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Joseph Winberry

Assistant Professor, UNC School of Information and Library Science

Joseph Winberry

Pronouns

He/Him

Phone

(919) 962-8366

Email

jwinber@unc.edu

Office

Manning Hall - 200

Joseph Winberry

Expertise

Community engagement and organizing; critical library outreach and services to diverse populations; information marginalization; social justice in information and library science; qualitative and action research methods.

Education

Ph.D., Communication & Information, University of Tennessee
Graduate Certificate, Gerontology, University of Tennessee
MS, Information Sciences, University of Tennessee
BA, History; Political Science, University of North Carolina-Greensboro

Biography

Joseph Winberry, Ph.D. is an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s School of Information and Library Science. His research currently emphasizes critical library practice and impact, especially in relation to societal aging. Prior to graduate school, Dr. Winberry spent several years working for non-profit organizations including the American Red Cross, and the Knoxville-Knox County Community Action Committee’s Office on Aging where he originated the organization’s elder abuse response programs. Current service activities include serving as the co-convener of the Association for Library and Information Science Education’s (ALISE) Historical Perspectives Special Interest Group, and as the founding co-chair of the Aging Rainbow Coalition which is a new initiative which emerged from his dissertation to meet the aging services information needs of LGBT+ older adults in East Tennessee. He credits his time working in non-profits, archives, and libraries with inspiring a belief in using information and library research to help people make a difference in their lives.

Courses

INLS 500: Human Information Interactions
INLS 551: History of Libraries and Other Information-Related Cultural Institutions
INLS 776: Ethics, Values, and Society

Awards

Chancellor’s LGBTQ+ Student Leadership Award, University of Tennessee (2023)
CCI Graduate Student Research Award, University of Tennessee (2022)
Best Conference Paper Award, ALISE (2021)
Bohdan S. Wynar Research Award, ALISE (2021)
Emerging Social Informatics Researcher Award, ASIS&T (2020)

Publications

Winberry, J. (2023). “People have died to get us to where we are”: Combating aging services information marginalization alongside LGBT+ older adults. (Doctoral Dissertation, University of Tennessee)

Lenstra, N., Oguz, F., Winberry, J., and Wilson, L. S. (2021). Supporting social connectedness of older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic: The role of small and rural public libraries. Public Library Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1080/01616846.2021.1970446

Winberry, J., and Potnis, D. (2021). Social innovations in public libraries: Types and challenges. The Library Quarterly, 91(3), 337-365. https://doi.org/10.1086/714315

Winberry, J., and Bishop, B. W. (2021). “Documenting social justice in library and information science research: A literature review.” Journal of Documentation, 77(3), 743-754. https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-08-2020-0136     

Winberry, J. (2018). Shades of silver: Applying the Strategic Diversity Manifesto to Tennessee’s Knox County Office on Aging. The International Journal of Information, Diversity, & Inclusion, 2(4), 52-72. https://doi.org/10.33137/ijidi.v2i4.32203 

Selected Presentations
Winberry, J., & Gray, L. (2022). From “mesearch” to “wesearch”: The role of community in developing identity-centric research. 2022 ALISE Conference. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. https://doi.org/10.21900/j.alise.2022.1033 

Winberry, J., Gray, L., Hardy, J., Jaber, B., & Mehra, B. (2021). Conceptualizing relevance of information as a social justice issue: An interactive panel discussion. The 84th ASIS&T Annual Conference, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. https://doi.org/10.1002/pra2.524 

Winberry, J. (2021). Student perspectives of LIS education in an aging society: Initial findings. 2021 ALISE Conference, virtual. https://hdl.handle.net/2142/110942 

Winberry, J. & Mehra, B. (2021). Fifty years in the fight: A thematic analysis of Social Responsibilities Round Table newsletters, 1969-2019. American Library Association 2021 Annual Conference, virtual.

Zhu, X., Cowell, E., McBee, K., Headrick, J.S., & Winberry, J. (2019). Serving the community with trustworthy government information and data: What can we learn from the public librarians? 2019 ALISE Conference, Knoxville, TN, USA.  http://hdl.handle.net/2142/105341