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ARL Academy Fellows 2006
Lyn Batty
Lyn Batty is currently a master’s student in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Lyn earned her B.A. in English Literature from UNC. After graduation, she worked as a research analyst for the Hearst Corporation in New York City.
She received her J.D. from Georgetown University Law School in Washington, D.C. During law school, Lyn served as an editor of the Georgetown Journal of Legal Ethics. She also interned for the Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia and for a D.C. Superior Court Judge. After law school, Lyn practiced in the areas of family law, children’s advocacy, and bankruptcy law, and later served as the director of development for a non-profit agency addressing issues of hunger and poverty.
Lyn’s interests include public services in academic libraries, copyright issues affecting libraries, information policy, scholarly communications, and library development.
Lyn can be reached at: lynmarie@email.unc.edu.
Kim Burton-Oaks
Kim Burton-Oakes began her MLS in August, 2006. Her long-standing scholarly passions include medieval and Renaissance literature, art, and history in Western Europe , as well as contemporary cultural studies.
During the last eight years, most of her time has been spent teaching various courses on medieval and Renaissance literature, 19 th-century British literature, literacy experiences, and academic writing at UNC at Chapel Hill and (previously) at University of Louisville. Kim’s interest in academic librarianship is rooted in the desire to facilitate better and more integrated research, teaching, and learning through public service programming. She is especially excited to learn more about archiving, collection development, the history of the book, and how older historical texts are collected, preserved and made accessible to patrons.
Kim is also currently completing her doctoral dissertation on magic and medieval romance (Literary Magic: Crafting Magic in Medieval Romance) and works as a Research and Public Services Assistant in the Rare Book Collection at UNC at Chapel Hill. In her copious spare time, she reads (of course!), knits, takes dance classes, chastises her husband and two very spoiled cats, and occasionally — sleeps.
Kim can be reached at: ksburton@email.unc.edu.
Stephanie Horowitz
Stephanie Horowitz grew up in Maryland, where she attended the University of Maryland-College Park as an undergraduate, receiving a B. A. in ancient history. After graduating, she worked in the archives of several of Maryland’s cultural institutions, including the Jewish Museum of Maryland, the Columbia Archives, and the University of Maryland-Baltimore County Special Collections Department. These experiences led her to apply to the cooperative public history-library science master’s program at North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
While earning her M. A. in public history, Stephanie worked in NC State’s Special Collections Research Center. She also spent a summer in Cooperstown, New York as the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum’s photograph archives intern. Stephanie is currently a research assistant for UNC at Chapel Hill’s University Librarian emeritus while earning her master’s degree in library science. Although most of her past experience has been in archives, Stephanie is currently interested in reference (both digital and physical) and instruction in academic libraries.
Stephanie can be reached at: sahoro@gmail.com.
Jennifer Joyner
Jennifer Joyner earned her B. A. with Honors in History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2003. In 2004, she moved to Greenville, North Carolina, where she earned her M. A. in History at East Carolina University in 2006. While a student at ECU, Jennifer was awarded the Henry C. Ferrell, Jr. Scholarship in History for her research and interest in the American South. She is a member of Phi Alpha Theta.
While pursing her M. A., she served as the assistant to the university historian and the university archivist working on a project to publish a history of East Carolina University to commemorate the one hundred year anniversary of ECU. During that time she developed an interest in archives and library science. She continues to have an interest in Southern history and in particular North Carolina history.
Jennifer is currently a first year graduate student in the SILS program. She can be reached at jdjoyner@email.unc.edu.
Amit Kumar
Amit Kumar hails from New Delhi , India . He attended Dental School in India where he graduated with a BDS (Bachelor of Dental Surgery) and a Master of Dental Surgery. He practiced dental surgery at a leading private hospital in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and served as the Chair for the continuing Dental and Medical Education programs for the hospital. In addition to practicing dentistry Amit was involved with many community outreach programs where he delivered a number of talks and headed several public awareness programs.
He is currently enrolled in the MSIS program at the School of Information and Library Science. His interests are in the area of Health Informatics, Academic Health Libraries, and Digital Libraries. He is also interested in working on information modelling related to electronic patient records, consumer health information as well as workflow modelling and user interface design to facilitate better work support for health workers.
Amit can be reached at: amitjgd@gmail.com.
Jennifer Solomon
Jennifer Solomon is currently a student in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She received her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Indiana University, Bloomington and her B.A. in Women’s Studies and Creative Writing from UNC.
Jennifer currently works in User Services for the Health Sciences Library, where her duties include providing reference and instructional services, and serves as a volunteer for the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture at Duke University.
Before coming to the HSL, Jennifer worked as a writing instructor at Indiana University and the Bloomington Women’s Writing center; she also worked in various special collections, including The Kinsey Institute Library. Jennifer continues her work as a freelance writer and is always looking for ways to incorporate writing and librarianship.
Contact email: Jennifer_solomon@unc.edu
Vedana Vaidhyanathan
Vedana Vaidhyanathan is pursuing a Master's degree in Library Science with a specialization in Bioinformatics (Certificate in Bioinformatics Program). She is a Cum Laude graduate of Florida International University in Political Science, where she was granted membership in the Pi Sigma Alpha Political Science Honor Society.
She is a founding member of the India-United States Transplant Foundation, a former intern for the Transplant Recipients International Organization and a volunteer for the University of Miami’s Jackson Hospital Transplant Association. She has used her involvement in transplant issues to spearhead her interest in bioinformatics and health sciences librarianship. Vedana works with Professor Bradley Hemminger in the joint training fellowship between the Carolina Center for Genomic Sciences and the Health Sciences Library at UNC.
Vedana (Nani) can be reached at: vedanav@email.unc.edu.
Todd Venie
Todd received a BA in history and political science from Indiana University and a JD from The Ohio State University where he was a member of the National Trial Competition Team. After passing the Ohio bar exam, Todd worked as an assistant county prosecutor in Lancaster, Ohio.
For the last several years Todd has been working at a public library in Naperville, Illinois while studying computer application programming. He currently works as a Research Assistant in the Faculty Research Service at the UNC Law Library.
Todd can be reached at: vtodd@email.unc.edu.
ARL Academy Fellows 2005
Steve Bahnaman
Steve Bahnaman is an MSLS candidate at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Currently, he holds a position at North Carolina State, where he helps patrons at the reference desk and over NCSU's "Ask A Librarian service."
As an undergraduate, Steve attended Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, earning a double major in religion and international studies. He also holds a Master's degree in Theological Studies from Emory's Candler School of Theology. Though originally he planned to be a professor of religious studies, Steve has found that he is called more strongly to the more directly service-oriented profession of reference librarianship. Steve is interested in academic reference, virtual reference, instruction, and collection development, especially in the fields of religion, social science, and the humanities. Specific interests include expanding the range of service provided by academic reference, in improving synchronous online reference services, and in the methodology of reference interviewing and one-on-one instruction.
Steve can be reached at: stevebahnaman@gmail.com
April Brewer
April Brewer is a first year MSLS student at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Prior to living in Chapel Hill, she could be found in Virginia, learning the joys of the retail book business, and before that in Boston, where she earned both a MA and a BA in medieval history from Tufts University.
Her focus had been on early medieval women and law in Ireland and England (thanks to a year abroad at University College Cork, Ireland), but now she enjoys rare books and archives. She hopes to someday work at the Smithsonian Rare Book Room, or at the Bodleian.
April can be reached at : abrewer@unc.edu.
Chris Siewers
ARL Fellow Chris Siewers hails from Rocky Mount, NC. He attended Wake Forest University, where he graduated with a B.A. in History and was awarded a Wake Forest Study Abroad Scholarship for study in London, England. After college, Chris spent several months in New Zealand through a work abroad program, cleaning toilets and changing linens along the way to earn travel and food money.
He enrolled at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Law in August 2002. While in law school, Chris served as an editor of the North Carolina Journal of International Law and Commercial Regulation and interned with a judge on the North Carolina Court of Appeals. He earned his J.D. in May 2005. He is studying copyright law and working on an article examining the Supreme Court’s use of comparative and international law as persuasive precedent. Chris currently works in the Faculty Research Service at the law school and as a Reference Assistant at the law library. In his spare time, Chris likes to argue the merits of eastern North Carolina barbecue. Chris can be reached at: siewers@email.unc.edu.
ARL Academy Fellows 2004
Lisa Boxill
Lisa Boxill earned her B.A. with Honors in Philosophy and American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She was awarded the Pogue Scholarship and spent a year studying Scottish philosophy, history and literature at Glasgow University, Scotland.
While pursuing her J.D. from the Harvard Law School, Lisa served as Deputy Editor in Chief of the Blackletter Law Journal, and as Secretary to the Black Law Student Association. Her work experience includes an Internship in the Legal Affairs Department of Mammoth Records, serving as an Extern in Chambers to the Chief Judge, U.S. District Court, Central District of CA, and working as a Law Clerk and Summer Associate at a law firm in New York City.
Lisa is currently a first year graduate student in the SILS masters program; Lisa can be reached at: boxill@email.unc.edu
Emma Cryer
Emma Cryer received her MA in art history at the University of California at Santa Barbara, where she specialized in the study of sixteenth-century Italo-Flemish sculpture. She has worked in Visual Resource Collections at both UCSB and the University of Manchester, with an emphasis on digital manipulation and preservation of collections. Currently she resides in Chapel Hill while working on her MSLS from the University of North Carolina. As well as an ARL fellow, she is currently a Carolina Academic Library Associate, specializing in electronic resources and acquisitions. Emma can be reached at: emmabono@email.unc.edu
Benjamin Hunter
Ben Hunter, a native of North Idaho, is an experienced performer and composer of both contemporary concert music and folk music. His compositions include everything from a three-movement symphony to electro-acoustic chamber music to works for Balinese Gamelan orchestra. While earning his Master of Music from the University of Oregon, Ben worked with some of the world's most esteemed living composers to organize master classes, workshops, concerts and festivals. Ben is still active as a composer and as a performer on the piano, Scottish highland bagpipes and Irish uilleann pipes. His most recent project was extensive incidental music for a production at the Ontological-Hysteric Theatre in New York.
Ben's interest in academic reference, music and media center librarianship stems from a desire to foster and facilitate creativity and artistic expression within a diverse patron base. In addition to working towards his MSLS at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Ben works as a Research Assistant in a media resources library. This position has led him to become increasingly interested in combining the more traditional roles of libraries with current multimedia technology, allowing patrons to not only acquire information, but to also explore new ways of applying that information. Ben can be reached at: bahunter@email.unc.edu.
Leigh Jones
Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, Leigh Alexandria Jones is currently a graduate student at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she is working on her MSLS. She is an honors graduate of Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee where she earned a BA in Business Administration and English (2000). During her years as an undergraduate, Leigh served as an intern in the Employee Relations Division and the Compensation Division of the Department of Human Resource Management (HRM) at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB). After her graduation from Fisk, Leigh briefly worked in the HRM Employment Division at UAB. She also briefly served as an assistant in the office of the Chief and the Deputy Chief of the UAB Police Department.
In 2001, prior to beginning law school, Leigh was selected by the American Bar Association’s Council on Legal Education Opportunity (CLEO) to be a CLEO Fellow. For six weeks, she participated in a legal institute at the David A. Clarke School of Law at the University of the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C. She went on to earn her Juris Doctor from Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas. While in law school, Leigh was employed in the Serials Department at Texas Southern’s Robert J. Terry Library. It was during this time that Leigh developed her strong interest in the field of library science.
Leigh is interested in studying the management and administrative issues affecting academic libraries. She is specifically interested in issues that concern marketing and human resources. After her graduation from UNC in May 2006, Leigh hopes to attain a position in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, North Carolina or other area in the Southeastern United States.
Since 1997, Leigh has been a proud member of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Incorporated, an international community service organization that is devoted to the promotion of education in all forms. Leigh can be reached at: leighja@email.unc.edu.
Joan Petit
Joan Petit is a student in the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she serves as President of the Information and Library Science Student Association. Joan works in Instructional Services for the University Library, where her job includes teaching library instruction sessions and providing reference services. She attended UNC as an undergraduate and double majored in English and women’s studies. Joan received her MA in English from Western Carolina University. Before beginning her career in librarianship, she spent several years in the mountains of North Carolina, pursuing such diverse jobs as freelance writer, writing instructor, raft guide, kayak instructor, public relations coordinator, and marketing manager. Joan’s library career goals are to work in instructional services and user education, with particular emphasis on collaboration and library outreach. Joan can be reached at: jpetit@email.unc.edu.