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Mary L. Boone
In her travels around the world, Mary L. Boone (MSLS '73) has always been able to connect with librarians through a love of learning and books, even when they don't speak the same language.
“Everywhere I have been, I have seen the universality of librarianship,” said Boone, whose first international experience was in Bolivia as a Peace Corps volunteer. Since then, Boone has lived and worked in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Europe as an employee of the Peace Corps Library, the U.S. Army Library Program and the U.S. Department of State.
“Remember that you are members of a powerful profession, and connectivity with other librarians enhances that power, both for you and for the profession itself,” Boone told the 2003 SILS graduating class as their commencement speaker.
Now State Librarian of North Carolina, Mary brings her extensive knowledge and international experience to her current task of providing equal access to library and information services to citizens in all parts of North Carolina.
Hannah Rains Toney & Gina Jones
When Gina Jones (then Gina Rains) graduated from the School of Library Science in 1984, she had no idea that she would be returning to campus seventeen and a half years later to celebrate another SILS graduation. Yet in December 2001, Jones was back - this time to see her daughter, Hannah Rains Toney, graduate with a master's degree in information science.
Jones, who earned her SILS degree in library science, worked at Burroughs-Welcome after graduation, implementing the company's first mainframe-based integrated library system. Now she is a senior consultant in the emerging technology department in the technology office division at GlaxoSmithKline.
By the time her daughter graduated from North Carolina State with an undergraduate degree in history, an information science program had been added at SILS. Toney says her interest in computers and research — and her mother's experience here — led her to the school.
“The good thing about SILS is that it has its finger on the pulse of what employers want,” says Toney, who is now an emerging technologies analyst with BD Technologies in RTP. “It's really with the times, if not ahead of them.”
Linwood Webster
As a master's student and full-time UNC employee, Linwood Webster (MSIS '02) had more than enough to keep track of. But that didn't keep him from adding yet another task to his to-do list: increase minority representation at SILS.
After a discussion with Dean Joanne Gard Marshall on the topic, Webster volunteered to represent SILS at graduate and professional school fairs across the Southeast. At the fairs, he fielded questions from minority undergraduate students, telling them about admission requirements and the field of information and library science.
“I enjoyed putting positive information about SILS out there,” Webster says. “Going to these career fairs lets minority undergraduate students know that the field is wide open if they take the initiative.”
Webster's master's paper focused on, appropriately enough, minority recruitment. “The admission of minority applications is really important to me,” he says. “I hope it will continue to increase in the future.”
As a loyal alumnus, Webster continues to volunteer with the School and minority recruitment efforts.
Amanda Wilson
With undergraduate degrees in music and psychology and a plan for a career as a music therapist, library school wasn't high on Amanda Wilson's (MSLS '03) priority list. Yet after working as an undergraduate in the university library of Emory, her alma mater, Wilson realized “I actually look forward to going to work every day! And the people I work with feel the same!”
So, Wilson set her path for a master's degree in library science and discovered SILS. “SILS grabbed my attention initially because it is a top-ranked school in the south,” Wilson said. “However, after I did more research, other aspects of the school attracted me, specifically, the course load requirement and the master's paper.”
Once she became a SILS student, Wilson took full advantage of the experience, serving as a Carolina Academic Libraries Associate, president of the Information and Library Science Student Association, a member of the dean search committee and an eager volunteer to increase diversity at SILS.
Now Wilson is employed in a cutting-edge position as the metadata librarian at The Ohio State University. “What prepared me most for this position was my involvement in research projects at SILS,” Wilson said. “Librarians are tenure-track faculty at OSU, and being able to talk knowledgeably about the theory we learned in many classes at SILS helped give me a competitive edge.”
Dr. Brian Sturm
Is it true that young girls favor books about horses, and little boys prefer pages filled with cars? According to Dr. Brian Sturm, whose research explores trends in children's reading preferences, the answer is “yes.”
In a survey of North Carolina children, Sturm, an associate professor at SILS, found distinct preferences between the genders: animals and fiction for girls; transportation and sports for boys (ages 6-7). But as the children grow older (ages 9-10), both girls and boys generally lose interest in animals and gain interest in science and sports.
“I hope that knowing these trends may help librarians design and manage appropriate collections of books,” Sturm says. “Teachers can use the information as well. By knowing what children enjoy, they can tailor lesson plans so the students will deepen their engagement with the lesson.”
Sturm plans to go global with his next project: a collaboration with the Ministry of Education in Chile to create a study of children's reading and information preferences there and the United States.
Dr. Stephanie W.Haas
Dr. Stephanie W. Haas, the newly-selected Frances Carroll McColl professor for 2005-2007, is a dedicated teacher of information science who firmly believes in creating connections and interactions both in the classroom and the world at large.
“Dr. Haas is an engaging teacher who helps students feel comfortable about participation,” said Prof. Gary Marchionini. Haas’ teaching philosophy focuses on revealing connections between theory and practice, between problem and solution, and among students in her classroom. Believing that learning happens best in an atmosphere of attention and respect but also warmth and understanding, Haas encourages her students to learn from each other and to take on roles of both student and teacher.
In 1996 the American Society for Information Science recognized Haas as Outstanding Information Science Teacher of the Year, and in 1997 she was honored with the SILS Outstanding Teaching Award.
Haas first came to SILS as an assistant professor in 1989, and she was named associate professor in 1995. During that time she has taught a number of courses on databases, systems analysis, information models, organization of information, applications of natural language processing and information retrieval.
Her current research seeks to create an integrated model of user access to and use of governmental statistical information. Called the GovStat Project, her work with this project involves the Statistical Interactive Glossary, metadata for statistical tasks and envisioning new kinds of help for supporting users of statistics. Haas also is involved in the North Carolina Emergency Department Database (NCEDD), which makes hospital emergency department data available for public health surveillance. Hospital ED data are critical to the early detection of and response to a possible biological or chemical terrorist attack, while also enabling public health efforts to track, investigate and evaluate common health problems. Specifically, Haas works on the Chief Complaint Vocabulary Project, which seeks to analyze the form and content of chief complaints made in hospital emergency rooms (i.e., patients’ reasons for coming to emergency rooms) in an effort to develop a standardized vocabulary.
Dr. Barbara Wildemuth
Dr. Barbara Wildemuth, Frances Carroll McColl professor and associate dean for undergraduate programs at SILS, has a passion for teaching and it shows.
Wildemuth has received not one but two outstanding teacher awards — one from SILS and the other, the Outstanding Information Science Teacher Award, from the American Society for Information Science and Technology.
“Barbara Wildemuth is a faculty member who excels both inside and outside SILS,” said former SILS Dean Joanne Gard Marshall. “Not only is she a dedicated teacher who devotes herself to helping her students learn, but she also plays a key role as an experienced methodologist who is familiar with both quantitative and qualitative research. Not least, Barbara promotes a sense of community wherever she goes.”
Wildemuth came to SILS as an instructor in 1988, was named full professor in 2000 and appointed associate dean for undergraduate programs in 2002.
Her research focuses on information-seeking behaviors and information use, design and evaluation of information systems and adoption and use of information technologies. She has received research grants from organizations including the National Science Foundation, the National Library of Medicine and the Frances C. and William P. Smallwood Foundation. Wildemuth has been published in such diverse journals as the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, The Library Quarterly, The New Review of Information Behaviour Research and Health Promotion Practice.
John MacMullen
Like most SILS students, John MacMullen (MSIS '97) bid farewell to SILS after graduation and headed off to pursue a career elsewhere. But what sets MacMullen apart from his peers is that he keeps coming back.
After working at Nortel Networks in RTP for four years and giving generously to the school as an alumnus, MacMullen returned to campus in 2001 for a one-year bioinformatics fellowship.
“My job was to get information and library science folks involved with researchers and practitioners thinking about new opportunities in biomedical research,” MacMullen says. “Biology isn't just dissecting anymore; it is moving to computer and data analysis.”
In 2003, MacMullen returned to the school again, this time as a doctoral student to continue his research and work toward what he hopes will be an information science faculty position.
“I was drawn by the faculty's reputation and the innovative problems that SILS was working on at the time,” MacMullen says. “That was eight years ago and it is still true today. Some of the best-known people in the field work at SILS.”
Plant Information Center
Professor Evelyn Daniel is using technology to bring children and nature closer together with the Plant Information Center (PIC), a web-based learning project at SILS.
The center, which Daniel spearheaded with Dr. Peter White, director of the N.C. Botanical Garden, is a digital repository of more than 375 botanical specimens from North Carolina and the southeastern United States. The project evolved out of a desire to make the University's botanical resources and expert knowledge accessible to school children.
“The whole approach is to bring research projects related to the natural world to the public,” said Daniel. “Our interest is in information and how to make it more accessible.”
Associate professor Jane Greenberg, a principal with the project, added, “The PIC shows students how a research tool used by botanists can help identify plants in their own backyards.” The PIC helps science teachers supplement their knowledge and provides lesson plans, student projects and activities, creating a vital link between SILS and the community.
Interaction Design Lab
At the SILS Interaction Design Lab, Professor Gary Marchionini is working to make information more accessible.
The lab is a center for the study of human information interaction, where researchers use a variety of video equipment and eye-tracking and usability workstations to observe and record people interacting with systems like web sites or data retrieval systems. Their reactions and problems give researchers insight into how we search for, view and comprehend information and what improvements can make these tasks easier.
“We're interested in helping people find the information they need and making sure that once they find it, they understand it,” Marchionini said.
The lab houses innovative research projects like the Open Video Project, which makes a repository of diverse video files available to researchers, and GovStat, a joint university/government effort to make online government statistics more accessible and understandable to the general public. With both projects, lab researchers have been able to use their observations to improve existing systems and design new systems to make information tasks easier.