SILS professors recipients of research grants

Jeffrey Pomerantz and Diane Kelly, assistant professors at the School of Information and Library Science, have each received a Junior Faculty Development Award to continue their research in the field of library and information science.

Pomerantz will be using the funding to launch a project to multi-state evaluation of statewide virtual reference services. It will expand the scope of the evaluation of the NCknows service, completed for the State Library of North Carolina for which he was principal investigator and has the potential for national impact. This project is expected to fill a need for large-scale evaluations of library consortia that can aid libraries in offering effective and efficient services to their user communities.

The purpose of Kelly's project is to evaluate a novel information seeking environment that could impact the ways in which information is located on the Web. Through the project, a user would arrange retrieved documents in visible piles labeling them according to various aspects/facets of the search. Users would then have the opportunity to search and explore more fully by requesting similar documents to those in a given pile.

The funding period begins January 1, 2006 and ends December 31, 2006.

Recipients of the awards were selected by the Committee of Faculty Research and Study Leaves, chaired by Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Robert N. Shelton at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.