Robert Molyneux (Ph.D. '84) has been selected as a 2010 Distinguished Alumnus of the School of Information and Library Science (SILS). He will receive the School's highest honor bestowed to its alumni, the Distinguished Alumni Award, during the 2010 spring commencement ceremony on Sunday, May 9. Molyneux will also deliver the commencement address, "...something commensurate to our capacity for wonder."
The Distinguished Alumnus Award recognizes alumni who exhibit a strong commitment to librarianship or information science and demonstrate outstanding professional achievements at the international, national, state or local level. The SILS Alumni Association acknowledges alumni “who demonstrate a high degree of professionalism and outstanding service to our profession and to the School of Information and Library Science.”
"Bob's experiences range from working in academic and public libraries, to teaching at a major university, to analyzing data and digital information and providing leadership at the national level," said Dr. Gary Marchionini, SILS dean and Cary C. Boshamer Distinguished Professor. "His current work further demonstrates his incredible ability to provide support for libraries through open source. He represents what we hope for each of our students to achieve and he's truly deserving of this award that acknowledges only the best."
"This is an honor from a school that has given me so much," said Molyneux. "To receive it in the shadow of Dean Holley’s passing is particularly poignant. I feel and have said that no one ever benefited from an educational experience as much as I did from SILS. Dean Holley and that extraordinary faculty helped create an atmosphere where many of us--including me--learned to do more than we ever knew we could."
Molyneux is vice president of Business Development at Equinox Software, Inc., a company that develops and supports open source solutions for libraries. He was chief statistician at SirsiDynix from 2004 until 2007, where he worked on the Normative Data Project. Prior to that, he was at the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science where he served as its director of statistics and surveys. Previously Molyneux held various positions at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, including statistician in the Division of Research and Statistics and senior information analyst in the Division of Information Resource Management while heading the team that implemented the Internet at the FDIC. He has held faculty positions teaching in the library schools at the University of South Carolina, Louisiana State University, and the University of Illinois. He also did intense, short duration training— primarily in the fundamentals of digital networks—for Global Knowledge, a technology training firm. Prior to his doctoral work, he worked in academic and public libraries.
His academic research has largely concentrated on compiling, documenting and analyzing data from libraries with occasional forays into other areas, particularly information technology. This work has appeared in articles, monographs and Web sites.
Molyneux earned his AB from the University of Virginia, MSLS from Western Reserve University and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
The commencement ceremony will be held on Sunday, May 9, 2010 at 1 p.m. in the
