Dr. Irene Owens to speak at winter commencement

Dr. Irene Owens (Ph.D. 1995), dean of the School of Library and Information Science at North Carolina Central University, will be the guest speaker at the School of Information and Library Science's winter commencement on December 17, 2006.

Dr. Owens came to NCCU from the University of Texas at Austin 's Graduate School of Information where she had been a graduate advisor and associate professor. She was the first African American to earn tenure in the graduate School of Library and Information Science (now the School of Information) at the University of Texas at Austin.

She has been an elementary school teacher, a classification record assistant at the Library of Congress, and has held several positions at Howard University in Washington, D.C. — including director of the Consciousness IV Undergraduate Library Project (funded by the Council on Library Resources) — head of the Reference Department and director of the Divinity Library. She has served as a consultant in several capacities, including the Triangle Research Libraries Network (the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Duke University and North Carolina State University); the U.S. Office of Education funded Library Evaluation Project with Tribal Librarians, conducted in conjunction with the University of Wisconsin; and for the U.S. Embassy in South Africa. She was also selected by the State Department to serve as a speaker for National Library Week and as a consultant in Pristina, Kosova.

Dr. Owens is the recipient of numerous awards including an Outstanding Service Award from Howard University and the Texas Excellence in Teaching Award. She is a life-long member of the Phi Kappa Phi honor society.

Dr. Owens has published widely, including entries in the International Information and Library Review, College and Research Libraries, the Bulletin of the American Society of Information Science (ASIS), the Journal of Management, The Journal of Library Administration, and Library Management. She is the editor of Acquisitions and Collection Development in the Humanities and Strategic Marketing in Library and Information Science. She is currently completing a book with Greenwood Press entitled, The Management/Leadership of Staffing in Libraries and Other Information Agencies.