLIS graduate, will be able to purchase essential solar system resources for the school's library, thanks to a $400 grant from the Boaz City Schools Foundation.  A current SLIS student who interned at the School, Cindy Lancaster, together with Katy Pate and Jana Watts, wrote the winning grant proposal as an assignment for Dr. Gordy Coleman's class, LS 532. Congratulations to all!

May 28, 2012

Congratulations to Carolyn Jo Starkey, who is the librarian at Buckthorn High School in Huntsville, and is also completing her doctorate in Instructional Leadership at the University of Alabama. Carolyn Jo has been elected to the American Library Association Council.

Congratulations also to Dr. Jamie Naidoo who was elected to the Board of Directors of the Association for Library Services to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association.

SLIS Summer Socials
If you missed the very successful first summer social of 2012, you have two more opportunities to join SLIS alumni, students, friends, faculty, and staff at the June and July socials, on
June 14 from 5-7 p.m. in Florence, AL at Rosie’s Cantina, 302 N. Court Street. Local hosts are Miranda Ball (256-810-5469) and Deidre Brewer (256.762.6333)
and on
July 18 from 5 p.m. until …… At the beach at Tacky Jack’s on the Causeway, US 90 and US 98, Spanish Fort, AL. Local hosts are Jane Daugherty, Rheena Elmore, and Bonnie Lee (251.978.0887)

May 4, 2012

Dr. Naidoo has been named the Dia Dynamo for 2012, for significant contribution to the advancement and promotion of El día de los niños/El día de los libros (Children's Day/Book Day).  An illustrated article about this award can be found at
http://sharebookjoy.blogspot.com/2012/04/new-dia-dynamo.html and http://www.patmora.com/dia/diadynamos.htm

Also, Dr. Naidoo has just published an invited article in Young Adult Library Services, as follows: Naidoo, J. C. (Spring 2012). Cultivating Latino cultural literacy: Pura Belpré award-winning books in library programming for teens and tweens. Young Adult Library Services, 10 (3), 32-36, 41.

The following SLIS students will graduate today from our school.  Congratulations to all our graduates, and good wishes for their continued success.

Master of Library & Information Studies
Lindsey Bishop, Birmingham, AL
Ephranette Brown, Madison, AL
Robert Burgess, Hoover, AL
Beth Canzoneri, Birmingham, AL
Rachel Dobson, Birmingham, AL
Vanjury Dozier, Sweet Water, AL
Valerie Frechette, Lewiston, ME
Nathan D. Godwin, Huntsville, AL
Rebecca Haynie, Opelika, AL
Rachael Hyde, Hueytown, AL
Cassie Johnson, Cullman, AL
Joe Kimbrough, Leeds, AL
William Mark Landau, Millport, AL
Felicia Lindsay, Twentynine Palms, CA
Geeta Malik, Birmingham, AL
Ellen Murray, Auburn, AL
Melanie Pieper, Tuscaloosa, AL
Katrina Rash, Mountain Brook, AL
Sarah R. Saxton, Tuscaloosa, AL
Jerry Spector, Northport, AL
Claire M.  Stanton, Jacksonville, AL
Deborah E. Stanton, Washington, IA
Chantelle Swaren, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Elizabeth Theris, Louisville, AL
Claire C. Veach, Selma, AL
Elizabeth Walston, Birmingham, AL
Stuart Waugh, Tuscaloosa, AL
Miranda Webster, Northport, AL
Rachel D. Williamson, Birmingham, AL
Amy Yonts, Enterprise, AL
Louise Youngblood, Robertsdale, AL

Master of Fine Arts in the Book Arts
Sonja L. Greentree Rossow, Prattville, AL
Mary Frances McManus, Tuscaloosa, AL
Allison Milham, Northport, AL
John N. Sirmon, Tuscaloosa, AL

Master of Library & Information Studies AND Master of Fine Arts in the Book Arts
Erin Morris, Tuscaloosa, AL

Jennifer Land will receive her PhD in Communication Information Science with a cognate in Library & Information Studies.  Dr. Elizabeth Aversa will hood Jennifer at the ceremony on May 4, 2012. Congratulations to Jennifer on this achievement.

May 3, 2012

Kudos to Beth Riggs, who received the prestigious Knox Hagood Award for Staff in the College of Communication & Information Sciences in a ceremony last Friday, April 27, 2012.  The award is given annually to those who go beyond typical responsibilities of their positions, and contribute to the development of the College’s academic and professional image in an outstanding manner.  Well done, Beth!

The American Library Association (ALA) Office for Accreditation has announced the appointment of Elizabeth Aversa to the Committee on Accreditation (COA).  At the request of Molly Raphael, ALA President, Dr. Aversa will complete an unexpired term due to the resignation of a COA member. The term will continue through ALA Annual Conference 2013. Congratulations, Elizabeth, and good luck!

Congratulations also go to Jamie Naidoo, whose latest book was published on April 28, 2012. 
"Rainbow Family Collections: Selecting and Using Children's Books with Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Content," which is published by Libraries Unlimited, examines over 250 children's picture books, informational books, and chapter books with LGBTQ content from around the world. Well done, Jamie!

Jeff Graveline, SLIS adjunct professor, has been named by the Business & Finance Division of the Special Libraries Association as the recipient of the Achievement in Academic Business Librarianship Award, sponsored by Business Expert Press. In announcing the award, SLA issued the following:
"Jeff embodies the skills and talents needed to be a successful business librarian. His deep knowledge and experience with business information allow him to provide excellent service in both the academic and corporate arenas. He is currently an Associate Librarian at the Mervyn H. Sterne Library at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He teaches business and law information courses at the School of Library and Information Services at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa and has developed course content for graduate and law school classes. Jeff chaired the B&F College & University Business Libraries section, and is currently the B&F Bulletin editor as well as Professional Development Chair. He also serves as a member on SLA’s Public Policy Advisory Council." 
Congratulations from your SLIS colleagues, Jeff!

April 26, 2012

Rachel Fleming-May, former faculty member in SLIS and an alumna of the PhD program at UA, was awarded the College of Communication and Information Faculty Teaching Award for 2011-2012 at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. 
The award was presented to Rachel in a ceremony on April 23, 2012.  Congratulations to Rachel from all of us at SLIS.

April 19, 2012

SLIS celebrated Honors Day on Friday, April 6, 2012 in 205 Gorgas Library. As in the past, the event consisted of awards to outstanding students, and the induction of nominees into the local chapter of the Beta Phi Mu Honor Society. A special presentation was made to J. Gordon "Gordy" Coleman, Jr. by the president of that honorary society, Carrie Steinmehl, to honor him for his career in library and information studies, from which he will retire at the end of the semester. Dr. Coleman was taken by surprise by the framed certificate of appreciation and was almost speechless.
Those honored were as follows:
Marylyn Wright – Bethel Fite Endowed Scholarship
Carla Crews and Cindy Husky – Corr Scholarship
Amanda Haldy – Faculty Scholar, MLIS program
Rachel Renick – Florine Altman Award 
Sonja Greentree Rossow – Raymond F. McLain Book Arts Award
Joel S. Shields and Timothy D Winkler – Online Innovation Award
Beta Phi Mu Honor Society inductees present at Honors Day – Carla Crews, Rachel Renick, and William Fair Worford.
The SLIS Honors Day speaker was Dr. Ann Curry who spoke eloquently on “Competing Voices in the Public Forum: An Information Dilemma”. Her research encompasses censorship and intellectual freedom within society as a whole, and access to information issues, particularly those associated with controversial subjects and those that involve inequitable access for particular groups. She is currently investigating information ethics and the evolving nature of information access influenced by the internet and social media. Ann Curry, PhD is Professor in the Graduate Program in Communication and Technology in the Faculty of Extension at the University of Alberta, and has just been names Professor Emerita at the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.
Other SLIS students and alumni receiving awards from the college were:
Jefrey S. Naidoo – Outstanding Dissertation Award
Ann Bourne – Outstanding Service by a Graduate Student Award
Lindsey Reynolds – Outstanding Research Award

Congratulations to Professor Anna Embree whose handmade book "Voyage Along the Horizon" was selected for the Guild of Book Workers 2012-2014 traveling exhibition: Horizon.

SLIS alumna Debbie Stanton, now director at the Washington Public Library, Washington, Iowa achieved LEED certification for green building practices in a ceremony in February (http://www.kciiradio.com/2012/02/library-receives-environmental-certification/). The library will also be honored by the Iowa Corridor Business Journal during their Green Symposium in April.

The following SLIS graduate students presented at Dr. Naidoo’s recent Latino Children’s Literature Conference.  Included is Alexander Parks, who is not a SLIS student, but is enrolled in Dr. Naidoo’s CIS 620 class. 
Miranda Webster, “Broken Lives, Broken Borders: Negative Depictions of the Latino Immigrant Experience in Youth Materials.”
Lance Simpson, “Y Todos Nosotros Conjuntos: Evaluating and Including Chicano Children’s Literature in Library Collections.”
Lacee Nisbett, “Exploring Recent Young Adult Literature with LGBTQ Themes.”
Patty Crow, “Golden Flowers & Hurricane Dancers: A Critical Examination of the Taíno Culture in Children’s Literature.”
Beth Dobson,“¡Vamos a Cuba!: Examining Cuban Cultural Authenticity in Latino Children’s Literature.”
Robert Burgess, “Juan Bobo: A Puerto Rican Simpleton.”
Katy Olson, “Side by Side: Examining the Experiences of Migrant Workers in Children’s and Young Adult Literature.”
Claire Stanton, “Dios, Patria, Libertad: Children’s Literature Representing the Dominican Republic.”
Liz Walston, “Using Technology to Improve Bilingual Literacy.”
Alexander Parks, Doctoral Student, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, College of Education,
 “Queer Representations in Latino Youth Literature.”

April 5, 2012

Please join us in congratulating Dr. Jamie Naidoo whose application for tenure at the university has been approved and will take effect on August 16, 2012. 

April 4, 2012

Congratulations to Laurie Bonnici who was awarded a University of Alabama Research Grant of $6,000 for her project titled "The University of Alabama Access Usability Analysis Initiative (Project UA31)".  Dr. Bonnici , Muriel Wells, Jackie Brodsky, and Charles Meadows III co-authored an article with Dr. Stephanie Maatta titled "Physiological Access as a Social Justice Type in LIS Curricula", which was published in the latest issue of the Journal of Education for Library and Information Science (JELIS). Well done, all. 

April 2, 2012

Congratulations to Heidi Julien who has been awarded $6,000 by the UA Research Grants Committee for her proposal titled "Information Literacy in Alabama."   Well done!

The School of Library & Information Studies at The University of Alabama is delighted to welcome to our community Dr. Melissa Johnston, who will join us as Assistant Professor starting August 16, 2012. Dr. Johnston will be taking a leadership role in preparing students for practice in the area of School Library Media. She also will be continuing her excellent record of research focusing on the school librarian as a leader in technology integration. Dr. Johnston has published in School Library Media Research, Journal of Education in Library and Information Science, and School Libraries Worldwide, and she has presented her work at numerous national and international conferences. She was named a Library Journal Mover and Shaker (2007) and Georgia Library Media Specialist of the Year (2006). Dr. Johnston currently serves on the American Library Association Council. We are very pleased to have this energetic and productive scholar join our vibrant community, and we know she will be warmly welcomed to The University of Alabama, and to Tuscaloosa.

March 29, 2012

A Capstone Faculty Milestone Luncheon took place at the Bryant Conference Center on March 29, 2012 to honor faculty with 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, and 40 years of service to the university.  Anne Edwards was honored for 25 years of service, and she and Heidi Julien were in attendance.  Interim President Bonner greeted the honorees and made gave some short remarks, and a slide show of the honorees had been prepared and ran throughout the luncheon.  Anne joined the University Libraries on August 4, 1986 as the Monographs Acquisitions Librarian, and was appointed the following year to Associate Dean, a position she held until May of 2002 when she stepped down from her administrative duties.  In 2008, Anne transferred to the School of Library & Information Studies, and the rest is history.  

March 28, 2012

Congratulations to Dr. Jamie Naidoo whose work is featured in the following UA News links:  http://uanews.ua.edu/2012/03/ua-professor-consults-for-sesame-street/ and http://uanews.ua.edu/2012/03/uas-slis-to-host-national-latino-childrens-literature-conference/ and http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20120402/NEWS/120409995/1007?Title=-8216-Sesame-Street-8217-asks-University-of-Alabama-professor-for-help.

March 27, 2012

Congratulations to Jennifer Land who successfully defended her PhD dissertation on March 22, 2012, and will receive her degree in Communication and Information Sciences in May. Her dissertation is titled "From Gravestones to Google: The Impact of Internet Adoption on Genealogists' Information and Communication Behaviors."  Jennifer's committee consisted of Dr. Elizabeth Aversa (chair), Dr. Laurie Bonnici, Professor Clark Center, Dr. Jeff Weddle, Dr. Catherine Davies, and the late Dr. Gary Copeland.

March 19, 2012

On March 18, 2012, Allen Curtis "Curt" Clapper, a member of the 2010 National Cohort, died in Arlington Heights (Chicago) following a brief and sudden illness in Arlington Heights.  His obituary, at http://www.glueckertfh.com/obituaries/0312/0319_Clapper.html mentions that some of Curt's written work had been published recently.  This successful endeavor was a book of original writings by Curt and several writers titled "AHA! A Collection of Stories and Poems from a Midwest Writing Group":

http://www.amazon.com/Collection-Stories-Poems-Midwest-writing/dp/146792508X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332254335&sr=1-1.  Curt had worked for several years at the Arlington Heights Memorial Library, and his creativity, intelligence, and gentle manner were greatly appreciated by those who worked with him. He will be sorely missed by those co-workers, by his fellow cohort members and by the faculty and staff of SLIS. 

Elizabeth Lemon from Gulf Shores, Alabama, graduated with an MLIS from SLIS in 2005. She was diagnosed with cancer in December 2011 and died on March 16, 2012.  Elizabeth had been living and working in Minnesota, where she received a second Master's degree in addictions counseling in 2008. Using her knowledge from both degrees, Elizabeth had been working as a counselor at the Hazelden Clinic since 2008.  Elizabeth is remembered with fondness by many at UA, where she not only pursued her degree but worked in the university libraries.
SLIS offers sincere condolences to the families and friends of Curt and Elizabeth.

March 6, 2012

The School of Library & Information Studies at The University of Alabama is very proud to announce that The Board of Trustees of The University of Alabama has approved the appointment of Dr. Elizabeth Aversa to the prestigious Marie Drolet Bristol-EBSCO Endowed Professorship in the School of Library & Information Studies, effective February 3, 2012.  The Board's resolution highlights Dr. Aversa's many and impressive accomplishments, citing her "significant and lasting contributions in public and state librarianship", her leadership in establishing the synchronous online program option for the Master's in Library & Information Studies at UA, her "notable national profile" and service as President of the Association for Library & information Science Education, and her receipt of that association's Service Award, among many others. The resolution continues with the awards she received in 2011--Alabama Librarian of the Year and honorary membership in Beta Phi Mu, as well as an account of her impressive research and teaching career. Dr. Aversa served as Dean or Director of four schools of library and information studies in the U.S. as well as in other academic, public, state, and corporate positions during her career, and stepped down from her position of Director of the School of Library & Information Studies in 2011, which she had held for eight years.  Following a sabbatical, she returned to the School's faculty in January 2012.               

February 23, 2012

• Award-winning Latino young adult author Luis Rodriguez will be speaking on Friday, February 23, 2012 at 1:00 p.m. in the Ballroom of the Ferguson Center.  This event is free and open to everyone. Rodriguez is best known for his book, Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. For more information about the presentation:  http://events.ua.edu/events/index.php?com=detail&eID=6141  For more information about Luis Rodriguez: http://www.luisjrodriguez.com/index.htm

• Monday, February 27, 12 noon – 1 pm CST in Gorgas Library Room 503

Melissa Gross, College of Communication and Information at Florida State University Understanding the Relationship College Students have with Information: Findings from a Phenomenographic Investigation
Understanding how students perceive and experience information is an important first step in assessing the need for information literacy instruction as well as for determining how to design instruction that will be relevant to this target population. Phenomenography, developed by educators in Sweden in the mid-1970s, was chosen for this study (Gross & Latham, 2011) as it was designed specifically to describe the relationship between research participants and their experience with a phenomenon and to derive categories of conceptions that allow the various relationships to be discovered (Marton, 1981, 1986). Further, the usefulness of phenomenography to investigate perceptions of information literacy has been demonstrated, beginning with Bruce’s groundbreaking research on educators’ perceptions of information literacy (1997).  The goal of a phenomenographic analysis is to categorize conceptions of a phenomenon and to organize them in what is called the “outcome space” (Marton, 1994). The outcome space expresses the structural framework within which the categories of conception exist. Identifying the categories of conception and understanding the relationship between the categories provides a useful way to develop an understanding of the relationship between these students and information.  Note: Wimba room for participating in this Colloquium from a distance: http://tinyurl.com/7l2uds7. (Information about using Wimba.)

• Friday, March 2, 2 pm – 3:30 pm CST in Gorgas Library Room 503

Tim Barrett, 2009 MacArthur Fellow from the University of Iowa.
Book Arts and Information Science – Polar Opposites or a Hidden Gold Mine?
Professor Barrett will share his views on the territory shared by specialists in the various book arts and those in the new field of information science.  While the two seem to be at opposite ends of the information storage and retrieval spectrum, Barrett will make the case that Universities like Alabama and Iowa have much to gain by cultivating the overlapping spheres of creative research occupied by both disciplines.  Questions and dialogue following the presentation will be encouraged. Note: Wimba room for participating in this Colloquium from a distance: http://tinyurl.com/73rjl3s. (Information about using Wimba.)

Professor Barrett’s visit to Tuscaloosa is funded in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services' Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program Grant. Additional funding is provided by the Library School Association of the University of Alabama School of Library and Information Studies.

• On Saturday, March 3rd, 2012, the Center for the Book will hold a gathering of interested individuals for a day of information sharing at the University Libraries. The University Libraries and SLIS are hosting this event, which is open to anyone interested.  Registration is required: http://alabamacenterforthebook.lib.ua.edu/al-book-atrs-second-annual-workshop.

Other news:

John Paul Myrick, adjunct professor in SLIS, has accepted the position of Library Development Director for the West Virginia Library Commission, headquartered in Charleston. The position provides consulting services and coordinates the work of a team of consultants serving public libraries, library boards and municipal and county governments across the state, maintains and reports statistics on WV public libraries to the state and the federal government, oversees the administration of over $9 million in state and federal grants, heads the West Virginia Center for the Book, and many other duties. We wish John Paul the very best in this next step of his career.

Dr. Christa V. Hardy, SLIS alumna and Information Literacy & Learning Assistance Coordinator at Alabama State University, was a guest speaker in Dr. Heidi Julien's LS 527 User Instruction class. 

Dr. Hardy is a second-generation librarian from historic Tuskegee, Alabama.  Several African American library pioneers have also called Tuskegee home, including bibliotherapy pioneer Sadie Peterson Delaney and noted bibliographer Monroe Nathan Work.  In 2010, Dr. Hardy completed her doctorate from the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois. Her dissertation entitled “’Piecing a Quilt’: Jessie Carney Smith and the Making of African American Women’s History,” was a study of an African American woman librarian. Dr. Hardy's dissertation interprets the historic relationship between cultural identity and knowledge production and demonstrates how their experiences, ideas and practices can inspire contemporary librarians concerning leadership and social change. 

Dr. Christa V. Hardy (left) and Dr. Heidi Julien (right)

Dr. Jeff Weddle, Associate Professor in SLIS, and his wife, Professor Jill Grogg of the University of Alabama Libraries have had published the chapter  "Version Control” in a new book titled Understanding Information Retrieval systems: Management, Types, and Systems (Ed. M.J. Bates,  CRC Press) to be released in March 2012.  Congratulations to Jeff and Jill on this achievement.

Dr. Jamie Naidoo has been chosen as an educational consultant by Sesame Street in New York to design culturally relevant and sensitive programs for Latino children. In this role he will suggest ways to use Latino children's literature in the Sesame Street programs as well as ways to reach the Latino family market.

Dr. Naidoo is completing his term as Chair of the 2012 Pura Belpre Award, which is presented by REFORMA and the American Library Association to outstanding Latino authors and illustrators whose work best portrays and affirms the Latino cultural experience in children's literature. At the same time, Dr. Naidoo has been appointed to a two-year term on the American Library Association Rainbow List, which identities high-quality children's and young adult literature representing the LGBTQ experience.

February 9, 2012

A current SLIS student was interviewed recently by a fellow student for a YouTube clip about an invitation he had sent to a popular actress!  The story was picked up by the Crimson White on February 8, 2012, page 6, with the title "Grad student sends actress dance Invitation via YouTube"
http://cw.ua.edu/2012/02/08/grad-student-asks-actress-to-dance-via-youtube/

SLIS students Robert Burgess and Beth Dobson will present posters at the upcoming College of Communication & Information Sciences ' Discerning Diverse Voices Symposium on March 8th. The Symposium begins at 8am and will be held until 4pm in 205 Gorgas.   Robert's poster "Children and The Relationship with Their Parents and Grandparents in Latino Picture Books" and Beth's poster "Exploring Latino Immigration in Children's Literature" were also shown at the REFORMA Conference in September 2011. Both posters are autographed by the author René Colato Laínez, who will be at the University of Alabama in late March for the National Children's Latino Literature Conference.

SLIS ALFA Fellows involved in the project of the same name, which is funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Studies (IMLS), continued their studies and experience at the American Library Association Midwinter Meeting in Dallas during January 2012. The entire group assembled at the IMLS booth where their picture was taken (see below).  Information about the fellows was requested by IMLS for a future entry on the IMLS Blog "UpNext" (http://blog.imls.gov/).  The entry is not on the blog yet, but we will keep watching for it.

Gorgas Library will host the Miniature Book Society’s national traveling exhibit from Feb. 15 to April 15 in the Pearce Foyer on the second floor. The exhibit, sponsored by University Libraries and the Alabama Center for the Book, showcases modern masterpieces as well as historic examples. The exhibit also includes books from the Miniature Book Society’s annual competition. Mary Elizabeth Watson and Timothy Winkler, two UA students from the School of Library and Information Studies book arts program, entered the 2011 competition. Their books will be featured in the collection. To accompany the exhibit, four additional display cases will feature 22 miniature books from the W.S. Hoole Special Collections and information about the art of collecting miniature books. The exhibit is free and open to the public during regular library hours: Monday-Thursday, 7:30-2 a.m.; Friday, 7:30 a.m.-6 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.; and Sunday, noon-2 a.m. Call 348-1416 for more information.

Congrats to 2004 SLIS graduate, Kristy Dixon, for her article in the February 2012 issue of College and Research Library News:  MetaWHAT?: Training access services staff to partner in digital projects metadata creation

February 2, 2012

Dr. Jamie Campbell Naidoo has published a chapter titled "School and Public Library Services, Programs, and Collections for Diverse Youth in America" in Farmer, L.S. (ed.) Youth-Serving Libraries in Japan, Russia, & the United States.  Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, Inc.: 2012, pp.315-338.

Dr. Naidoo's article "So Loud a Silence: Library Services to Latino Youth with Disabilities," written with current student Allison Ladd, was published in the REFORMA Newsletter, Fall/Winter 2011, pp. 10-12.

Dr. Robert Riter published “Exhibition Catalogs and the Dissemination of Artists’ Books,” in the Australian Book Arts Journal (December 2011), and will be presenting the following papers at conferences in the next few months:
“Boxed, Booked, and Scanned: Making Archival Books from Archival Texts,” at From Idea(s) to Book(s), to be held at the Université de Lorraine (Nancy, France), June 21-23, 2012; and
“Redefining Documania,” at the Popular Culture Association/Popular Culture Association Annual Meeting (Boston, MA), April 11 – 14, 2012.

Two SLIS students will be presenting papers at “Back to the Future: Reconciling the Past, Present, and Future in Archives and Special Collections,” a conference hosted by the Indiana University Society of American Archivists, Student Chapter, in Bloomington, IN on March 3-4, 2012. Recent graduate Patricia Vlastnik will present “Nothing Like the Real Thing: Primary Sources in the K-12 Classroom-Outreach Implications for Archives and Special Collections,” and current student Rebecca Baltrusaitis' paper is titled “From the Sword to the Pen: A Social History of Archives in Medieval England.”  Congratulations to Patricia and Rebecca.

Congratulations to current students Beth Dobson and Claire Stanton who have been chosen as ambassadors to the 2012 Fay B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival at the University of Southern Mississippi.  Since the inception of the festival five years ago, at least one or two SLIS students have been selected each year as ambassadors. They receive free registration and housing in exchange for volunteer service during the event, and have the opportunity to meet, listen to, and work with people of significance in the field of children’s literature, and attend workshops relevant to the field. For more information on the Festival and the Ambassadors program, go to: http://www.usm.edu/childrens-book-festival and http://www.usm.edu/childrens-book-festival/ambassadors-program.

SLIS gymnastics fans attending the meet on January 13 were delighted to hear the floor announcer tell the crowd that Rachel Estes and her children had been chosen as "Fans of the Week." They were accompanied to the Fan Couch and enjoyed the meet from "the Best Seat in the House." They also received a 55" TV. Ironically, the Estes household has been "TV free" for eight years!  Rachel is a SLIS graduate and a past IMLS Fellow. 

SLIS is very proud to announce that Professor Steve Miller was presented with the inaugural Distinguished Career Award at the College Book Art Association biennial meeting held January 5-8, 2012 in San Francisco, California. This is truly a significant and well-deserved honor for Steve, who is Coordinator of the MFA Program in Book Arts, a highly respected national leader in book arts, an artist, and a poet.

The IMLS Project ALFA Fellows gathered in Denton, Texas from January 19-22. Kane Urban met with the Fellows to speak with them about Canine Companions for Independence (CCI).  He was joined by his service dog, Ellie, who demonstrated how she works with Kane as a team to acquire information and perform tasks in his daily living activities. Also meeting with the group were Brian O'Connor (SLIS faculty at University of North Texas) and UNT SLIS doctoral student Melody McCotter who is studying accessibility issues for the visually impaired.

On March 3rd, the Alabama Center for the Book will hold a day-long gathering of archivists, librarians, book artists, educators, and others who are passionate about Alabama's special collections and archives, large and small. This will be a day of vivid conversations and presentations around this subject and others. Joining SLIS and the UA Libraries as presenters will be John Cole, director of the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress, MacArthur Fellow Timothy Barrett speaking on the durable qualities found in ancient papers, and outstanding book artist Tim Ely. For information and registration, please contact Donna Adcock at dbadcock@ua.edu.

January 23, 2012

The work of recent SLIS alumna Lindsey Reynolds was profiled in the January 20 Washington Post.  Lindsey has been in residence at the Honfleur Gallery in the  Anacostia neighborhood of Washington, D.C., collaborating with educator Rob Peterson to create the audio archive project "Radio Transmission Ark:" 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/visual-audio-exhibit-broadcasts-anacostia-voices-via-online-radio/2012/01/17/gIQALv5CEQ_story.html

December 20, 2011

Congratulations to Dr. Dan Albertson, Assistant Professor, who is the recipient and lead investigator of a $49,532.00 grant from the National Library of Medicine for his project “Video & NLM-Enhanced User Interfaces: An Information Sharing and Outreach Model to Support Autism Spectrum Disorder (ADS) Decisions of Rural Clinicians.” The one-year collaborative project involves three entities at The University of Alabama: the School of Library & Information Studies (Dan Albertson); the Department of Communicative Disorders/ASD Clinic (Angie Barber); and the Institute for Rural Health Research (Lea Yerby). This grant is part of a larger initiative through the University of Maryland.   

SLIS Instructor Dr. Naomi Gold, is the author of "Rebels, Heretics, and Exiles: Blogging among Estranged and Questioning American Hasidim" in Blogging in the Global Society: Cultural, Political and Geographical Aspects 2011), ed. Tatyana Dumova and Richard Fioro, Hershey, PA, Information Science Reference (IGI Global). Additional information about the publication at http://www.igi-global.com/book/blogging-global-society/49568

Dr. Danny Wallace, Professor and EBSCO Chair of Library Service, will continue his project with the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) Statistics through a new, three-year agreement with ALISE. Under this agreement which carries a $36,000 honorarium, Dr. Wallace, as ALISE Statistical Data Manager, will continue to gather annual statistics from library and information science programs in North America and produce them in an annual print volume as well as in electronic format. Dr. Wallace will also continue the ongoing effort to convert earlier years of statistics to searchable formats, using a specially designed data management system. ALISE has collected data annually since 1980.  

The following SLIS students graduated from the Master's programs in Library and Information Studies and Fine Arts in the Book Arts in December 2011.  We wish them the very best in their future careers. Keep in touch!

Kellie Marie Aldridge, Fayette, AL
Denise C. Baker, Notasulga, AL
Megan Marie Bennett, Tuscaloosa, AL
Gary D. Bodine, Guntersville, AL
Kelli Bragg, Camano Island, WA
Angela Denise Bridges-Christa, Huntsville, AL
Carla Leake Crews, Odenville, AL
Laura Nabors Cripps, Huntsville, AL
Susan Marie DeBruin, Tuscaloosa, AL
Lynn A. DiMaggio, Homewood, IL
Charles Alan Doss, Frederick, MD
Bridget A. Elmer, Asheville, NC
Autumn Hill Faulkner, Troy, AL
Lydia Felts, Huntsville, AL
Sara Lawrence Fenn, Abbeville, AL
Sylvia Garcia, Fort Collins, CO
Shannon O'Gwynn Gavin, Manchester, GA
Kenneth Carter Haggerty, Tuscaloosa, AL
Michael Marie Hall, Birmingham, AL
Lucinda R. Huskey, Harvest, AL
Colleen Patricia Jensen, Birmingham, AL
Sarah M. Kirkley, Pinson, AL
Clay Maurice Kriese, Nashville, TN
Allison Renea Ladd, Tuscaloosa, AL
Brad E. LeMarr, Tuscaloosa, AL
Robert LoMascolo, Union Springs, NY
John Daniel Mahaffey, Trafford, AL
Teressa Lynette Malone, Macon, GA
Debora Lynne Markey, Birmingham, AL
Lauren Elizabeth Martin, Tuscaloosa, AL
Amy Jean Myrick, Blountsville, AL
Akeia Renee Owens, Tuscaloosa, AL
Catherine Odom Pankey, Mountain Brook, AL
Jamaica Afiya Pouncy, College Station, TX

December 16, 2011

Jackie Brodsky, doctoral student in SLIS, has been awarded this year's Doctoral Students to ALISE Grant, which will allow her to attend the Annual Conference of the Association of Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) in Dallas during January 2012. The award includes a $500 stipend towards conference expenses, free conference registration, attendance at a luncheon, and free membership in ALISE for one year. The award sponsors, Libraries Unlimited and Linworth (an imprint of ABC-CLIO), will present a certificate to Jackie during the conference.  Congratulations Jackie!

December 13, 2011

Congratulations to Steven MacCall who has been elected to a three-year term as Secretary/Treasurer of our professional organization, ALISE, starting in January 2012. 

December 7, 2011

Happy Holidays to all and best wishes for 2012

Dates to remember:
The University of Alabama and SLIS will be closed for the holidays from December 22, 2011 to January 2, 2012, inclusive.  Classes begin on Wednesday, January 11.

Spring 2012 Orientation for SLIS on-campus students will take place on Tuesday, January 10, 2012 in SLIS from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m.  Orientation for SLIS regional cohort students at Gadsden will take place at the Gadsden Center on Friday, January 13th from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

The UA Fall 2011 commencement ceremony is at 9 a.m. on Saturday December 17.
On the previous evening, Friday, December 16, with support from SAC and the Library School Association, Dr. Julien will host a SLIS graduation reception at her home from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. If you are graduating or are a member of the SLIS faculty, adjunct faculty, or staff, please email Retia Boone (rboone@slis.ua.edu) to indicate your intention to attend, as well as the number of people in your party.

Each December, SLIS awards free books to elementary, middle, and high school libraries in the Black Belt region of the state via the SLIS Book Bonanza for the Black Belt Program. This year, $7000 in free books are being awarded to 6 school libraries in the area. Twenty deserving school libraries applied for the program, and the 6 winners were chosen based upon criteria such as the current age of the school library collection (average publication date) and the number of books available per student. The winning schools for the 2011 SLIS Book Bonanza for the Black Belt Program are:

• J.E. Terry Elementary & Shiloh Elementary and 6th Grade Academy (Plantersville, AL - Dallas County)
• Mount Olive Primary School & Mount Olive Intermediate School (Fort Mitchell, AL – Russell County)
• Carver Middle School (Eutaw, AL – Greene County)
• Francis Marion High School (Marion, AL – Perry County)
• Sunshine School (Newbern, AL – Hale County)
• Southside High School (Selma, AL – Dallas County)

This program was established in 2009, and is just one of the many ways in which the School of Library and Information Studies gives back to our local community, region, and state. Schools in the Black Belt region of the state are encouraged to apply again in November 2012 for a chance to receive free books for their school library media centers during the 2012 SLIS Book Bonanza for the Black Belt Program. For additional information, contact Dr. Jamie Naidoo at jcnaidoo@slis.ua.edu

The annual Book Arts Holiday Sale was held Monday and Tuesday, December 5 and 6, in the Ferguson Student Center. MFA students offered a wide range of gifts, such as handmade journals, chapbooks, and broadsides suitable for framing.

Congratulations to Charles Meadows, doctoral student in the College of Communication and Information Sciences, who has successfully defended his dissertation titled "The Effects of Narrative Elements and Individual Attributes on Transportation in Health Communications."  Charles will be awarded the Ph.D. at commencement in May 2012.

SLIS will bid a fond “au revoir” and “thank you” in December to Sarah Bryant, who took on the teaching responsibilities of Professor Anna Embree during the fall semester (Professor Embree has been on sabbatical.)  Sarah approached the challenge with grace and professionalism, providing enthusiastic and excellent instruction and proving herself to be an instant colleague and participant in all things SLIS. We are very grateful to her, and wish her well in her future endeavors.  Come back and see us, Sarah!!

Dr. Laurie Bonnici has volunteered to be the SLIS official “ALISE Representative.” In that capacity she will encourage membership in the Association for Library & Information Science Education and attend a breakfast at the ALISE annual conference. Thank you, Laurie.

Plans are underway for the SLIS Research Colloquia Series for Spring 2012.  Please watch the calendar on our Website for updated information.  

John Connolly, member of the Sixth Sense National Cohort, was appointed Assistant Editor of the quarterly journal of the Virginia Library Association, Virginia Libraries.

Dr. Laurie Bonnici presented a paper titled "The Impact of Aging on ICT-Mediated Information Access" at the Aging and Society Conference 2011 on Tuesday November 8 in Berkeley, Ca.

Jane Daugherty, SLIS alumna and librarian at the Gulf Shores Public Library, was featured in an article “Gulf Shores library provides professional, community involvement opportunities” for her commendable work in her first professional position.
http://blog.al.com/pr-community-news/2011/11/gulf_shores_library_provides_p.html

During the fall, SLIS added a thesis option for the Master's program in Library and Information Studies (MLIS).  Students selecting the thesis option will still complete 36 credit hours, but will opt for 6 fewer hours taken as elective courses in favor of 6 thesis hours. This option is now in place.  http://www.slis.ua.edu/Thesis.html

On October 20, Dr. Steven L. MacCall was inducted into the The University of Alabama Chapter of the National Academy of Inventors.  Dr. MacCall was presented as a charter member, together with his colleague David J. McMillan and sixteen other researchers.  Their patent, number 6,850,944, is titled “System, Method, and Computer Program Product for Managing Access to and Navigation through Large-Scale Information Services”, and was registered with the U.S. Patent Office in 2005.

Drs. Dan Albertson, Heidi Julien, Steven MacCall and Danny Wallace attended and presented at the annual conference of the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) in New Orleans from October 9-11.

Congratulations to Dr. Jeff Weddle, whose co-authored book, The Librarian's Guide to Negotiation: Winning Strategies for the Digital Age (with Beth Ashmore and Jill E. Grogg), has been published by Information Today.

 Maryann Whitaker, SLIS doctoral student, and Dr. Dan Albertson have had an article published in Reference and User Services Quarterly, volume 51, no. 1, pp. 49-59, 2011. “Triangulating Findings from and Instruction-Based Community Engagement Project” was developed from an earlier article titled “Computer Training for Persons with Intellectual Disabilities”, about an award-winning service learning project under Dr. Albertson's purview.

Dan DeSanto, SLIS graduate now working at the University of Vermont Libraries has published an article in the ASIS&T Bulletin titled "Mobile Future of Place-Based Digital Collections." Mr. DeSanto documents his pursuit for an app for a digital collection, a project that began during an internship with Dr. Steven MacCall during his graduate studies.

Professor Anne Edwards completed four sessions in the Career Planning series for current and recently graduated SLIS students. The sessions are offered face to face and at a distance, and archived for those who cannot attend at the time of presentation. They cover practical suggestions for finding position announcements, preparing and submitting applications, interviewing, and negotiations with future employers.  In addition to the sessions, Professor Edwards gives feedback on draft resumes/CVs and cover letters to those who have attended or listened to the archived sessions.

SLIS Alumni Day was held on October 29th, 2011.  Organized by the Library School Association and hosted by SLIS, the program included several short sessions, a luncheon at which Dr. Heidi Julien was the invited speaker and an award ceremony. The LSA Board meeting took place following the program.

The SLIS Strategic Plan for 2011-2015 has been approved by consensus through a process of confidential individual interviews with SLIS faculty, a one-day strategic planning meeting in September, and two subsequent rounds of discussion. The document is now on the SLIS Website and is subject to modification via annual review.

The nationally-traveling exhibition of the 2011 Miniature Book Competition and Exhibition will visit the UA Libraries during February and part of March 2012, courtesy of Lou Pitschmann, Dean of Libraries. Books by two current MFA in the Book Arts students, Mary Elizabeth Watson and Timothy Winkler, were selected for the Distinguished Book Award and will be part of the traveling exhibition.  Watch for information about this exhibition on the SLIS Calendar.

Dr. J. Gordy Coleman has announced his upcoming retirement at the end of this academic year. A national search is in progress for a faculty position in Dr. Coleman’s area of expertise, school library media, to begin in fall 2012.

2012 will mark the 40th anniversary of the founding of SLIS. A celebration to recognize this milestone is being planned for the fall of 2012, and updated information will be available as plans progress.

Improvements to the Website continued through the fall.  It is now possible to search the SLIS site from the “search” button, and a Calendar has replaced the former Events page. Many thanks to Reggie Perkins for his valiant work on these and other changes. Additions to the calendar may be made by contacting Retia Boone at rboone@slis.ua.edu.

September 22, 2011

On Wednesday, September 28th 2011, Dr. Elizabeth Aversa, professor and former director of The University of Alabama's School of Library and Information Studies will give a lecture at the University of Tennessee (UT) titled "Changing Lives Through Information Services and Technologies." This will be the final lecture in the UT School of Information Sciences' Former Directors Lecture Series. Jose Marie Griffiths and Ann Prentice, also former directors of UT's School of Information Sciences, have delivered lectures in this series.  The event will take place in the Scripps Convergence Lab Theater on the Knoxville campus from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. following a luncheon.  Dr. Aversa served as Director of the UT School of Information Sciences from 1999 to 2003. She then moved to Tuscaloosa as Director of the School of Library and Information Studies, a position she held from 2003 to 2011. Dr. Aversa is currently on sabbatical leave and will rejoin the School's faculty in January, 2012.

September 13, 2011

Congratulations to Dan Albertson, whose article titled "Situated topic complexity in interactive video retrieval" was published in the August 2011 issue of JASIS&T.
Complete citation:  Albertson, D. & Meadows III, C. (2011). Situated topic complexity in interactive video retrieval. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 62(9), 1676-1695.

July and August 2011

Sarah Bryant, 2008 UA Book Arts graduate and recent holder of the Wells College Victor Hammer Fellowship, has been awarded the Minnesota Center for Book Arts (MCBA) Prize for 2011. MCBA awards this prize annually through a prestigious international competition. The following link leads to an excellent description of the decision-making process and extensive information on the finalists' submissions.  Sarah Bryant's winning entry "Biography" is an extraordinary work, and we congratulate her on this honor.  http://www.mnbookarts.org/events/mcbaprize.html
This fall semester Sarah Bryant has joined SLIS and the MFA in the Book Arts Program at Alabama to teach bookbinding classes while Professor Anna Embree is on sabbatical.

Shelagh K. Genuis, a recent graduate of the doctoral program at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, whose dissertation committee was chaired by Dr. Heidi Julien, now Director of SLIS at The University of Alabama, has won the prestigious 2011 ASIS&T ProQuest Doctoral Dissertation Award. The ProQuest award recognizes an outstanding recent doctoral candidate whose research contributes significantly to an understanding of some aspect of information science, and the prize is intended to encourage new Ph.D.s to participate in professional associations, through provision of travel assistance to the ASIS&T conference and an opportunity for the awardee to present the winning research. Dr. Genuis was chosen from 20 finalists, and her dissertation is titled “Making sense of evolving health information: Navigating uncertainty in everyday life.”  Look for her at this year's ASIS&T conference in New Orleans in October, 2011.

On August 27, Susan DeBruin and her husband, Derek, were honored by the City of Tuscaloosa and The University of Alabama at a remembrance service for those who died in the April 27th tornado. Susan, a current MLIS student and library assistant at the Health Sciences Library on campus, and Derek had helped numerous people immediately following the impact of the deadly tornado, putting aside their personal losses and concentrating on comforting and aiding those who were injured.  Among those they assisted were Nicole Mixon, a student who was well known to a SLIS alumna and director of libraries for Jefferson State Community College in Birmingham. Nicole was a member of that college's community until her transfer to UA, and her father is on the faculty of the college. Sadly, Nicole was one of those who died.  Susan and Derek also comforted and helped Chelsea Thrash, a student who was thrown 150 feet by the storm and whose back was broken. Chelsea just returned to her studies at UA, walking into her first class of the fall semester.  Enough cannot be said about Susan and Derek's selflessness, and their recognition as Capstone Heroes is richly deserved.

Drs. Naomi Gold, Jennifer Campbell-Meier, and Heidi Julien all began faculty appointments in SLIS on August 16, 2011. Naomi Gold, an MLIS graduate, was appointed as instructor, Jennifer Campbell-Meier is now assistant professor, and Heidi Julien is professor and director of the School.  Dr. Elizabeth Aversa, who stepped down from the position of director at the end of June 2011, is on sabbatical leave during fall 2011, and will return to teaching, research, and service as professor in SLIS in January 2012.

A three-part commencement ceremony was held at the beginning of August 2011 for those who completed their degrees in May and in August (May commencement was postponed due to the tornado.)  SLIS graduates are listed below.  Dr. Aversa, who had been chosen as Commencement Marshall, led the platform party for all three commencement ceremonies. Congratulations to all our graduates!

May graduates:
Carly Ruth Addison
Stephen Paul Asbury
Alison Dunn Barry
Stephanie Rainey Beaver
Brian Orvis Bess
Jeannine Marie Bruno
Anthony Mitchell Cox
Vern London Cresap
Lauren Brittany Dodd
Carol A. Ellis
Lauren Elizabeth Faulkenberry
Alisha Leigh Fisher
Weston Gordon Flippo
William Charles Friedman
Susan Lynn Green
Amanda Elizabeth Haldy
Kate Elizabeth Haley
Michelle Devins Hamrick
Christopher Kendrick Hare
Kelly Michelle Harper
Courtney Miranda Hicks
Morgan Leigh Higgins
Crystal Rae Hodgens
D'Arcy L. Hutchings
Marie-Christine Hyland
Michelle Ann Jerney-Davis
Pamela Elise Jones
Sarah Bernadette Kent
Ayaba Akofa Adaobi Logan
John Daniel Mahaffey
John Patrick Mantooth
Wilson Carrol May
Krysten Alexandra Nevarez
Catherine Oseas
Rebecca Elizabeth Owen
Sara Jane Parkel
Natalie Hutchins Reed
Heather Leigh Rice
Brandi R. Robertson
Kristen Danielle Sherrer
Joseph William Stewart
Daniel Gray Tackett
Sarah Elaine Thornburg
Anthony Isaiah Vicory
Kelsi Rae Walters
Grindl Cook Weldon
Tracy Williams
William Fair Worford
Judith Rae Wright
Qiong Xu

August graduates:
Helen D. Azarian
Walt R. Barrett
Adrith Lee Bicchieri
Amy Morris Blackstock
William Doug Bolden
Amanda Griffin Butler
Sarah Morgan Cooper
Whitney Lynne Cornutt
Cristin Michelle Dillard
Erin Huckabay Downey
Lydia Anne Ellis
Diana Marie Finkle
Lindsay Meredith Harris
Erin Elizabeth Honeycutt
Guikang Jun
Stephanie Megan Johnson
Katherine Eve Jones
Susan Ellen Jones
Katherine Shasta Kohler
Amy Josephine LaRue
Christopher Alan Martin
Hannah T. Miller
Tamar Miller
Awnali Dawn Mills
Rachael Engler Moffitt
Jeremy J. Myntti
Emily Michelle Nelson
Haley Marie Rugger
Samuel Charles Rumore
Michael J. Sargente
Karen Thompson Sommessa
April K. Szuch
Jonathan Alan Underwood
Jean Malone Ward
Kinberly S. Westbrooks
Christina Louise Winston

The SLIS Library School Association hosted its third and final 2011 Summer Social for students, alumni, faculty and staff at Tacky Jack's on the Causeway at Spanish Fort in south Alabama in July 2011. A good time was had by all.

UA SLIS received the honor of becoming the parent organization of the first and only student chapter of SHARP, the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing. The hard work of the students with Dr. Jeff Weddle as advisor led to the SLIS chapter being officially recognized by the Society in the summer of 2011, and it was also awarded $150 in seed money.  SHARP was founded to create a global network for book historians working in a broad range of scholarly disciplines. Research addresses the composition, mediation, reception, survival, and transformation of written communication in material forms including marks on stone, script on parchment, printed books and periodicals, and new media. Perspectives range from the individual reader to the transnational communications network. With more than 1000 members in over twenty countries, SHARP works in concert with affiliated academic organizations around the world to support the study of book history and print culture.

Brittany Turner, a SLIS DE student of the 2010 cohort, was awarded the Donald Peterson Student Scholarship by the Society of American Archivists (SAA) on August 26, 2011, at ARCHIVES 360°, SAA’s 75th Annual Meeting in Chicago. The scholarship recognizes a graduate student or recent graduate for exceptional leadership and the desire to become actively involved in the archives profession. While engaged in online graduate studies, Ms. Turner is the project coordinator for the New York State Archives in Albany. Her involvement in researching and promoting archival security particularly impressed the Peterson Subcommittee members.

Franklin Road Academy in Nashville, Tennessee has been awarded a $1,000 Dollar General Back-to-School Literacy Grant as a result of coursework completed by Jenni Arvin and other students in LS 532 in spring 2011 (Dr. Gordy Coleman was the instructor.)  Ms. Arvin will be able to purchase resources for the school's Heart to Heart program for students with Down syndrome. Congratulations to Jenni and her classmates and to Dr. Coleman for continuing the tradition of grant writing assignments in his syllabus.

Recent SLIS graduate Lauren Dodd writes for the interesting and multi-perspective Hack Library School blog. She recently posted a general overview of LIS internships, their necessary planning and tips for their effective execution: Internship Tips and Insights

Photo gallery. SLIS was well represented in photographs of classes taken on the first day of the fall semester.  See how many SLISers you can recognize. http://photos.al.com/4558/gallery/first_day_of_classes_at_ua/index.html.

MFA student Tim Winkler is performing a series of experiments with eBook formats. His first result is a book available on Amazon.com. Professor Steve Miller expects to see more experiments and refinements in the future as Tim works through this format this year:
http://www.amazon.com/Pyotr-Uta-Romance-ebook/dp/B005JMDY34/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1314883901&sr=8-1

SLIS alumni Bill Friedman, Joan Xu and Lauren Dodd co-authored an article with Brett Spencer, (UA Librarian) recently published in Internet Reference Services Quarterly: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10875301.2011.570110 

June 23, 2011

Summer News

Please note:  August commencement ceremonies for UA graduate students will take place on Friday, August 5, from 6-8 p.m.  The SLIS reception will be held at Dr. Aversa's home starting at 9 p.m. that evening.

SLIS has been awarded a one-year collaborative planning grant under the IMLS Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian program.  The Co-Principal Investigators are Steve Miller and Robert Riter, and SLIS will partner with the Alabama Center for the Book, here at the University Libraries.  This grant will allow the School to investigate and prepare a proposal for a joint MLIS/MA in the Fine Arts (Book Arts) degree.  IMLS will contribute $24,007 to this project, which will begin on July 1, 2011 and conclude on June 30, 2012.  Congratulations!

Congratulations also to Robert (Bob) Riter who successfully defended his dissertation on May 2, 2011 at the University of Pittsburgh's School of Information Science. Dr. Riter will hold the rank of Assistant Professor in SLIS as of August 16, 2011.

This Sunday (June 26th) at the American Libraries Association Annual Conference in New Orleans, SLIS faculty and staff will host a table at the Collaborative LIS Alumni Reunion organized by ALISE. Current students, alumni, former and retired faculty, and friends are invited to this event on Sunday evening from 5:30 p.m. -7:30 p.m. in the Hilton Riverside Grand Ballroom C/D.  Hope to see you there!  

The Library Staff Association hosted two summer socials in May (Birmingham) and June (Guntersville) for alumni, students, faculty, staff, and friends in those areas of the state.  The third social will be held at Tacky Jack's on the Causeway in Spanish Fort, AL at 5 p.m. on Thursday, July 21st.  We look forward to seeing you on July 21st. A huge thank you to the hosts of this year's socials: Annalisa Crews, Steven Yates, Beth Wheeler Dean, Jane Daugherty, and Bonnie Lee. 

SLIS has been awarded a $40,000 contract from the Alabama Public Library Service to evaluate its current 5-year plan. This review is mandated by the federal government.  Jennifer Campbell-Meier and Elizabeth Aversa are conducting the review, which involves seven discussion sessions with public library personnel and local/state education officials across the state, data gathering and analysis, meetings with APLS, and a formal report to be completed by January 31, 2012. Jennifer and Elizabeth have already completed four of the seven sessions to date.

Dr. Aversa will be leaving the position of Director of the School of Library and Information Studies on June 30, 2011, but she is not going far, and not for very long. During the remainder of the summer she will enjoy some time for relaxation, but will continue her work on the APLS review (see above), complete the summer course she is teaching, and pursue a number of other ongoing commitments to the School and the profession.  During the upcoming fall semester, Dr. Aversa will be on sabbatical, working on a grant proposal with a colleague at another university.  And she has an overseas trip planned.  We will see Dr. Aversa again in January when she returns as a member of the SLIS faculty, and we will welcome her back to her new office (Room 517).  Good luck, good travels, and grateful thanks will accompany her as she leaves for a well-deserved break.

Professor Steve Miller will become interim director of SLIS from July 1 through August 15, and will then hand over the reins to Dr. Heidi Julien, our new director, on August 16, 2011.

Dr. Dan Albertson will become the Coordinator for Distance Education on August 16th, taking over from Dr. Steven MacCall, who has ably and enthusiastically carried out those duties with great success since the inception of the DE program in 2004. Thank you, Dr. MacCall, and good luck, Dr. Albertson.

Orientation sessions for students entering SLIS programs in fall 2011 are scheduled for Tuesday, August 23 (3-8 p.m.) for on-campus students, and Wednesday, August 17th (evening) through Saturday, August 20th for the Seventh Distance Education Cohort.

SLIS is very pleased to welcome Misty Mathews, the new communication specialist in the College of Communication & Information Sciences, who began work on June 1, 2011. Misty has already met with Dr. Aversa and others in SLIS and is helping all units of the college with public relations issues, press releases, and related work. Thank you, Misty.

News from students and alumni

Dinah Harris, Second Wave National Online Cohort, has been elected vice president/president elect of the Tennessee Library Association, effective 2011-2012.

Kathleen Spring, Fourth Dimension DE Cohort, will begin her new position of Collections Management Librarian at Linfield College in Oregon on July 1, 2011.

April Szuch of the Fifth Dimension DE Cohort, who will graduate in August, will begin work as a librarian at the Flathead County Library in Kalispell, Montana. Among other responsibilities, April will be in charge of adult fiction collection development.

SLIS alumni Melissa Fortson and Josh Sahib have co-authored an article with their colleague in the University of Alabama Libraries, Brett Spencer.  See Fortson, M., Sahib, J., & Spencer, B. (2011). Step right up to the library!  College & Research Libraries News, 72(6), 350-352.

The Student Chapter of ASIS&T at the University of Alabama has received word that its petition to reactivate the chapter has been approved.  Officers are Joan Xu, Chapter Chair and Treasurer; Adrith Bicchieri, Vice Chair and DE Rep; and Susan DeBruin, Webmaster and Secretary. http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_151039308289374.

May 20, 2011

Former UA faculty member Rachel Fleming-May’s Photos from the UTK-SIS/UA-SLIS Graduation Ceremony, May 2011. Click here to see the photos.

May 2, 2011

Greetings colleagues,

We at the School of Library and Information Studies, The University of Alabama,  thank all of our colleagues in the state and throughout the library and information science community for their messages, calls, and expressions of concern following the massive tornado that struck Tuscaloosa and our region on the afternoon of April 27. As the media reported, this event was both devastating and unprecedented.  At the University we are working today to try to find all of our faculty, staff and students, and to assist those who have survived but are without homes, vehicles, and personal effects.  The University is up and running, although classes, examinations and commencement have been cancelled.   

We are receiving two questions from the many kind folks who have contacted us. These are  (1) Is everyone in your school okay? And (2) What can we do to help?  I will give you the answers that I have to date.

1. All faculty and staff of the School of Library and Information Studies are accounted for.  Several suffered total loss of or extensive damage to their homes and are not able to occupy their properties any longer, and others who live in the city had minor damage (trees on the homes, cars smashed, etc.).  Many of us remain without power and potable water, and our communication technologies are still not working well from many areas.  Cell phone towers, telephone lines, electrical poles and lines, and water towers were destroyed in the storm, so if you do not hear from the people you are messaging they are probably having trouble with communications.  These services are being restored, but we are told that some services may take a week or more to come back.

Within the University of Alabama community we know that at least six UA students lost their lives due to the tornado and the search continues. Faculty and staff who lived in the most devastated areas are beginning to check in and several departments in the University have put out calls for their people to report.  Our School’s administrative staff and faculty are waiting for messages from students who have not yet reported in; through various listservs, personal e-mails,  and facebook we have heard from a large contingent of students and alumni and we are thankful that we have heard from so many who are safe.

1. Many SLIS constituents, including our colleagues from other LIS programs, have offered to send money, to come to Tuscaloosa to volunteer in the recovery efforts, and to contribute to help those who are affected here.  Our University makes the following suggestions.

“Because of the number of injuries, please consider donating blood. You can donate blood at any American Red Cross location and designate it for Tuscaloosa. This is one of the most important actions we can take to help those affected in the Tuscaloosa area.

Members of the UA community who would like to offer assistance may continue to sign up to volunteer at St. Matthias Church at 2310 Skyland Blvd. Those who desire to contribute to community relief efforts may also contact the local chapters of the American Red Cross and the United Way.

Many have asked for additional ways you can help. Contributions to the UA Acts of Kindness Fund will be used to help UA students, faculty and staff who need assistance as a result of storm damage.  The University will continue to provide resources as additional needs become known.”

As director of the School of Library & Information Studies at the University of Alabama, I am speaking for all of us here when I say thank you so very much for your concern.  We continue to put one foot in front of the other and we know that, with your continued support and concern, better days are ahead.

Best regards,
Elizabeth Aversa
Director
School of Library & Information Studies
The University of Alabama

April 21, 2011

Dr. Heidi Julien appointed as new Director of the School of Library and Information Studies at The University of Alabama

As the result of an international search for the next Director of the School of Library and Information Studies, the Dean of the College of Communication and Information Sciences and the faculty and staff of the School are very pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Heidi Julien to that position, effective August 16, 2011.

Dean Loy Singleton remarked "Our College is extremely pleased to have an internationally recognized scholar and administrator like Dr. Julien stepping into the director position for SLIS. The ability to successfully attract a scholar of her high caliber and experience as director is a tribute to all that the SLIS faculty, students and supporters have done to make it one of the best-known, nationally ranked schools of library and information studies.”

Dr. Julien is currently Professor and Graduate Coordinator in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. She holds a Bachelor's degree of Education and a Master's degree of Library & Information Studies from the University of Alberta, and a Ph.D. in Library and Information Science from the University of Western Ontario.  Her academic career has included appointments at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, and at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Dr. Julien's research in human information behavior, information literacy, and information policy has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and has been presented internationally and published in a wide range of journals. An award-winning teacher, Dr. Julien has taught graduate courses in the areas of reference, information retrieval, information literacy, information policy, and management. She has also served as President of the Canadian Association for Information Science, Director (External Relations) for the Association for Library and Information Science Education, and Chair of SIG USE in the American Association for Information Science and Technology.

Professor Steve Miller, chair of the director search committee commented on the search and its outcome: "Dr. Heidi Julien is at the top of her form as a vital faculty member with strong research productivity. In our interviews with her we were impressed with her global vision of LIS education and building a community of scholars at home. The faculty of the School of Library & Information Studies is delighted that Dr. Julien has chosen to help shape the future of our School, and we greatly look forward to working with her."

When asked for her reaction to her new position, Dr. Julien stated "It is an honor to join a School so committed to high quality teaching and to innovative programs, to diversity, to community service, and to exploring important research questions. This leadership position provides an opportunity to build on the superb foundations laid by Elizabeth Aversa, and I look forward to collaborating with SLIS students, with my new colleagues, and with the local professional community."

Dr. Elizabeth Aversa, Professor and Director of the School since 2003, is stepping down from her administrative position on June 30, 2011, and will take a sabbatical leave during the fall of 2011.  She will return to the faculty of the School in January 2012 to continue teaching and research in the field.

April 15, 2011

Three Book Arts students placed first, second and third in the University of Alabama Libraries' Book Collecting Contest.  In 1st place was Timothy Winkler, whose collection featured Outsider art books, in 2nd place Sara Parkel, whose collection focused on artist books, and in 3rd place Sonja Rossow, whose collection centered on pop-up books. The winners were awarded cash prizes and as 1st place winner, Timothy Winkler is eligible to compete in The Fine Books & Collections Collegiate Book-Collecting Championship, sponsored by Fine Books & Collections. Kudos to all three winners.

James Gilbreath has been hired as the librarian at Brown Mackie College in Birmingham, where he is starting a collection from scratch!  Congratulations and good luck!

Two SLIS students, Amy Myrick and Morgan Higgins have been awarded YALSA grants for summer reading programs in their respective libraries, Oneonta Public Library and North Shelby Public Library. These grants assist librarians with the costs of hosting summer reading programs for diverse groups of teens. You can read more about the YALSA grants here:
http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/news/ala/alsc-yalsa-launch-new-youth-l
Congratulations to Amy and Morgan!

Celebrating Cuentos: Promoting Latino Children’s Literature and Literacy in Classrooms and Libraries, edited by Dr. Jamie Campbell Naidoo, was published by Libraries Unlimited on February 25, 2011.  The book received the following positive review in Booklist Online: 
"Celebrating Cuentos is a must-read for children’s librarians, school librarians, and classroom teachers with Latino populations. Editor Naidoo, assistant professor at the University of Alabama and founder-director of the National Latino Children’s Literature Conference, has gathered scholars, librarians, authors, and illustrators to contribute chapters about promoting Latino children’s literature and literacy. Chapters offer information on Latino culture, literature, awards, collection development, and programming for libraries and classrooms as well as a recommended bibliography of children’s literature and professional resources. This book complements works that focus on authors and individual titles, such as Latina and Latino Voices in Literature: Lives and Works (Greenwood, 2003). An essential purchase for school and public libraries and academic libraries with teacher-education programs" — Cynthia Crosser
(Naidoo, Jamie Campbell (editor). Nov. 2010. 280p. illus. Libraries Unlimited, hardcover, $55)

Greg Sellers has accepted a collection management librarian position at the Mississippi Library Commission in Jackson, Mississippi, where he will begin on April 21.  He will also serve as Recorder of State Documents and help with the management of the State Document Depository.  Our congratulations and best wishes go to Greg. 

Dr. Jennifer Campbell-Meier has been appointed to the Assistant Professor position in SLIS, effective August 16, 2011. She has served as Instructor at SLIS since August 2010, teaching in the areas of information services, foundations, academic and special librarianship, and information technologies. Dr. Campbell-Meier is a graduate of the University of Hawaii at Manoa where she completed the PhD in Communication and Information Sciences. Her research there focused on Institutional Repository Development, an interest that she brings to SLIS. She received both an MLS and a BA from Indiana University in Bloomington. Dr. Campbell-Meier has taught in library and information science programs at San Jose State University, the University of British Columbia, and at her alma mater in Honolulu.
Dr. Campbell-Meier also brings a wealth of practical experience in information settings to The University of Alabama program. Most recently, she served as Coordinator of Information Literacy and Distance Education at North Georgia College and State University in Dahlonega, GA.  She has also held positions as Knowledge Management Coordinator, Electronic Resources Coordinator, Assistant Cataloger, and Multimedia Librarian for academic libraries in Indiana, Hawaii, and South Dakota. Dr. Campbell-Meier has published and presented on the topics of institutional repositories, information literacy, and information services. Over the past dozen years she has been active in community, scholarly, and professional services including library board membership, leadership on campus committees, and involvement in state library programs and library associations. She served as co-investigator on The GALILEO Knowledge Repository, a grant project funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and she continues to be involved in developing federally- and state- funded projects for The University of Alabama.
We congratulate Dr. Campbell-Meier and welcome her in her new capacity to the School.
SLIS Honors Day, held on April 8, 2011, was an afternoon filled with celebration. Many SLIS students were honored during the program; some receiving their awards in person, some in absentia, and one via modern technology in the form of Steve Miller's new I-Pad and Skype. Dr. Aversa herself was recognized as the Beta Phi Mu Librarian of the Year, and also awarded an honorary membership in that honorary society.
The audience was then treated to a presentation by Dr. Anne S. MacLeod, retired professor at the University of Maryland. Dr. MacLeod spoke about her fascinating research on the connections between modern art and picture book art, and showed many examples of the similarities through her slide presentation.  Finally, Dr. Aversa delivered a moving tribute to Dr. Margaret Stieg Dalton, who will retire this summer, and, on behalf of the School, presented Dr. Dalton with a gift of bookends in the form of Cairn terriers (her dog of choice.)   Following the scheduled program, Honors Day participants were invited to gather on the fifth floor of the library for photographs, refreshments and merriment. 

SLIS students honored on April 8, 2011:
Willa C. Broughton and Jamie J. Byun (Bethel Fite Endowed Scholarship)
Melissa A. Koener (Corr Scholarship)
Lauren B. Dodd (Florine Oltman Award)
Erin L. Morris (Raymond F. McLain Book Arts Award)
Bridget A. Elmer (Faculty Scholar Award)
Jefrey S. Naidoo (James D. Ramer Outstanding Dissertation Award)
Timothy Duane Winkler (Student Paper Award)

Students inducted into Beta Phi Mu:
Nitin Arora                            Cynthia Barnett                    Willa C. Broughton
Michele E. Brown                 Evan Michael Bush               Jamie Jane Byun
Connie Wong Chow             Jacob Jaguar DaSilva           Laura C. Gricius-West
Matthew Warner Layne       Richard Light LeComte       Mary Catherine Lennon
Alisha Marie Linam              Elizabeth Rowe Lochamy    Paul Jerome McLaughlin
Katherine Anne Popadin     Amanda Axley Presnell        Joanne M. Riley
Samuel A. Rumore                Cynthia Jean Shank             Gail A. Sheldon
Kristin Smith Skees               Kathleen M. Spring              Jenna Weber
Carol Roark York                Melissa Koener                      Scarlett Lacey Sims
Braegan Christine Phillips   Courtney Leigh Barbour     Benjamin Ryan Martin

SLIS News, January 1-April 1, 2011

An unusually large group of SLIS faculty and staff attended the ALISE Annual Conference in San Diego, CA in early January.  Danny Wallace, Margaret Dalton, Elizabeth Aversa, Beth Riggs, Anne Edwards, Jamie Naidoo, Laurie Bonnici, Jennifer Campbell-Meier, Steve Miller, and Mary Meares (UA Communication Studies) presented papers and posters at the conference.  In addition, most of the faculty and staff, as well as Dean Loy Singleton, participated in numerous preliminary interviews with potential candidates for the positions of Director of SLIS and Assistant/Associate Professor. Doctoral student John Burgess was awarded the red (crimson) ribbon which denoted second place in the ALISE/Jean Tague Sutcliffe Doctoral Student Research Poster Competition. His poster was titled Librarianship in Light of Existential Risk: A Philosophical Analysis.

Following the ALISE conference, several SLIS faculty attended the ALA Midwinter Meeting in downtown San Diego, where they carried out committee and officer responsibilities, networked, attended programs, and visited with library vendors. The SLIS highlight during ALA was the presentation of the Library Journal Teacher of the Year Award to Dr. Steven MacCall.  Faculty, students, alumni, and friends were in attendance at this upbeat event.

On January 15, Associate Professor Anna Embree was presented with the Emerging Educator Award from the College Book Art Association (CBAA) at its annual conference at Indiana University in Bloomington.  Several Book Arts students had accompanied Professor Embree to the conference and were delighted when they discovered that she had been chosen to receive this recognition of her significant contributions to the field.

On January 29, on behalf of the Book Arts Program at SLIS, Professor Steve Miller accepted the 2011 Institutional Award for Distinguished Achievement at the annual meeting of the American Printing History Association at the New York Public Library. Associate Professor and UA Binder Anna Embree, friends of the Book Arts program, and alumni were present to congratulate Professors Miller and Embree.

First-year Book Arts student Timothy Winklerwas one of twelve winners in The New Yorker's fourth annual contest soliciting readers’ takes on Eustace Tilley, the magazine’s mascot. Winkler's winning design, Wandering Eye, can be seen in the gallery of all the 2011 entries.  Twelve winners were chosen from among more than six hundred entries. Tilley, the Regency dandy, is the creation of art editor Rea Irvin and has been on the cover of almost every anniversary issue — including this year’s—since his first appearance, on the début issue, in 1925.

The University's Scholars for Community, Outreach, Partnership, and Engagement (SCOPE) sponsored a panel on "Finding Mentors and Nurturing Mentees" on Monday, February 28 on campus.  Panelists included doctoral student Maryann Whitaker and Dr. Danny P. Wallace.

Paula Webb, (SLIS alumna 2002), Reference and Electronic Resources Government Documents Librarian at the University of South Alabama (USA), was named a 2011 Library Mover and Shaker by Library Journal. See http://www.libraryjournal.com/csp/cms/sites/lj/ljInPrint/MoversAndShakers/

profiles2011/moversandshakersWebb.csp. Paula was the creator of the USA Library's Deep Water Horizon Oil Spill website that attracted hundreds of hits daily when it first appeared after the BP Oil disaster. The Government Printing Office made the site a Depository Library Spotlight for August 2010 - www.fdlp.gov/outreach/spotlight/748-univofsouthalabama.

 

On March 1, LifeSouth representatives presented Dr. Aversa and SLIS with the trophy for winning the Blood Drive Challenge in 2010, for the fourth year in succession. The event also served as the official kickoff for the 2011 Challenge, which took place on March 8 and 9 on the university campus. 

 

The Library School Association, SLIS’s alumni organization, sponsored a mentoring panel on March 22 at Samford University in Birmingham.  The event was facilitated by Rachel Estes, Director of Outreach, Canterbury UMC, and featured panelists were Renee Blalock, Director of Birmingham Public Libraries; Tatum Preston, Librarian, Birmingham Museum of Art; Tim Pennycuff, Archivist, UAB; Charlotte Ford, Library Director, Birmingham-Southern College; Susan Robie, Media Specialist, Shades Cahaba Elementary School; Steven Yates, Media Specialist at Mountain Brook High School, and Mandy Haddin, Librarian at Johnston Barton law firm in Birmingham.

On March 23, Aaron Trehub, Assistant Dean for Technology and Technical Services at Auburn University, was the guest speaker in the LS 505 Collection Development class.  Mr. Trehub was the project director for a four-year IMLS grant that resulted in the creation of the Alabama Digital Preservation Network (ADPNet). Mr. Trehub then became the first chair of the ADPNet steering committee in the immediate post-grant phase (2008-2009). 

Discerning Diverse Voices: Communication & Information Symposium on Diversity was held on March 31 in the Gorgas Library on campus. Jackie Brodsky and Laurie Bonnici presented a poster, and Daniel Tackett, Rachel Renwick, Muriel Wells, Laurie Bonnici, John Burgess, and Jamie Naidoo presented papers.

On March 31, the 21st Annual Elizabeth W. Stone Lecture at Catholic University of America in Washington, DC was presented by our director, Elizabeth Aversa. Dr. Aversa was dean and associate professor at CUA’s School of Library and Information Science between 1994 and 1998. The Elizabeth W. Stone Lecture series is held each spring and the speakers are invited by the Alumni Association. Previous speakers have included esteemed librarians, university presidents, journalists, members of professional associations and government representatives. Established in 1990, the Lecture Series honors Dr. Elizabeth W. Stone, Dean Emerita of the School of Library and Information Science (SLIS), for her service to the school and the library profession. Dr. Stone (M.S.L.S. '61) joined the SLIS faculty in 1961 and was named chair of the Department of Library Science in 1972. Under her leadership, the department became the School of Library and Information Science in 1981 and she served as Dean until 1983.

The annual Edible Book Festival was held in SLIS on April 1st. Students, staff, and faculty contributed creative culinary concoctions, as did our SLIS friends, Mary's Cakes and Pastries in Northport, AL.  A tasty time was had by all.  http://blog.al.com/upbeat/2011/04/eat_your_books_edible_book_fes.html

Please note:  Student association news will be added shortly.

November 29, 2010

Don’t forget:

• The Annual SLIS Children's & Young Adult Book Sale, the proceeds of which support SLIS’ National Latino Children’s Conference.  Books will be sold December 1-3 in Room 530 Gorgas.  See the Events Page for sale hours each day.
• The Book Arts Sale.  Beautiful handmade items sold to the public on December 6 from 9-4 next to Starbucks in the Ferguson Center

Congratulations to our faculty and alumni for their success in the publishing arena:

Dr. Dan Albertson’s article “Influences of users' familiarity with visual search topics on interactive video digital libraries” (link) appeared in the December 2010 issue of the highly regarded refereed publication Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology. 

Dr. Jamie Campbell Naidoo’s book entitled Celebrating Cuentos: Promoting Latino Children’s Literature and Literacy in Classrooms and Libraries has been published by Libraries Unlimited – sporting a beautiful cover and excellent and timely content.

SLIS alumna Connie Chow of Huntsville has been appointed a field recruiter for “Discovering Librarianship” by the ALA Office for Diversity.
http://www.americanlibrariesmagazine.org/news/ala/ala-office-diversity-selects-field-recruiters-discovering-librarianship
Jennifer Keach, recipient of the SLIS faculty scholar award in 1994, has co-authored Web Project Management for Academic Libraries, a Chandos Publishing/Neal-Schuman publication. Jennifer is Director of Digital Services at James Madison University in Harrisonburg VA. 

SLIS faculty and staff continued their tradition of giving generously to the United Way Campaign and almost doubled their goal amount.  A big “Thank You” to all who contributed.  

Faculty, staff, and students thoroughly enjoyed the ALA-SAC Thanksgiving Luncheon on Monday, November 22nd.  The food was excellent and plentiful and the company superb.  SLIS faculty and staff are very appreciative of students’ efforts that resulted in such a successful event.

For those of you contemplating attending commencement in May, 2011, there is added incentive for you to do so. We have learned that Dr. Aversa has been chosen to lead the graduation exercises and the procession. As Commencement Marshall, she will sport a red robe and will carry the traditional commencement mace http://registrar.ua.edu/commencement/mace/index.html.  It will be the digital equivalent of a “Kodak moment” Don’t miss it.

November 15, 2010

Fantastic news!  Dr. Steven MacCall has been named Library Journal’s 2010 Teaching Award.   This is a magnificent honor for Dr. MacCall, and we are so proud of his success. He has to wait until January 8, 2011 to receive the award at the ALA Midwinter meeting in San Diego, and we will send out information on that celebration nearer the time.  More on this exciting news from Dr. Aversa on SLIS-L later this week; in the meantime, see the following links for details and interviews:

http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/communitylibraryeducation/887460-272/steven_maccall_winner_of_ljs.html.csp

http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/ljinprintcurrentissue/887425-403/those_who_can_teach.html.csp

September 30,2010

The Book Arts Program at SLIS has just learned that the Board of Trustees of the American Printing History Association has voted to give the APHA 2011 Institutional Award for Distinguished Achievement to the book arts program at Alabama.
The formal presentation will take place at the New York meeting of the
association at 2 p.m. on January 29, 2011 at the New York Public Library.
Congratulations!

September 20, 2010

Congratulations to Elizabeth and Rocco Aversa, grandparents for the second time as of September 18, 2010.  Preston Chase Poniatowski arrived on Thursday evening, healthy, weighing 7lb. 1oz., and measuring 19.5 inches.  Parents, Margaret and Brian, and brother Pierce are all welcoming Preston to their home and family in Mount Laurel, NJ.

Elizabeth Aversa, Anne Edwards, Mary Meares (CCIS), and Beth Riggs have had a panel presentation accepted for the ALISE Conference in January 2011 in San Diego, CA.  The acceptance rate by the ALISE Juried Panel Committee was 43%, so there was formidable competition among those submitting proposals. The title is Rethinking the Administrative Structure for Greater Competitiveness: Incorporating Individuals with Diverse Backgrounds into the LIS Program Organization.

The Library Media Center at Paul W. Bryant High School in Tuscaloosa received a national award from the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) on September 14, 2010. The award was presented by AASL president, Dr. Nancy Everhart, who is visiting school libraries across the country. The visit to Paul W. Bryant High School's Library Media Center is part of Everhart's Vision Tour, which is designed to showcase exemplary school libraries across the nation. Paul W. Bryant High School's library program was chosen as "Outstanding School Library in Alabama" by the Alabama School Library Association.  Paul W. Bryant Library is the first library in the state of Alabama to receive this prestigious award. The Paul W. Bryant High School Library is under the direction of Shannon Bogert and Shelley Dorrill. Bogert and Dorrill were innovative in creating their Stampede to Read Program, a system of monthly programming, book talks, gaming events, unique displays, and literacy instruction for students of all reading levels. The Stampede to Read Program, combined with community collaboration, resulted in a tremendous increase in patron usage and circulation.

The annual Alabama Library Expo will take place during the week of September 27th through October 1st with sessions at five venues throughout the state.  On Wednesday, September 29th, the Expo will be held at the Bessemer Civic Center.

Susan DeBruin, a current SLIS student who is also a library assistant at the UA Health Sciences Library, presented her winning essay and received the Robert Avant Student Award from the Alabama Health Libraries Association during its annual meeting last week in Birmingham. The award pays the winner’s expenses for a CE course and conference expenses for the annual meeting of the Association. Congratulations to Susan.

Summer 2010 (June 15 – August 31)

STAFF
Cassie Martin (Office Associate II) left SLIS on July 31, 2010 to pursue her graduate education at the Virginia/Maryland School of Veterinary Studies.

 

Retia Boone joined SLIS as the Office Associate II on August 1, 2010.  Retia is from West Alabama and is working towards her B.S. in Paralegal Studies. She is very happy to be working at SLIS. 

 

As a result of significant changes and increased responsibilities, Beth Riggs’ position was upgraded over the summer.  Her new title is Assistant to the Director.

Monte Faison has been hired into the .5 FTE position in Area Computing, reporting to Reggie Perkins. Monte is working towards his B.S. in Business Administration at UA.

STUDENTS AND ALUMNI

Alumni Reception at American Library Conference, Washington DC
SLIS students, faculty, alumni, and friends gathered at the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel in DC for snacks and networking at the all library school reception during ALA in June.  SLIS displayed the Haiti Broadside and other Alabama/SLIS items and caught up on news and views with friends new and old.  

Commencement
Congratulations to the following SLIS graduates who received their MLIS degrees in August, 2010. These 33 students came from 16 states, including Alabama, and one Canadian province.  We wish them the best of success in their careers.
Tammy Ellen Ackerson – Laramie, WY
Deana Marie Adams – Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Martha Walker Branch – Mobile, AL
John Ford Carlisle – Jackson’s Gap, AL
Sagoree Chattergee – Cincinnati, OH
Caroline E. Chick – Birmingham, AL
Connie Wong Chow – Madison, AL
John Crawford – Jacksonville, FL
Charlotte E. Evans – Charleston, SC
David Alan Gibbs – Athens, GA
Naarah Beth Gonzalez – Provo, UT
Bonnie Jean Gormley – Acworth, GA
Elizabeth E. Graham – Montgomery, AL
Laura Gricius-West, Manchester, NH
Alexandra Lynne Harrington – Virginia Beach, VA
Rebecca Denice Hunt – Waterford, MI
Clare Madyun King – Saginaw, MI
Matthew Warner Layne – Birmingham, AL
Mary Catherine Lennon – New Smyrna Beach, FL
Benjamin R. Martin – Tuscaloosa, AL
Julia Lewis Marx – Birmingham, AL
David Wilson Miller – Theodore, AL
Emma C. O’Hagan – Birmingham, AL
Elise Helen Peterson – West Fargo, ND
Braegan C. Phillips, McCalla, AL
Sharon Elizabeth Reidt – Brattleboro, VT
Deborah Stout Ripley – Redondo Beach, CA
Samuel Anthony Rumore, Jr. – Birmingham, AL
Sarah Alice Speights Savas – Huntsville, AL
Kathleen M. Spring – McMinnville, OR
Dana J. Stanley – Oklahoma City, OK
Michelle A. Townsend – Clinton, MS
Amanda Lene Trawick – Brundidge, AL

LSA Summer Socials
The SLIS Library School Association (LSA) hosted three summer socials during May, June, and July—in Tuscaloosa, Prattville, and Gulf Shores, respectively. Current students, alumni, staff and faculty attended these get-togethers and shared news and information. SLIS thanks LSA for arranging these events.

Class assignment becomes funded project
Students who wrote a grant proposal as an assignment in Dr. Gordy Coleman’s LS 532 class, School Library Media, submitted a variation of the proposal to the Dollar General Back to School Project.  Last week, they were delighted to hear that their proposal had been funded!  $3,000 is on its way to the Ridgecrest Elementary School under the title Ridgecrest Rockets: Launching Lifetime Readers. Grant writing is a regular assignment in the class, but this is the first time such an effort has been rewarded monetarily.  Congratulations to all involved!

New student orientation sessions were held for on campus MLIS and MFA students, and for the national online cohort “The Sixth Sense”.  54 students attended the on campus orientation on August 19, 2010—a record number, and the 43 students admitted to the distance education MLIS program were on campus for three full days, from August 19-21. All faculty and staff contributed to the programs.

FACULTY
Jennifer Campbell-Meier joined the faculty officially on August 16, 2010 (she taught a course for SLIS during the summer.) Dr. Campbell-Meier is teaching LS 501, Introduction to LIS, and LS 533, Special Libraries & Information Centers, this semester. 

Robert Riter (Bob) also joined the faculty on August 16, 2010. He is finishing his doctorate at the University of Pittsburgh.  Bob is teaching LS 506, Cataloging and Classification, during the fall.

Jeff Weddle was promoted to Associate Professor and awarded tenure on August 16, 2010.

Elizabeth Aversa, Director of SLIS, announced that she will step down from her administrative position no later than May 15, 2011. She will remain on the faculty of SLIS; teaching, conducting research, and contributing her extensive skills, knowledge, and experience to the School.  A national search for a new director is underway, led by a committee chaired by Dr. Danny Wallace.

Faculty members Campbell-Meier, Wallace, Naidoo, and Bonnici taught MLIS classes during Interim and summer sessions 2010.  Professor Steve Miller taught a class titled Digital Concepts in Letterpress at the Penland School of Crafts near Asheville, NC from May 30 to June 11, 2010.

Laurie Bonnici, together with the University of South Florida, was awarded an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Grant.  The $882,416 grant project, Accessible Libraries for All: a Recruitment Project to Prepare 21st Century Librarians to Bridge the Physical Divide, will be completed in three years.

Steven MacCall attended Rare Book School 2010: Special Collections Librarianship at the University of Virginia from July 19-23.

Jamie Naidoo presented a paper as part of a session titled Celebrating Culture, Reading, & Family Literacy @ the Library with the Latino Reading and Literacy Programs; El día de los niños/El día de los libros (Día) and Noche de Cuentos at the IFLA World Conference in Gothenburg, Sweden in August  2010.

Laurie Bonnici presented two papers during the summer. The first, with Stephanie Maata (University of South Florida) and Muriel Wells (doctoral student at UA), was titled Readiness Index: Measuring the Preparedness of Libraries to Serve Patrons with Disabilities in the Context of Economic Challenge, and presented  in June at the program“ALA Diversity Research Grant Findings”  during the ALA Annual Conference in Washington, DC.  The second paper was presented in July at the National Diversity in Libraries Conference 2010 at Princeton University, NJ. It was titled Creating Accessible Resources with Technologies at Hand, with Muriel Wells and Stephanie Maata as co-presenters.

The following faculty members have signed book contracts:

• Elizabeth Aversa, with Libraries Unlimited, for the 6th edition of The Humanities: a Selective Guide to Information Sources, which continues from Blazek and Aversa’s 3rd, 4th, and 5th editions of the standard text in Humanities reference. With Anna Perrault, Professor, University of South Florida. Anticipated completion date: July 2011.

• Laurie Bonnici, with the publisher Information Today, for The Study of Information Revisited: Chaos in the Emergence of Disciplinary Identity,which will develop fractal maps of the disciplines Library and Information Science (LIS) and Computer and Information Science (CIS.)  The maps will trace the trajectory of Information Science from 1965 into the future.  With Kathleen M. Burnett, Florida State University and Mega M. Subramaniam, University of Maryland.

Dan Albertson has had three papers accepted for publication in peer-reviewed journals; two by the Journal of the American Society for Information Science & Technology (JASIS&T), and one by the Journal of Education in Library and Information Science (JELIS.)

Danny Wallace, Connie Van Fleet, and Lacey Downs will present a paper titled The Use of Research Methodologies in the Knowledge Management Literature, at the October 2010 ASIS&T conference in Pittsburgh, PA.

Elizabeth Aversa is serving as chair of an ALA Committee on Accreditation External Review Panel. The panel will be making its site visit to review an MLIS program at another university this fall.  

FACILITIES

Over the summer, 30 new chairs were purchased for Room 503, and a rolling, reversible whiteboard is now available in Room 532. Also, the School now owns five easels, two of which are very light and portable for poster presentations, etc. 

 

 

June 15, 2010

Dr. P.K. Jain, Library Director at the Institute of Economic Growth, University of Delhi, India will talk about “LIS Education in India: Challenges and Opportunities”, on Wednesday, June 16th from 1:30 – 3:00 p.m. (one hour talk with Q&A session and half hour reception/meet the speaker) in Room 401, Gorgas Library. Coffee and light refreshments will be served. This event is sponsored by University of Alabama Libraries, Capstone International Programs, School of Library and Information Studies, and SLA-Alabama Chapter. SPECIAL THANKS TO MANGALA KRISHNAMURTHY FOR COORDINATING THIS EVENT!

Congratulations to Cathy Craig who was named Employee of the Month during March 2010 at the Yeary Library, Laredo Community College, Texas where she is a Catalog/Reference Librarian. The college president awarded Cathy with a large plaque, balloons, a bouquet, a college mug, candy, and a $50 check.

Kudos  also to Sarah McDermott, Lauren Faulkenberry, Annie Herlocker, and Sara Parkel for their award-winning books at the ARTBOUND First Annual Juried Student Book Arts Competition at the University of Florida Libraries! Congratulations.

The SLIS Annual Report 2009-2010 is now available. Click here.

May 5, 2010

Professor Anna Embree is teaching a Byzantine Bookbinding workshop at the University of Iowa Center for the Book, from May 21-23, 2010. In the workshop, participants will be introduced to the main structural characteristics of Byzantine bookbinding through the construction of a model. The workshop will begin with a discussion of the unique features of Byzantine wooden board covers. This will be followed by board preparation and sewing of the textblock using an unsupported link stitch. Pronounced raised endbands will be sewn along the board edges and into the text-block. These books will be bound in full goatskin with braided leather clasps and will be decorated with blind tooling. Experience sewing a text-block is required. http://www.uiowa.edu/~ctrbook/events/index.shtml#Byzantine

Amanda Haldy won the Best Student Poster Award for "Orphans & Digitization" at the Midwest Archives Conference in Chicago in late April.  Well done, Amanda!

NETSL1, or the Mini Fantastic Fourth Reunion, took place at the New England Technical Services Librarians Conference in Massachusetts during April. SLIS students pictured at the following URL are, left to right, Kathie Popadin (Stafford Springs, CT); Joanne Riley (Boston, MA); and Laura Gricius West (Manchester, NH). 

The April 17, 2010 Alabama Book Festival was a great opportunity for faculty and students in the Book Arts program to travel to Montgomery and show and sell their work. Pictured (left to right) are Kerri Harding, Stephanie Jacobs, Lauren Faulkenberry, Mary McManus, Professor Anna Embree, and Erin Morris.  Not pictured: Sarah Parkel.

Steve Miller is currently in San Juan, Puerto Rico at the FERINART SAN JUAN 2010-the Fourth International Artisan’s Festival which takes place from April 30 through May 9, 2010. More than 70 artisans from 32 countries are participating along with more than 125 artisans from Puerto Rico. Under “International Artisan Highlights, you will find the following entry:
“De Estados Unidos viene Steve Miller, Profesor MFA del Book Arts Program de la Universidad de Alabama”
More on the Festival can be found at  http://ferinart.org

Dr. Elizabeth Aversa was interviewed by CBS News Channel 42 (Birmingham) about the Haiti Broadside.  The interview was aired on the 6 p.m. News on Friday April 30, and a short article and slide show of the broadside can be found on the Channel 42 website.

Steve Miller was presented with the Knox Hagood Award for Faculty on April 30, following the College of Communication & Information Sciences faculty meeting.  The award, which is in its 24th year, comes in the form of a plaque and a check, and is intended to recognize and encourage sustained outstanding performance on the part of a faculty member in the College. Congratulations!

 

Book Arts students held their Show and Tell for the School on Friday, April 30.  Pictures will be mounted on the SLIS Home Page.

Emma O’Hagan will be the first SLIS graduate student to pursue an international internship. This summer, Emma will travel to New Delhi, India and will contribute to and learn from the library at the Institute of Economic Growth at the University of New Delhi. She will work under the direction of its librarian, Dr. P.K. Jain*. Negotiations and arrangements for this internship were greatly enhanced by the admirable networking skills of Mangala Krishnamurthy, Assistant Professor in the UA Libraries, who is also the current International Relations Chair within the Special Libraries’ Association’s Physics-Astronomy-Mathematics Division. As a result of Mangala’s efforts, Emma was offered internship opportunities at five institutions in India, from which she made her choice. UA’s Capstone International Center generously awarded her a scholarship of $300 which will cover housing expenses. Emma will be in India from May 7 through June 17, and will spend about 4 weeks of that time on her internship. She promises to keep us informed through her upcoming blog at eohagan@wordpress.com. We wish Emma great success this summer, and we encourage SLIS students to seek internship opportunities within the U.S. and across the globe.   

*Plans are in the works to bring Dr. Jain, who is active in the Asian Chapter of the Special Libraries’ Association, to UA as a guest lecturer on June 16, 2010. He will be attending the SLA conference in New Orleans prior to his visit to Tuscaloosa. Dr. Jain will be sponsored by the Alabama Chapter of SLA and SLIS.

April 21, 2010

On April 9, 2010 Dr. Jamie Campbell Naidoo was presented with the 2009 Virginia Hamilton Essay Award at the 26th Annual Virginia Hamilton Conference on Multicultural Literature for Youth at Kent State University, Ohio.  The award recognizes a journal article published in a given year which makes a significant contribution to professional literature concerning multicultural literary experiences for youth. 

Rob LoMascolo and Lauren Faulkenberry, students in the Book Arts program, won 1st and 3rd prize respectively in the recent UA Libraries Book Collecting competition. In the Libraries Video competition, current Books Arts student Ally Nevarez and MLIS student Josh Sahib won 1st prize for “Good Research vs. Bad Research” (featuring cameo appearances by Steve Miller and Cassie Martin.)  Congratulations to all of our winners. 

Dr. Dan Albertson has been awarded a university Research Grant for his project “User-Centric Video Digital Libraries for Television and Film Studies”.  Dr. Albertson will also be recognized on April 23rd at a luncheon and poster session for recipients of the annual UA Center for Community –Based Partnerships awards.  This award is for Dr. Albertson’s successful project that involves teaching basic computer skills to intellectually challenged individuals in West Alabama, and will provide him with funding to continue the project.

April 20, 2010

Three Public Book Arts workshops will be offered on the UA campus during May, as follows:
1. Introduction to Letterpress Printing. Saturday, May 15 from 9-6 and Sunday, May 16 from 1-6
2. Papermaking 101. Friday and Saturday, May 28-29 from 9-5
3. Introduction to Bookbinding. Monday and Tuesday, May 17 and 18 from 6-9

Detailed information on registration and the workshop content can be found here.

SLIS was well represented at the 2010 Alabama Library Association Convention which was held in Huntsville from April 13-16.  On the program were sessions presented by or including speakers from SLIS faculty: Jeffrey Graveline (adjunct) on copyright, Jamie Campbell Naidoo on sensational storytelling, and Gordy Coleman on information literacy. In addition, a host of current and former students presented papers or posters (too many to mention here.) 
Jeffrey Graveline, reference librarian for Business and government documents at the Melvyn Sterne Library at UAB, received the Intellectual Freedom Award from ALLA, a prestigious honor for his work in the state on copyright, author rights, and fair use. Ann Marie Pipkin, a SLIS graduate and librarian at the Alabama School of the Fine Arts in Birmingham, received the Distinguished Service Award from the Alabama Library Association for her contributions to librarianship in K-12 education, not only in the state, but far beyond. 
Finally, a SLIS reception for students, alumni, faculty, and friends attracted a large and enthusiastic crowd on Wednesday evening of the convention. 

Amanda Haldy, a current MLIS student, will present her poster “Orphans and Digitization” at the Midwest Archives Conference in Chicago on April 23. Her study grew from a paper written in LS 501 and addresses orphan and volatile works in the digital archives environment.

April 15, 2010

On April 1, 2010, the School celebrated 3 events in one:  the Edible Book Festival, the unveiling of the Haiti Broadside, and the recognition of the winner of the Student Advisory Council’s award for Best Student Paper.

The 2010 Edible Book Festival, part of an international festival, produced myriad creative offerings that were devoured eagerly by the attendees, but not before they had been photographed.  Pictures can be seen on the School’s Web Page.

The Haiti Broadside, a beautiful work of art created cooperatively by SLIS faculty and students, was unveiled by Dr. Elizabeth Aversa and Professor Steve Miller.  75 numbered copies of the broadside, on handmade paper made from cotton clothing, printed with a poem, “Night and Day”  by Paul Laraque, a Haitian poet, and decorated with an original design by UA artist Sarah Marshall, are available for purchase. 100% of the proceeds will go towards rebuilding libraries in Haiti that were destroyed in the 2010 earthquake.  Those who contributed to the creation of the SLIS broadside included Steve Miller, Anna Embree, Elizabeth Aversa, Jeff Weddle, Sarah Marshall, Anthony Cox, Anne Edwards, Ellison Graham, Mary McManus, Paul McLaughlin, Beth Riggs, Melissa Koener, Bill Friedman, Amanda Haldy, Weston Flippo, and Elise Peterson (Click here for details).
To purchase a broadside, which measures 11” x 17”, for $55.00 (including shipping and handling), please contact Retia Boone at 205-348-4610 or rboone@slis.ua.edu.

Samuel A. Rumore, a current MLIS student, was awarded the SAC Best Student Paper Award and recounted the story behind his paper, which featured a treasured book about Bear Bryant.

On April 9, 2010, SLIS Honors Day celebrations included the following awards:
Corr Scholarship                               Kelli Miller
Bethel Fite Endowed Scholarship     Carol York
Student Paper Award                       Willa Broughton
Technology Innovation Award          Willa Broughton
Florine Oltman Award                       Cynthia Markushewski
Raymond F. McLain Book Arts Award Sara Parkel
Faculty Scholar Award                       Richard “Alex” Perry

Dr. Sue Medina, former director of the Network of Alabama Academic Libraries (NAAL), gave an inspiring talk and received two resolutions from SLIS. Beta Phi Mu, the honor society, was also represented by the presence of its officers and president Mr. Jeff Simpson.

Elise Peterson, current MLIS student and member of the North Dakota National Guard, recently spent time there filling sandbags and battling the floods. While there, she was interviewed several times by the media:
Guard: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLMBe0InCmU
Eye Witness News: http://kstp.com/news/stories/S1477390.shtml?cat=1

Congratulations to Cindy Markushewski, SLIS ’09, who has joined the National Children’s Advocacy Center in Huntsville, Alabama as the new research librarian.

Professor Anna Embree has three handmade artist books in a current exhibit at the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina. The exhibit,  
“Artist,  Educator, Mentor, Rascal: Dolph Smith and Friends: Celebrating book arts instructor Dolph Smith's years of teaching, runs from March 23 - May 9, 2010. Professor Embree teaches at Penland during the summer months. http://penland.org/gallery/10exhibitions/smith/index.html

March 23, 2010

Teresa Kiser, a 1999 SLIS graduate and adjunct instructor at SLIS, has been chosen a “Mover & Shaker” by Library Journal.  See: LJ “Movers & Shakers 2010: Jane of All Trades: http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6721907.html”
Teresa is Assistant Director/Technology Coordinator at the Public Library of Anniston-Calhoun County, Alabama.  Our heartiest congratulations go to Teresa for this impressive achievement and honor.

Rita Bloodworth Smith, a 1997 SLIS graduate and currently Outreach & Education Coordinator at the Mercer University Medical Library in Macon, Georgia, has been awarded the 2010 Michael E. DeBakey Library Services Outreach Award for outstanding service to rural or underserved communities. The award was established in the early 1990s to recognize the contributions to medical education and librarianship by Michael E. DeBakey, M.D. (1908 – 2008). A world-renowned American cardiac surgeon, innovator, medical educator, and international medical statesman, Dr. DeBakey worked to improve national and international standards of health care. Rita will be one of several members of the health care community being recognized at the Friends of the National Library of Medicine Awards Dinner on May 11, 2010 in Washington, DC. Other awardees include Dr. Eugene Braunwald for his significant contributions to the medical and scientific literature, and Dr. Robert Gallo who co-discovered the Human Immunodeficiency Virus.
http://www.fnlm.org/pdfs/DeBakey_Nomination_Info_2010.pdf

MLIS student Elise Peterson was recently named the 2009 Alabama Wing Officer of the Year, a prestigious award for leadership in the Civil Air Patrol (CAP), which is a non-profit, volunteer auxiliary organization of the US Air Force. Within the CAP, each state is considered a Wing and the Alabama Wing numbers over 600 Officers. (For information about the Civil Air Patrol, go to www.gocivilairpatrol.com.)

Elise has served as a cadet in the Civil Air Patrol for over 11 years and as a member of the North Dakota Air National Guard for over 6 years.  Last year she joined the local squadron (Tuscaloosa Composite Squadron) and was appointed to the position of Deputy Commander of Cadets. The cadet program in the Tuscaloosa Squadron has recently been reactivated after two decades, and Elise has provided the leadership to develop and grow this local program which now numbers over 20 cadets.  Congratulations to Elise for her achievements in the Civil Air Patrol, and her dedication to volunteer activities and service outside her graduate studies.

SLIS has just learned of the death of Professor Ruth Waldrop, who passed away just days before her 99th birthday in Ormond Beach, Florida.
 
Professor Waldrop was an amazing librarian, library educator, and library advocate.  Among other accomplishments, Professor Waldrop is to be remembered by the SLIS community for “A Proposal for Graduate Education in Librarianship: Crisis and Resolution”  a 1968  document that helped pave the way for the founding of the then Graduate School of Library Science at the University of Alabama.  As a School librarian, Country and State Media Services Supervisor, Library Educator, author of numerous books, and Executive Director of the Alabama Library Association, Ruth Waldrop was an outstanding, one-of-a-kind leader in Alabama librarianship.  An endowed scholarship in her name continues to enable part-time students to attend SLIS.
 
Details on funeral arrangements and contacts will be posted on Tuesday, March 23 at http://www.lohmanfuneralhomes.com/visitations/View.php?id=3774, the Lohman Funeral Home website.

March 3, 2010

The College of Communication and Information Sciences (CCIS) History Forum is co-sponsoring, with UA Libraries, a lecture by Samford University Journalism professor and CCIS Ph.D. graduate Julie Williams. Julie will be talking about her new book, Wings of Opportunity: The Wright Brothers in Montgomery, Alabama. (Dr. Jeff Weddle is the current Coordinator of the CCIS History Forum.) The lecture will take place on April 8, 2010.

Dr. Sue O. Medina will be the speaker at SLIS Honors Day on April 9, 2010. Dr. Medina has recently retired from her position as Director of the Network of Alabama Academic Libraries (NAAL).

On February 19, 2010, MLIS students and SLIS faculty and staff worked with MFA students and Professor Steve Miller to make their own handmade paper. Over 70 sheets were produced and dried in preparation for printing. On March 5th MFA and MLIS students and SLIS faculty and staff will work together in the Type Lab to print a poem by a Haitian poet with a linoleum cut on this paper to create a limited edition broadside. Broadside sales will help an international project to rebuild libraries devastated by recent earthquakes in Haiti.

Muriel Wells, a SLIS doctoral student, has been named one of Library Student Journal's Emerging Leaders of 2009.

Dr. Jamie Naidoo is the first author on the only U.S. paper accepted by the Literacy and Reading and the Library Services to Multicultural Populations sections of the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA)  for its annual conference in Gothenburg, Sweden in August 2010. The authors are Jamie Campbell Naidoo, Patricia Montiel-Overall, Lucía González, and Irania Macías Patterson, and the title is "Celebrating Culture, Reading, & Family Literacy @ the Library with the Latino Reading and Literacy Programs El día de los niños/El día de los libros (Día) and Noche de Cuentos"

February 10, 2010

Kristin Skees, a Graduate Council Fellow who will graduate in May 2010, has had a paper selected for presentation at the Graduate Art History Symposium at UAB on February 26.  Her paper is titled "Street Art and the Museum" and was written for LS 501, taught by Professor Gordy Coleman last fall. 

Intensive SLIS and Book Arts Collaborative Project to Benefit Rebuilding Haitian Libraries
SLIS is seizing a unique opportunity to contribute something to benefit the people of Haiti.  MLIS and MFA students will work together to bring to life a Handmade Broadside featuring poetry by a Haitian writer and original art. The prints will be sold to help rebuild Haitian libraries. SLIS faculty Dr. Aversa, Anna Embree, Steve Miller, and Jeff Weddle represent the faculty in this endeavor.
Timeline for the project:
By February 17th 2010 SLIS will have gathered 5 lbs of 100% cotton fibers, donated and cut into 1” squares to be made into rag paper.
On February 19th the rag paper for the broadsides will be handmade in SLIS’s Lost Arch Papermill by SLIS students.
On March 5th 2010 MLIS students will have an opportunity to letterpress print the poetry and artwork for the broadside.
The completed broadside will be unveiled on April 1st at the Edible Book Festival.

Dr. Laurie Bonnici was awarded the 2009 ALISE Best Conference paper for lead author on a paper titled “Everything Old is New Again: The Evolution of Library and Information Science Education from LIS to iField.”  The article, co-authored with Dr. Kathleen Burnett (FSU) and Dr. Mega Subramaniam (Maryland) was recognized with a plaque and a check for $100 at the 2010 ALISE conference in Boston in January 2010.  The article appears in the Journal of Library and Information Science Fall 2009 issue (Vol. 50, #4, pp. 263-274).

David Nolen, a 2007 SLIS graduate and IMLS Fellow, currently on faculty at Mississippi State University Libraries, has published an article, "Characteristics of la literatura: A Reference Study of Spanish and Latin American Literature," in College & Research Libraries, January 2010, 71: 9-19.

A new series of workshops for current and newly graduated SLIS students on job seeking and placement will take place during spring semester 2010. Five hour-long noncredit sessions will be presented by Professor Anne Edwards. The sessions will covering the job search process from identifying sources for job announcements through interview and negotiation strategies. All are invited.  Dates are listed on the Events page of the Website.

January 26, 2010

Dr. Danny P. Wallace spoke on “Business Intelligence Courses in Schools of Library and Information Science” and hosted an open forum on the ALISE Statistics at the 2010 Association for Library and Information Science Education Annual Conference in Boston in January.

Dr Dan Albertson had an article published recently:
Albertson, D. (2010).  Analyzing User Interaction with the ViewFinder Video Retrieval System. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 61(2), 238-252.  DOI: 10.1002/asi.21257

Dr. Jamie Naidoo presented a research, works-in-progress poster at the ALISE conference in January entitled "Picturing My Family: A critical analysis of international picture books depicting same-sex households and gay themes." He also co-moderated a session at the conference entitled "Inclusive Voices: Embracing Diversity in Youth Services." Jamie is currently serving as the co-chair of the youth section of REFORMA (an affiliate of the American Library Association dedicated to library and information services to Latinos and the Spanish-Speaking), and as a member of the ALA Spectrum Advisory Committee which works to promote diversity in the LIS field. He had his recent article entitled "Embracing the World’s Reflections: The Creative Expressions of Maya Christina Gonzalez" published by REFORMA.

Congratulations are due to three former IMLS fellows for significant achievements:

Jaena Hollingsworth (2006), Assistant Librarian and English Department Liaison at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, has been named the Indiana Library Federation’s Outstanding New Librarian for 2009.
Makiba Foster (2007), of Washington University Libraries, St. Louis, MO, who was sponsored by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association (BCALA),and Steven Yates (2006), of Spain Park High School, Hoover, AL., who was sponsored by the Alabama Instructional Media Association (AIMA), have been selected as 2010 Emerging Leaders by the American Library Association.

January 22, 2010

SLIS RECEIVES NOTIFICATION OF CONTINUED ACCREDITATION OF MLIS PROGRAM

Three days after meeting with the American Library Association’s Committee on Accreditation in Boston, SLIS Director Elizabeth Aversa received written confirmation on January 19, 2010 that the School’s Master’s Program in Library & Information Studies had  been awarded continued accreditation.  The long process of preparation, site visit, meetings, and reports is now over, and the cycle begins again (the next visit will occur in 2016).  A well-earned round of applause is due to Dr. Aversa and her faculty and staff, as well as the numerous supporters of the MLIS program and the School.   

December 15, 2009

Congratulations to the following 36 MLIS and MFA (Book Arts) graduates who were honored at Winter Commencement on Saturday, December 12:

Andrea Nichole Abernathy (Athens) 
Heather Marie Blackmon (Boaz)
Amy Michelle Brock-Reed (Alabaster)
Janet Allene Burroughs (Carlton, GA)
JoAnna Jean Butler (Huntsville)
Evan Lee Conaway (Auburn)
Meghan Jean Crook (Reading, MA)
Shelley Cleare Dorrill (Tuscaloosa)
Kimberly Marie Emrick (Alabaster)
Melissa Beth Fortson (Tuscaloosa)
Elizabeth Marie Freise (Kansas City, MO)
Adelia Bush Grabowsky (Duncanville)
Mary Jean Harris (Oakman)
Kevin Michael Hebert (New Orleans, LA)
Patricia L. Hixson (Alabaster)
Lydia Marie Hofstetter (Columbus, GA)
Jamie Marie Jack (Pell City)
Donald Alvin King (Louisville,  KY)
Elizabeth C. Laera (Vestavia Hills)
Cynthia Karen Markushewski (Huntsville)
Ntombikayise Nomsa Mathabela (Mbabane, Swaziland)
Patrick Ryan Milam (Mobile)
Danielle Linn Moore (Raleigh, NC)
Jessica Lindsey Pace (Cleveland, MS)
Richard Alexander Perry (Pleasant City, OH)
Mary K. Quillivan (Huntsville)
Gloria Julia Repolesk (Huntsville)
Amanda Lynne Scott (Arab)
Stephanie Diane Taylor (Montgomery)
Laura Lynn Tucker (Birmingham)
Dana Frances Webster (Montgomery)
Denise Amanda Wetzel (Mobile)
Alaina Theresa Willett (Birmingham)
Tanya Michelle Wilson (Birmingham)
Elizabeth Jane Wynn (Mountain Brook)
Mary Alison Yeager (Hoover)

December 7-9, 2009

The University of Alabama's School of Library and Information Studies (SLIS) awards over $6000 in free books to elementary and high school library media centers in the Black Belt region of the state via the SLIS Book Bonanza for the Black Belt Program.

Schools in the Black Belt region were asked to apply for the book give-away program in mid-November. A total of six schools were selected to each receive over $1000 in brand new books for children or teens. The winning schools for the 2009 SLIS Book Bonanza for the Black Belt Program are:

Gordo High School (Pickens County)
ABC Elementary School (Wilcox County)
J. E. Terry Elementary School (Dallas County)
Shiloh Elementary School (Dallas County)
Chisholm Elementary School (Montgomery County)
Robert C. Hatch High School (Perry County)

The SLIS Book Bonanza for the Black Belt is an annual program that provides free books to school library media centers in the Black Belt region each December. The program is just one of the many ways in which the School of Library and Information Studies gives back to our local community, region, and state.

Schools in the Black Belt region of the state are encouraged to apply again in November 2010 to receive free books for their school library media centers during the 2010 SLIS Book Bonanza for the Black Belt Program. If you need additional information about the program, please contact Dr. Jamie C. Naidoo at jcnaidoo@slis.ua.edu or SLIS at 205-348-4610.

MLIS student Richard Lecompte has an article, “Writers Blocked: The Debate over Public Lending Right in the United States during the 1980s,” in the November 2009 issue of Libraries and the Cultural Record.

SLIS professors Anna Embree and Steve Miller, instructors in the MFA in the Book Arts Program, spent the week of November 30-December 6, 2009 in Havana, Cuba. There they visited with printmakers, hand papermakers, book and paper conservators, and representatives from the Office of the Historian of the City of Havana, planning for a fifth book collaboration with Cuban artists and Alabama faculty and graduate students.

Photo by Steve Miller of the living room at Finca Vigia, writer Ernest Hemingway's home outside Havana, Cuba.

The School of Library & Information Studies will be one of the sponsors of the Doctoral Student Reception at the Annual Conference of the  Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) in Boston on January 13, 2010. 

SLISers Elizabeth Aversa and Beth Riggs will participate in a panel discussion at the ALISE Conference.  The panel is entitled Distance Education: “Setting the Tone for Collaborative Learning: Orientation for Online Students.” Other panelists are Stephen Bajjaly (Wayne State University), Trudi Hahn (University of Maryland), and June Lester (University of Oklahoma).

Dr. Bonnici has just published “US National Accessibility Survey: Librarians Serving Patrons with Disabilities.” L. Bonnici, S. Maatta, and Muriel Wells.  New Library World.  (2009) Vol. 110, No. 11/12, (512-528).

Dr. Bonnici will present the following at the ALISE Conference in January 2010 in Boston:

“Collaboration in LIS Education: Trends in Co-authorship.” K. Burnett, M. Subramaniam, and L.
            Bonnici, Association for Library and Information Science Education, Boston, MA, January 2010.

“iSchools Curricula: Indications of Fractal Distinctions in Time.” ALISE Conference, Boston, January 2010.             (With M. Subramaniam, S. Park, and K. Burnett). 

Professor Bullock has published the following article:

Maietta, Carol; Bullock, Sybil H. "A Value-Added Partnership Between a Chief Learning Officer and a Medical Librarian" Medical Reference Services Quarterly v. 28 no. 4 (October-December 2009) p. 375-384.

   
Graduating SLIS students and their parents and friends will be guests of the director at a reception to be held on Friday, December 11th from 5 to 7 p.m. at the director’s home.  Spouses, significant others, and children are all welcome to attend.

We are pleased to announce that Cassie Martin has joined the administrative staff of SLIS as Office Associate II.  Ms. Martin is a May 2009 graduate of The University of Alabama where she received her BS in Interdisciplinary Sciences.  Ms. Martin, who worked for SLIS as Office Associate in a temporary capacity from August through November, 2009, currently lives in Tuscaloosa. She anticipates attending graduate school for veterinary studies in the future.  When she is not working or studying, Ms. Martin enjoys learning to fly on the trapeze.

November 25, 2009

Beth Riggs and Elizabeth Aversa presented at the annual meeting of the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) in Vancouver, British Columbia.  Their program was entitled “Web-Based Teaching: Surviving and Thriving in a Pluralistic Online World,” and other panelists included Stephen Bajjaly (Dean, Wayne State University); Trudi Bellardo Hahn (University of Maryland); June Lester (University of Oklahoma); and Nancy Roderer (Johns Hopkins University Medical Faculty).  Dr. Steven MacCall also represented SLIS at the ASIS&T Conference.

Cherry Pendley and director Elizabeth Aversa have just submitted the annual statistical report for the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE).  The Association collects and publishes statistics on education in our field, and the annual report includes extensive information about faculty, curriculum, students,  continuing education and income and expenditures for the ALA-accredited programs.  SLIS professor Danny Wallace and doctoral student Jeff Naidoo are currently working on the statistical report under an agreement with ALISE.

The MFA in the Book Arts Program will have its annual Bookarts Holiday Sale of handmade gift boxes, journals, books, and holiday cards. It will be held December 7th and 8th at the Ferguson Center, near Starbucks. Please click on the following link for more details. See you there! Bookarts.

November 4, 2009

Exhibition Reception, Fifth Floor Gallery, SLIS On Alumni Day November 6, 2009, the School of Library & Information Studies will host its annual Alumni Day. As part of Alumni Day there will be an exhibition reception for artists Kathleen Fetters, Glenn House Sr., and Jim Slowe. The exhibition is entitled "Luciferous Logolepsy". Please join us for the festivities!

The School’s 20th Annual Alumni Day will be held on November 6, 2009.  Highlights of the event include the presentation of the Distinguished Alumni Award (see below), presentations by guest faculty and librarians, a mentoring panel session, demonstrations of the work of Book Arts students and faculty, and a reception to honor the artists featured in a Book Arts Exhibition in the 5th Floor Gallery, Gorgas Library. Details of the day’s program and activities are available from Beth Riggs at 348-1527.

Lee Pike

   

Congratulations to Lee Pike, Professor and Head, Angelo Bruno Business Library, who is the recipient of the 2010 SLIS Distinguished Alumni Award.  The award will be presented on Friday, November 6th, at the 20th Annual SLIS Alumni Day.

Dr. Danny P. Wallace was a grants reviewer for the Broadband Technologies Opportunities Program, a joint stimulus program of the U. S. Departments of Agriculture and Commerce designed to support the deployment of broadband infrastructure in unserved and underserved areas, to enhance broadband capacity at public computer centers, and to encourage sustainable adoption of broadband service.

Congratulations to Professor Steve Miller, whose ITunes track “Julie Chen” (with Julie Chen, on Book Artists and Poets) was named 3rd in the top ten downloads from UA’s iTunes U. [Complete article available in Dialog November 2, 2009 at www.dialog.ua.edu]

Dr. Jamie Naidoo’s chapter "Using Traditional and Multimodal Texts to Promote Multicultural Literacy and Intercultural Connections" was just published in the Canadian book Books, Media, & the Internet: Children's Literature for Today's Classrooms (Portage & Main, edited by Shelley S. Peterson,  David Booth, and Carol Jupiter.)

Generous contributions from SLIS faculty and staff enabled the School to exceed its goal for the United Way Campaign.  Many thanks to all contributors.

October 27, 2009

Exhibition Reception, Fifth Floor Gallery, SLIS
On Alumni Day November 6, 2009, the School of Library & Information Studies will host its annual Alumni Day. As part of Alumni Day there will be an exhibition reception for artists Kathleen Fetters, Glenn House Sr., and Jim Slowe. The exhibition is entitled "Luciferous Logolepsy". Please join us for the festivities!

October 15-18, 2009, Book Arts graduate students Kerri Harding, Sarah McDermott, and Ally Nevarez attended the Friends of Dard Hunter annual meeting of hand papermakers in Atlanta, Georgia, with Prof. Steve Miller. In addition to meeting a number of movers and shakers in the hand papermaking world, they met student peers from across the United States. As part of the weekend they demonstrated making paper from banana plant stalks and helped everyone make sheets to take away from the conference.

Book Arts students, guided by Prof. Anna Embree, participated again in the Kentuck Festival of the Arts in Northport, Alabama from October 16-18, 2009. All the Book Arts students helped at the printing demonstration table in the Children's Educational Area, as well as doing bookbinding demonstrations and selling their own work in the artist booth. A wet and chilly weekend failed to dampen their spirits and a good time was had by all, many thousands of attendees later.