inside sois summer 2014

giving technology its own personality


SOISnsidenside

Summer 2014UW-MILWAUKEE, SCHOOL OF INFORMATION STUDIES

In this issue... From a mobile app to an acoustic atlas with a stop at the PGA TOUR headquarters along the way, SOIS alumni once again show the diverstiy of the information professions.

Inside SOIS is published twice a year by the School of Information Studies Interim Dean: Wooseob JeongInterim Associate Dean: Alexandra DimitroffAssistant Dean: Chad Zahrt

Executive Editors:Chad ZahrtBonnie Withers

Writers:Bonnie Withers Sarah McCrawAlex Vegelatos

Art Direction / Design:Rebecca Hall

Photography:Natalie Puariea, Contributing PhotographerUWM Photographic Services: Pete Amland, Peter Jakubowski, Troye Fox

S u m m e r 2 0 1 4 V O L . 5 N o . 2

SCHOOL OF INFORMATION STUDIES | UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN - MILWAUKEE

IN THIS issueDean’s Note ....................................................................01Dr. Hope Olson: Passing Her Passion Forward .........02Giving Tech its own Personality: Jessica Gilmore ....08Blazing a Digital Trail: Kenning Arlitsch .....................10An Archival “Hole-in-One”: Carole LaRochelle ..........12IST Graduate IT Director: Rett Lehrer .........................14SOIS Tech Corner ..........................................................15Dr. Dietmar Wolfram ......................................................16Grant Award: Fostering East Asian Librarianship .....18Doctoral Student-to-ALISE Grant ................................19Doctoral Student Research Poster Award ..................19The Keepers of SOIS: Meet the Techs ........................20

Student Conference Report: iConference 2014 .........22SOIS Staff Retreat .........................................................23CIPR Update ...................................................................24SSIRG Update ................................................................25RGIR Update ..................................................................25Recent Scholarship ....................................................... 26Faculty Publications ..................................................... 27SLA Conference (Arabian Gulf Chapter) ..................... 28Alumni Updates. ............................................................ 29Development Director News: Connecting to SOIS .... 29

Keep us Informed!

We invite all students and alumni to send us

your updates and news for future issues of

Inside SOIS. We’d love to hear from you!

ADDRESS CORRECTIONS AND UPDATESUW-Milwaukee, School of Information StudiesAttn: Inside SOISPO Box 413Milwaukee, WI 53201Phone: 414-229-4707 | Fax: 414-229-6699Email: [email protected]

Inside SOIS is printed in limited quantity. Electronic issues are available online at: http://www.uwm.edu/sois/news/publications/ Please share this publication with colleagues and please recycle!

DEAN’S note

let the momentum continue!TRANSITION...TRANSITION...

3INFORMATION our focusINTERNATIONAL our scope

INTERDISCIPLINARY our mindset

Summer 2014 | 01

Fall of 2014 will once again see SOIS in transition as we welcome Dr. Tomas

Lipinski as the third permanent dean of the School of Information Studies. If Dean

Lipinski’s name is familiar to you, it’s because he served on the SOIS faculty

before leaving for leadership roles at the University of Indiana-Purdue University

Indiana and then the library school at Kent State. We’re delighted to welcome

Dean Lipinski back to UWM.

As I look forward to returning to my faculty role, I reflect on how important it is for each of us to give back in service of the School. I hope

each of you will consider the impact your contributions, in the form of hosting internship or fieldwork students, or through financial sup-

port, make not only to the individual student, but also to SOIS and the world around us. We must always be diligent in remembering the

great responsibility we have in preparing the next generation of information professionals. We need your help to insure that our students

and graduates continue to be the best and brightest, engaged in their work, community and the profession.

I’m proud of our accomplishments—I know, and have seen firsthand, that we have the best staff, faculty and students in the UW-System.

As I look to the start of Dean Lipinski’s tenure, the future of SOIS is as bright as ever.

Finally, I want to thank each of you for your support over the past two years. I’ve had the great fortune of watching the School grow and

change to meet the demands of an ever-changing higher education landscape. It’s been a wonderful journey and I hope you will afford

Dean Lipinksi the same level of support you have shown me during my tenure as dean.

We are SOIS! We are the best!

Woosoeb Jeong

Interim Dean


02 | Inside SOIS

Passing Her Passion ForwSeated at a sunlit dining table graced with a Chinese bowl filled with clementines, Dr. H

offers reflections on her professional career, her achievements, her retirement from th

SOIS in summer, 2013. A further marking point for reflection is her recent selection by

Satija Research Foundation for Library & Information Science*, for the 2013 Life Time A

Award, an award recognizing world library leaders. *http://srflisindia.org/wp/

What has been her career path?

What marks the unique quality of her body of rese

What impact has she had on students and colleag



Summer 2014 | 03

wardHope Olson

he faculty of

y the SRFLIS,

Achievement

“I believe when you choose a school, you should go where there is a scholar you most admire. That scholar was Dr. Olson.”

Dr. Daniel Martinez-Avila, Former International Post-Doctoral ResearcherSOIS Adjunct Instructor

earch?

ues?

By Bonnie Withers

04 | Inside SOIS


Reading….it all begins with reading. First there were forays to the Detroit Public Library, supplemented

by fiction from her pastor father’s personal library. Later, when the

family moved to Waukegan, Illinois, research for the high school

debate team moved from the school and local Carnegie libraries to

a memorable trip to the Chicago Public Library.

As an undergrad at Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter,

Minnesota, Hope conducted a study grounded in government

documents to determine whether political leanings of the mayors

were reflected in their city budgets. This study (the answer was

“no”) marked Hope’s first experience with text-based research, her

preferred methodology from that point on.

After a junior year in England, graduating magna cum laude, and a

summer marriage to Gust Olson, graduate study at the University

of Toronto was the next stop. It is here where Hope recognized

classification as her field of study, inspired by Professors Margaret

Cockshutt and Nancy Williamson. After earning her MLS degree,

while husband Gust continued working on a doctoral degree in

Russian literature, Hope began seventeen years of library work,

gaining the solid practical experience that richly supported and

directed her next career move—a PhD. Leaving 10-year-old son

Matt in the care of dad and grand-parents in Edmonton, Hope

entered the doctoral program at the University of Wisconsin-

Madison which she completed in 1996. (Matt later earned his own

PhD in computing science, resulting in a threeway “Dr. Olson”

household—fodder for jokes over the answering machine).

After serving on the faculty of the

University of Alberta (Edmonton,

Canada) from 1992-2003,

Hope came to SOIS in 2004.

The first person she knew on

the SOIS faculty was Dietmar

Wolfram whom she had met at

a conference in Alberta in 1995.

Dietmar recalls, “During the first

few years after Hope’s arrival

at UWM, we talked frequently

about library and information sci-

ence (LIS) research approaches.

We come from different scholarly

traditions, so I learned a lot from our discussions about humanistic

perspectives on LIS research problems. During our discussions

we found common ground in some of our research interests, in

particular the study of interindexer consistency. Through our work

we demonstrated that humanities-based and informetric-based

methods can be meaningfully combined and can complement each

other. “ For her part, noting especially Dietmar’s impeccable sense

of integrity, Hope says she can’t think of a better research partner.

The growth of SOIS over the past decade brought more excellent

colleagues to campus and allowed for expansion in information

organization (IO) studies and the opportunity for special projects

like the DOIT program.

Hope Olson is justly proud of the DOIT project

which she developed and administered with

Dr. Hur-Li Lee. Diversity in the Organization of

Information and Its Technology, funded with a

grant from the Institute of Museum and Library

Services, was designed to recruit students from

underrepresented populations in the library pro-

fession and to prepare them, through coursework,

especially in organization of information, and paid

internship, tuition and technology support, and

DIVERSITY IN THE ORGANIZATION of INFORMATION and its TECHNOLOGY (DOIT)

Dr. Hope Olson recieving her PhD from UW-Madison in 1996.

Hope Olson getting an early start on her research career.



Between 2007 and 2011, Hope served as associate dean and

then interim dean. Of her work in SOIS administration, she says,

“It revealed the complexity of the academy as well as the power

to do good.”

ResearchHope’s doctoral dissertation, The Power to Name: Locating the

Limits of Subject Representation in Libraries, was later (2002)

published as a book and is widely recognized as a classic of

scholarship in Information Organization. That evocative title

encapsulates the thrust of Hope’s robust list of publications and

presentations, over 100, available in English, French, Spanish,

and Portuguese. How have subject headings and classification

schemes revealed a bias toward male, white, hierarchical power?

How do the systems that have been accepted as logical, there-

fore, uniquely correct, marginalize the “other”? Hope’s work is

well-summarized in the SRFLIS citation, “The most identifiable

characteristic of her research activity is her feminist, poststruc-

tural, postcolonial approach focusing on equitable subject repre-

Hope Olson can undoubtedly be considered, nowa-

days, one of the main theoreticians in information

organization, especially because of the reflexive and

critical approach that she has given to the mentioned

area. Her studies were much ahead her own time and

have dived into deeper waters, because she not only

considers the practical and applied dimension of such

area, but, mainly, demands a deep reflection about the

technical procedures: the power to naming informa-

tion. In this vein, document surrogates can both serve

to promote intercultural dialog -and, as a consequence,

to establish social inclusion- as well as, in another and

dangerous way, to disseminate prejudices and to pro-

mote social exclusion.

For Hope, information reveals a deep and complex

dimension whose meaning is multiple, depending on

diverse users´ realities and cultures. In this sense, her

writings invite us to pay attention to the dangers of an

indexing blindness which could be led to the belief of

one only approach: the mainstream one, not consider-

ing other voices, colors and approaches and, as a con-

sequence, acting as a servant of a dangerous master:

the prejudice.

Her theoretical-methodological route, paved by inter-

esting interpretations of authors such as Foucault and

Derrida, reaffirm the social, cultural, political and, in a

higher instance, ethical dimension of information orga-

nization, whose results are document surrogates that

are not mere labels but mainly vehicles of values.

In this rich and deep world of ideas, Hope´s oeuvre is

especially powered by her extreme generosity, sensi-

bility and open mindness, always concerned on estab-

lishing dialogical experiences and on promoting mutual

learning by the exchange of cultural values.

José Augusto Guimarães, Professor

Universidade Estadual Paulista Júlio de Mesquita Filho, Faculty

of Science - Marília Campus, Department of Information Science

Reflections on Hope’s Work and Contributions

to the IO Field

general guidance and encouragement, to serve diverse

audiences in the library field. A highlight of the experience

for the 21 participants, half online and half onsite, was a trip

to the ALA Annual Conference 2005 in Washington, D.C.

Eighteen of the students completed the program with an

MLIS degree.

Summer 2014| 05


06 | Inside SOIS

sentation for access; the cultural aspects of classificatory structure

(notably from indigenous and feminist perspectives); Art and clas-

sification; and the roles and nature of surrogates…” Hope states

that at the most profound level, her work is grounded in “pervasive

values of responsibility to Others.”

Academic life includes conferences—attending them and organiz-

ing them. Hope speaks fondly of the IO professional organization

ISKO (International Society of Knowledge Organization), where

scholars first share their new ideas, with papers coming later,

making for an especially lively and creative environment. This

group alternates annual meetings between national and interna-

tional conclaves. Colleague Richard Smiraglia first met Hope at

an ASIST (Association for Information Science and Technology)

meeting when she was editor of the Knowledge Organization

journal (which he later took over). Friendship grew through email

exchanges and other conferences, especially ISKO. He says, “…

by meeting at biennial ISKO international conferences I learned

she was open to my explanation of semiotics as being like the

Christmas trees we made by folding TV guides when I was a kid,

which was a delightful way to combine my obsession with empiri-

cal study with her penchant for discourse analysis. Perhaps most

famously, in Granada in 2002, we dined one evening in a courtyard

with a solo guitarist who played all through our meal as the night fell

and the stars came up over the Alhambra.” Later, he cites evidence

of the profound regard in which Hope is held in the IO community,

“She’s a champ, all right; at a CAIS (Canadian Association for

Information Science) conference a young student quoted Hope

twice, and during the Q&A said “I met her once! Oooooo just like

a rockstar!”

StudentsComments from doctoral students, marked in equal parts by

respect and affection, detail Hope’s impact on their work and lives.

Daniel Martinez-Avila, a recent post-doctoral researcher at SOIS,

first met Hope when he was a master’s student at Carlos III

University of Madrid and she was invited to spend a week there.

Dani stresses that he was already well aware of Olson’s work and

had been much inspired by her writings. In 2009, when it came time

to choose a university for a special EU doctoral program, SOIS

was Dani’s first choice. “I believe when you choose a school, you

should go where there is a scholar you most admire. That scholar

was Dr. Olson.” He was inspired by her ability to translate clas-

sification into practice, her narrative skills, and both personal and

professional approachability.

Dani speaks in the highest terms of Hope’s guidance during his

doctoral program which she co-chaired, noting her willingness to

collaborate, her motivating support, her inspiration. Even though

Hope was piled high with administrative duties, she always made

time to meet. With a broad smile he offers one complaint, “I want

to have written what she has already written! What do I do now?”

Ann Graf, current doctoral candidate, meets regu-

larly with Hope to discuss art and classification…and

much more. “She has the ability to really see irony

and humor in academic situations when all is so

serious. She gives newer students ways to handle

stress, pressures, deadlines, personalities. She is

open and approachable.”

“I was new to this culture and I found it hard to inter-

act with professors,” states recent PhD graduate

Jihee Beak. Through time, Hope became “the most

“The most identifiable characteristic of her

research activity is her feminist, poststruc-

tural, postcolonial approach focusing on

equitable subject representation for access;

the cultural aspects of classificatory struc-

ture (notably from indigenous and feminist

perspectives); Art and classification; and

the roles and nature of surrogates…”

(above) Dr. Hope Olson with her Major Professor Dr. Edwin Cortez. UW-Madison, 1996.(right) Dr. Jihee Beak with her Major Professor Dr. Hope Olson. UW-Milwaukee, 2014.



Summer 2014 | 07

influential person I’ve met in this country. She’s my advisor, my

mentor, my role model, even sometimes my mom. She helps me

to justify the value of my work…she passes her passion forward.”

RetirementWhat does retirement mean to a scholar? Hope says that some

stop working, others stay active in their field to varying degrees.

Hope is currently happy to have a respite from teaching classes,

but she delights in working with students individually. Parkinson’s

Disease limits her independent research so she passes on to

others most of the research problems she identifies. Her major

ongoing research stream, in collaboration with Lynne Howarth

(University of Toronto), concerns the nature and roles of surrogates

(e.g. library catalog records as surrogates for books or database

entries for journal articles). Last summer they explored surrogates

as vehicles for making marginalized voices heard. Hope has

obtained a decade of her own medical records to employ as texts

for analysis. These records are surrogates for patients but patients’

voices are generally not heard and power dynamics are complex.

For example, she discovered that when the doctors noted she was

a “pleasant woman”, they were indicating that she was “compliant”.

(With a mischievous smile, she notes that not all doctors describe

her this way.) What does such coding imply about the power rela-

tionships between patient and doctor? What does it imply for other

contexts?

Faculty, staff, alums, and students of the School of Information

Studies are deeply grateful to Dr. Hope Olson for her passion, her

creativity, her intellect, her friendship, for the lasting mark she has

made through her internationally respected scholarship. All good

wishes go to her in her retirement as she continues to “pass her

passion forward.”

“I was new to this culture and I found it hard to interact with professors,” states doctoral

student Jihee Beak. Through time, Hope became “the most influential person I’ve met in this

country. She’s my advisor, my mentor, my role model, even sometimes my mom. She helps

me to justify the value of my work…she passes her passion forward.” Jihee Beak, PhD 2014

Dr. Hope Olson with her doctoral advisee Jihee Beak.

JESSICA GILMORE WAS A “GUINEA PIG,” part of the high school class of 2000 who were warned in kindergarten that they would be the vanguard in a new world of computers. She had her

first of many computer classes at age six. Even her teachers, however, could not have imagined how prescient they were.

Gilmore always loved her time on computers, and taught herself all she could. Years later, when she became a SOIS student, earning a bachelor’s degree in Information Science & Technology (IST), she put that education to good use – and found yet another world she could explore and enjoy.

“When I learned at SOIS why we do things in technology, I found it fascinating. I pride myself in my attention to detail and you need that in coding and problem-solving, and pretty much what we do here is problem-solving,” Gilmore said.

A May 2014 graduate, Gilmore hopes to work in the field of mobile software and application development. She has already launched her first mobile application, a project she undertook as a student while working part-time at the “App Brewery,” an academically-inspired cooperative effort between SOIS, University Relations and University Information Technology. Combined with her SOIS coursework – particularly an early class in mobile applications – the App Brewery helped Gilmore recognize her passion.



By Alex Vagelatos

Jessica Gilmore

Mobile Developer

IST Alumni 2014

Jessica Gilmore

Mobile Developer

IST Alumni 2014

08 | Inside SOIS


AS A STUDENT WORKER, she had the opportunity to create and launch a new mobile application for the Wisconsin LGBT Chamber of Commerce, now available on Google and iTunes.

“Students in the App Brewery write statements of work, learn project management, software development, the whole process you will need for the real world,” Gilmore said.

Not that Gilmore was unfamiliar with the “real world.” After high school, she studied music education at UWM for a while before earning a cosmetology license and working at her mother’s salon for eight years “working in the family business was one of my mom’s dreams, it turned out,” she said.

Eventually she returned to UWM to major in marketing; an instructor told her that with her experience and interests, SOIS might be a better fit. It didn’t take long for Gilmore to find out he was right.

“Twyla McGhee suggested I attend an open house to learn more. I talked with Chad Zahrt, Laura Myer and Angie Sadowsky. They are the reason I transferred to SOIS as a sophomore,” Gilmore said.

She originally thought she would use her love of design to work on

websites from the graphic design side. But she found that she loved software and application development more.

“IN THE IST PROGRAM, you can go in different directions, depending on your interests and the electives you take,” Gilmore said.

Her work in Associate Professor Tom Walker’s Organization of Knowledge class was an eye-opener.

“When we got into being able to classify and index things, it made so much sense. No matter what field I go into as far as development, I’m going to need that. My education here in SOIS has turned out to be so much larger than I thought it would be.”

An important part of that education, Gilmore says, has taken place outside the classroom in the form of counseling and advice on both her coursework and her career.

“THE PEOPLE IN SOIS are at least 50 percent of why I am as successful as I am. Everyone is so approachable and takes the time to answer your questions. The most prominent people in the field are right here. If they can’t answer your question, they know someone who can.”

That assistance helped Gilmore get a job in SOIS as an academic advising assistant for graduate students and as a marketing assistant for Rebecca Hall. As president of the SOIS IST Student Association, Gilmore has returned the favor, helping other students find work within SOIS.

“The help I’ve received here, school-wide, has been so important. And because we are such a diverse degree, you get suggestions from all sides and viewpoints.

APP BREWERY

Affectionately nicknamed the “App Brewery,” UWM’s Mobile Innovation Lab

employs UWM students who apply skills learned in coursework offered in SOIS

and other UWM academic programs to real-world projects for area nonprofits.

LGBT Chamber App

This app connects

users to LGBT

owned and allied

businesses around

Wisconsin. Users

can find businesses,

learn about upcom-

ing events, and see

how they can sup-

port a pro-fairness,

pro-business com-

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Summer 2014 | 09



10 | Inside SOIS


For some time, the focus of Kenning Arlitsch’s work has been search engine optimization for digital repositories – a familiar phrase but perhaps not likely to dominate casual dinner party conver-

sation. Unless, you pay attention a bit longer. And then you may hear the Sage Grouse Lek or the Mexican Beaded Lizard on your computer. Or read what life was like in the mid-19th century West, in newspapers published in that era.These practical and useful digital repositories are among the projects that Arlitsch has helped bring to fruition since he earned his MLIS degree from SOIS in 1993.

Arlitsch was named Dean of the Montana State University Library in 2012, after spending 18 years at the University of Utah. At the Bozeman, MT, campus, he leads a staff of 55, including 17 faculty librarians, and manages a $8 million operating budget.

In 1999, he began leading a team that developed the University of Utah’s first digital library, which grew to encompass Western newspapers, documents, photographs, maps and even the sounds of nature. “We always assumed that search engines were finding materials posted in our databases. But four or five years ago we discovered that search engines were not picking them up as we expected. So I began to really research how libraries have tradi-tionally prepared metadata for human comprehension rather than machine comprehension. My research partner, Patrick OBrien, and I found that for most digital collections, including Utah’s and many other libraries, search engines did not know to deal with that metadata,” Arlitsch said. That led to Arlitsch and OBrien to look into how metadata in digital repositories is made available to website crawlers, and how that material can be prepared for readability.

Arlitsch grew up on Long island, and received a bachelor’s degree in English literature in 1987 from Alfred University in upstate New York. He previously had an associate’s degree in business admin-

istration. After graduation, he drove a truck for Sears, moving furniture and appliances, before taking a four-month tour of the Continent.

Eventually, Arlitsch was attracted to UWM and its MLIS program.“The MLIS program at UWM was already well-established and it was a great time to start library school. Hitting the MLIS when I did with the internet first starting to blow wide open, and the first graphical web browser released, suddenly computing and information technology made a whole lot of sense, and not just to me,” Arlitsch said. An old friend from Long Island built Arlitsch a computer, another reason his interest was piqued. “It was an IBM 386 with a 40 MB hard drive and two MB of memory, prehistoric by today’s standards, but it helped me understand technology.”

Arlitsch began working at the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah as a technology instruction librarian in 1994, shortly after graduation from UWM.

Funded by a USIA/ALA International Library Fellowship in 1997, Arlitsch lived in Cyprus for six months and helped to establish, among other things, the country’s first international electronic doc-ument delivery system for the medical community, and a database

Blazing a Digital Trail

From Digital Repositories to the TraiMLIS Alumni Kenning Arlitsch is Le

By Alex Vagelatos



Summer 2014 | 11

of Cypriot medical literature.

Upon his return to Utah he moved into IT and did much of his work on digital library development and digitization over the next decade, including founding the Mountain West Digital Library and Utah Digital Newspapers program. From 2007 to 2012, he served as the library’s associate dean for IT services, managing a staff of 20 FTE, with responsibility for digitization, systems administration, programming, and website design and development. At Utah he also co-founded the Western Soundscape Archive with Jeff Rice, and the

Kenning ArlitschDean, Montana State University Library

MLIS 1993

The Acoustic Atlas is a digital

repository for bioacoustic and

soundscape research.

acousticatlas.org

pair developed the Acoustic Atlas at Montana State University in 2013. The Acoustic Atlas will continue to collect recordings of regional species, with a focus on Montana and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, and it will serve as a digital repository for bioacoustic and soundscape research. You can hear these record-ings at acousticatlas.org.

With the opportunity to move to Montana State University in the role of dean, Arlitsch was happy he did not have to leave the West.

SOIS Associate Professor Thomas Walker recalled how eager Arlitsch was to relocate to that region. “I remember his enthusiasm and that he jumped at the chance to go out west to my part of the country for his first job,” Walker said.

As for Arlitsch: “I had a great career at Utah, but after 18 years, I felt it was time to move on. Also, I’m very particular about where I live. I love the outdoors and the West, and when I saw Bozeman, I thought, ‘this is a place where I could live.’ ”

ils in Montana, aving His Mark

That enthusiasm has taken her on a journey from the Harpers Ferry site of John Brown’s attack on a federal armory in 1859 to her new job as paralegal/legal archivist for the PGA TOUR at its headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida.

You could add a virtual stop at UWM, as LaRochelle completed her studies in the MLIS program completely online while living in the Washington, DC area.

“Can you tell I’m the biggest fan of SOIS there is?” LaRochelle asked over the phone from balmy Florida recently. “The program and the people at SOIS were more connected with things and opportunities in the Washington, DC area than the people in DC. I call it the long-arm of SOIS.”

The long-arm of SOIS found LaRochelle while she was a legal assistant for a Washington, DC law firm and a single mother. She had graduated in 2011 from The Catholic University of America with a degree in Interdisciplinary Studies, coupled with years of vol-unteer work and professional education in archives and libraries.LaRochelle was looking for a program in which she could continue her study of archiving and related disciplines. She did her due diligence. “I looked at other schools, but they didn’t offer what SOIS did.”

Her husband-to-be, Scott, was living in the Milwaukee area, and LaRochelle paid a visit to SOIS, speaking with Amy Cooper Cary. “From my first contact with SOIS I had nothing but positive encour-agement. They said, ‘Carole, you can definitely do this.’”


12 | Inside SOIS

A Virtual Stop at SOIS Leads to Recent An Archival “Hole-in-One”

Carole LaRochelle MLIS 2013

Paralegal/Legal Archivist, PGA TOUR Headquarters

“Hi, I’m Carole and I’m an aspiring archivist.”

This excerpt from an “elevator speech” Carole LaRochelle wrote in 2013 is an example of

her enthusiasm as a recent SOIS graduate with an MLIS Concentration in Archival Studies.

By Alex Vagelatos



Summer 2014 | 13

Alums Dream Job!Growing up in an area “rife with history,” LaRochelle developed her love of historical documents and artifacts from her mother. They visited everything from Harpers Ferry to antique stores, where she discovered old postcards, photos, magazines and daguerreotypes. “All these things come into play and explain your path in life,” she said.

As a distance learner at SOIS, LaRochelle “was blown away. I felt more part of the SOIS community than I ever did being on a campus. The professors knew me better and were more available to me.”

After she and Scott married, the couple assumed they would settle in the Shenandoah Valley. But a conversation with the Chief Legal Officer of the PGA TOUR, a former attorney of the DC law firm, eventually led to LaRochelle’s applying for a job. When she learned that the position would involve records management for the TOUR’s Legal Department that sealed the deal.

At the TOUR, she is helping to move an all-paper system to an electronic one, a project that involves going through the metadata

of some 14,000 official records, including legal records, tourna-ment contracts, and vendor agreements.

“In this transition project, I analyze whether or not to retain the paper version for its enduring value,” LaRochelle said.

And, yes, there are golf lessons. Scott LaRochelle is an avid golfer, but Carole had never touched a golf club before she arrived in Florida. “It’s a sunny, warm vibe here,” she said of the TOUR headquarters, as well as Florida. “We both love it.”

“The program and the people at SOIS were

more connected with things and opportu-

nities in the Washington, DC area than the

people in DC. I call it the long-arm of SOIS.”

Carole LaRochelle

The Grafton, WI, native graduated with a degree in IST in

December 2011 and immediately began work as an IT intern at

Solaris, a West Allis-based company. That intern position quickly

expanded to full-time, and Lehrer became director of IT in mid-

2013. “I liked what I saw about Solaris, it’s charitable giving and

the fact that all of its employees have their pictures on the website.

It’s just a nice environment, a cool place to work,” he said.

Solaris custom-makes compression garments to help people with

Lymphedema, a chronic swelling that occurs when a blockage in

the lymphatic system prevents the

lymph fluid from draining adequate-

ly. Its compression garments also

aid in the treatment of venous insuf-

ficiency, venous ulcers and varicose

veins. It sells its products to a net-

work of durable medical equipment

retailers and hospitals.

Solaris was started in 2000 by Kathy Weatherly, an occupational

therapist who had been making her own medical compression

garments. Her son, Kyle Weatherly, became president in 2006 and

the company has seen rapid growth since. Located in the former

Allis-Chalmers complex, the company was named to the Inc. 5000

list of fast-growing privately held companies in 2012 and 2013. It

employs some 60 people.

As director of IT, Lehrer has a lot to do: maintaining the company’s

servers, and phone system as well as the proverbial “trouble-

shooting” of day-to-day problems with computers and printers. But

he was quickly given responsibilities beyond those tasks. “We’ve

been implementing an ERP system to handle all phases of the

business - accounting, customer management, shipping, anything

and everything. Next is the 2.0 version, with more tweaking for

customization, better integrating machinery and the warehouse,

and ways to improve the whole process,” Lehrer said.

School in Madison may not have been particularly fulfill-

ing for Lehrer, but he did learn a valuable lesson: his

favorite part-time jobs involved combining technology

and people. “When I came to UWM, I still liked working

in IT, but I found SOIS so much more interesting, with

the creativity it allowed,

and the human interac-

tion. Plus, you meet

lots of people who will

help you.”

The coursework in

Madison helped in

another way, as Lehrer was able to complete his

SOIS requirements in three semesters, plus a summer.

Among his favorite courses was the challenging work

done in project management, which required his work-

ing with other students in a group over a semester while

learning to budget their time and his.

It turned out to be good training. Because Solaris is growing –

along with its IT needs – Lehrer quickly moved from intern to

someone who will hire others to work with him in the IT department.

He has a laundry list of things he’d like to implement. One would

provide the company’s sales force with an interactive map of their

customers across the United States, allowing them to simply click

IST GRADUATEIT DIRECTOR

After 5 and 1/2 years and three majors at UW-Madison, Brett Lehrer finally found his calling in SOIS.

“If you have joy in what you’re doing, it’s not hard to make a career out of it.”

14 | Inside SOIS


SOISTECH CORNER

soistech.uwm.edu

By Jim Schultz

Director of IT, Solaris • IST 2011

Brett Lehrer

on all the customers in their area, for example, and bring

up the buying history.

It may have taken a while, but Lehrer is now doing what

he wants to do. “If you have joy in what you’re doing, it’s

not hard to make a career out of it.”



Summer 2014 | 15

A lot of exciting tech updates have been happing at SOIS! We just completed a major overhaul upgrading our server room. This included installing additional cooling, power, and most importantly several racks of IT infrastructure. With our upgraded server room we are able to offer increased capacity on the SOIS virtual computer labs, upgrade many of our services such as the student webspace, and offer additional IT resources for research.

Other important updates for this Fall include:• Faster new lounge computers

• New cameras and live streaming equipment

• Expansion of the SOIS digital signage network

• Expansion of SOIS charging stations around campus

Free software, printing, and more!All current SOIS students have access to many unique technology resources that no one else on our campus has. This includes free software from Microsoft and VMware, free printing in our lounges and computer labs, and use of our virtual labs and web space.

For more information on all of the new and updated tech-nology resources, please be sure to check out the SOIS Tech website at: soistech.uwm.edu. If you ever need any technology assistance or have any tech ideas for our School, please be sure to get in touch with us!

Step into this office and you forget it was once a patient hospital room. With a few simple touches—a handsome rug, a strong charcoal drawing of birch trees, Asian scrolls, neatly arranged bookshelves, Dr. Dietmar Wolfram has created a space that calms and welcomes. Here is where students at all lev-els—bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral—come for advice, encouragement, and collaboration.

Since his arrival at SOIS in 1990, Dietmar has been at the heart of programs which have added depth and breadth to the School, from implementation of the BSIST program to the development of the PhD program, including Overcoming Barriers to Information Access: The B2A Project, for which he secured, as principal inves-tigator, a major IMLS Laura Bush grant. His contributions have included development of curriculum, innovation in teaching through technology, and program direction, all while maintaining a robust research agenda. Dietmar’s areas of research interest are applied informetrics, information retrieval (IR) system design and evalua-tion, modeling and simulation of IR systems, and user studies.

Dietmar’s achievements as a teacher were recognized in 2012 when he was awarded the prestigious Thomson Reuters Outstanding Information Science Teacher Award by the American Society for Information Science and Technology. In their letters supporting his nomination, colleagues Iris Xie and Jin Ziang outlined the dedicated, energetic, and visionary work Wolfram has done in all levels of program development and implementation. More directly addressing his teaching, Iris stated, “Professor Wolfram’s dedica-tion to students can be shown by high student evaluation scores and comments.”

How does one learn to be a good teacher? Dietmar says it is a long apprenticeship where one takes bits and pieces from others and learns through trial and error. He stresses that one does not need to be an entertainer in the classroom to be successful. “What is vital is to show students you care, that you are there to listen, that you will allocate time to them, that you are fair, organized and clear, and flexible.”

In his letter of support for the ASIS&T award, doctoral candidate Kun Lu (now a professor at the University of Oklahoma School of Library and Information Studies) gave evidence of these character-istics as he detailed Dietmar’s strength as a teacher:“His classes are always well prepared, clearly organized, and thor-oughly elaborated. Even when I was first here as a foreign student, I could grasp the themes with ease. His in-depth knowledge about the field enables him to relate a wide range of materials promptly

and explain both the details and the broad picture in a quite com-prehensible manner…..He always encouraged us, stimulated our thinking, and supplemented [readings] with one or two wonderful citations when further interest in a topic was aroused.”

To this enthusiastic testimonial, Lu added, “…as knowledgeable as he is, he always maintains his humbleness and is very accessible to his students.” Whether in-class, online, or in his office, Wolfram is consistent in his open and engaged attitude toward his students.

Current doctoral student Hye Jung Han echos Lu in her description of Dietmar’s interaction with students, “He motivates students to learn actively by encouraging them to express opinions and views.” She says that he is passionate in his teaching and generous with his guidance, “He guides me in conducting research step by step from data collection to finding results, helping me to develop a research mind.”

There is long-standing discussion in academia about how the demands of research work and publication compete with expecta-tions of teaching and of service. When asked about this issue of research versus teaching, Dietmar points to a book that has highly influenced his approach to his work. Although it was written in 1990, Ernest L. Boyer’s Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate is still relevant. In fact, Dietmar uses this book in his introductory course for PhD candidates.

Dynamic, Informed by Research and Dedicated to Developing a Next Generation of Scholars

Dr. Dietmar Wolfram

“He motivates students to learn actively by

encouraging them to express opinions and

views. He guides me in conducting research

step by step from data collection to finding

results, helping me to develop a research

mind.” Hye Jung Han, Ph.D. Student

By Bonnie Withers

16 | Inside SOIS


Stated briefly, Boyer suggests that the notion of “scholarship” is commonly believed to refer to research and study; teaching then comes after scholarship. He proposes instead an expanded notion of scholarship, suggesting four equal and interacting func-tions, scholarship of discovery, scholarship of integration, scholar-ship of application, and scholarship of teaching. Boyer’s vision of teaching is based in deep intellectual engagement, pedagogical practices continuously updated and connected to the subject, students challenged to be active learners and critical thinkers. (Boyer, 23-24)

The interplay of research and teaching is well exemplified in Dietmar’s experience with distance learning at SOIS. The success of the online program goes back much farther than D2L! Distance learning first meant that SOIS staff drove to off-campus sites to meet with students. Dietmar recalls driving to Eau Claire and real-izing too late that an approaching snowstorm had changed course and the class should have been cancelled. Nevertheless, when he arrived, every student had braved the storm to attend his class.

Next came experiments with teaching through technology. Dietmar and other early adopters among the faculty experimented with connecting to remote sites in Wisconsin with audiographics tech-nology using telephone lines. Next came compressed video over ISDN lines with Internet-accessible content, and finally full Web-based coursework with streaming audio and video. After detail-ing these pioneering efforts in teaching a course in electronic networking and information services , Dr. Jin Zhang, in his ASIST nomination letter pointed out, “The use of these technologies created a self-referential learning experience where many of the technologies discussed in the course were used to convey the course content to facilitate interactions among class members.”

After a study of online student relationships to instructors raised concerns about the degree of interaction among class members, Dietmar altered his class design to draw attention away from the instructor as the center of attention and more toward peer discus-sion. Thus, research and pedagogy intersect and are, together, integral elements of scholarship.

Here, then, we find in Dietmar Wolfram’s practice Boyer’s vision of the scholarship of teaching--dynamic, informed by research and dedicated to developing a next generation of scholars. SOIS students who have been fortunate to study and work with Dietmar will agree with Hye Jung, “ I believe that Professor Wolfram’s well-balanced teaching and research guidance will be a great positive influence on future students.”

Boyer, E. L. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professori-ate. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Outstanding Information Science TeacherDr. Wolfram is a recipient of the prestigious Thomson Reuters Outstanding Information Science Teacher Award by the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T). (http://www.asis.org/awards/teacher.html)

Did you know?



Summer 2014 | 17

Student News

18 | Inside SOIS

The School of Information Studies was awarded a Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program (LB21) grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) for the Fostering East Asian Librarianship (FEAL) diversity initiative. The FEAL grant, under the direction of Interim Dean Wooseob Jeong, has awarded 12 Masters of Library Science (MLIS) scholar-ships to paraprofessionals currently working within domestic East Asian libraries to pursue the 36 credit MLIS program at SOIS, specializing in Chinese, Japanese, or Korean studies/service. SOIS has partnered with the library of each participating parapro-fessional to coordinate an individualized strategy for each student. This includes the identification and assignment of a professional mentor within the host library, and a commitment to active career guidance, occupational placement assistance, and other wrap-around services to support the paraprofessional(s). Students also received financial support in the form of tuition, and travel support to attend informational meetings and national conferences.

10 Students were admitted to the program in a cohort for the Spring 2014 academic semester. Two additional students joined the cohort in Fall 2014.

SOIS has a distinguished history in actively promoting diver-sity within the field of librarianship. Through the “Diversity in the Organization of Information and its Technology (DOIT) Project” funded by an IMLS Librarians for the 21st Century grant from 2005-2009, SOIS supported 21 master’s students from diverse populations to achieve professional standing within librarianship. The IMLS-funded “Overcoming Barriers to Access (B2A)” recruitment pro-gram currently supports 6 full-time doctoral students with research interests that address barriers to information access.

For more information regarding the program contact:Interim Dean Wooseob Jeong, [email protected] .

FEAL SCHOLARS Christopher FlahertyLinying WuYuh-Fen BendaHongxia SongSeung Bong JeonTsuyoshi HaradaKaori OtsuboShangching HuitzacuaQianwen ChenXiaohong LiMyung Hee Kim

Grant AwardFostering East Asian Librarianship (FEAL)


Fall 2013 | 19

ALISE/Jean Tague-Sutcliffe Doctoral Student Research Poster Award

Recent SOIS PhD graduate, Jihee Beak, recieved Honorable Mention in the ALISE 2014 Jean Tague-Sutcliffe Doctoral Student Poster Competition for her poster titled Emotional Metadata: Pilot Study of Children’s Book Selection Behaviors.

This competition was established in memory of Jean Tague-Sutcliffe, professor and former dean of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Western Ontario. 5 doctoral student posters are chosen each year to recieve this award. Congratulation Dr. Jihee Beak!

For more information about the competition, visit: http://www.alise.org/alise-jean-tague-sutcliffe-doctor-al-student-research-poster-competition

Summer 2014 | 19

SOIS doctoral student Adriana McCleer was awarded the Doctoral Students to ALISE (Association for Library and Information Science Education) Grant and attended the annual conference held in Philadelphia, Pa. in January. McCleer, who is currently pursuing a doctorate in information policy, was one of only two students in the country to be awarded the annual grant. “This is the first time I attended an academic conference,” McCleer said. “It was a great opportunity.” McCleer said she attended a variety of presentations on this year’s conference theme of research methods. “Just to hear how other people are conducting their research by using a variety of research techniques, instruments and approaches, I found that to be really useful,” she said.

As a grant recipient, McCleer received a one year membership to ALISE, a certificate at the ALISE awards ceremony, a stipend for lodging and meal expenses and she attended a luncheon hosted by a board member. She also had to participate in 10 hours of conference activities, including working at the registration desk.

McCleer said assisting with registra-tion was an excellent opportunity to make connections. “It gave me a chance to start some conversa-tions with faculty from all around the country,” she said.

McCleer and three other SOIS doctoral students and one faculty member presented a poster at the conference entitled “Converging Knowledge: Networking the Gap between Public Librarians and Researchers,” which focused on types of research methods. “I received really useful feedback and had a chance to talk with a range of people throughout the week about the work I’m doing,” she said. “Their critical questions and helpful feed-back was really useful.”

In 2007, McCleer earned a Masters in Library and Information Science from the University of Arizona in Tucson, Ariz. She received her Bachelor’s Degree in Spanish from Edgewood College in Madison in 2004. ALISE is a non-profit organization with a mission to promote excellence and advancement in teaching, research and service for educators and scholars in LIS.

Doctoral Student-to-ALISE Grant By Sarah McCraw

“I received really useful feedback and had

a chance to talk with a range of people

throughout the week about the work I’m

doing. Their critical questions and helpful

feedback was really useful.”

Adriana McCleer, Ph.D. Student



With the semester looming and the projects stacking, tarantula owner Anthony uses the power of PHP to smite those in defiance of video game progress. His battle cry “For Fluffy!” can still be heard well into the fall.

Anthony Julian Jesmok

Sorcerer of Arrays and External Data Sources

Kent may have missed out on seeing Kurt in the 90s, but that doesn’t keep him from reliving the greatest genera-tion of rock while taking his deck out for a spin. Now, if only he could find the perfect Lobster Lasagna.

Kent Patrick Fehrm

Technician of Information Arts

When Madeline dreams of sushi its about halfway through her latest Netflix marathon; now if they only had Game of Thrones on instant she’d be set.“I can’t just watch one episode on Netflix!”

Madeline Margret Jaeger

Tech Wizard

An audiophile, Brandon found that happiness can be sold in 24 bit increments. Too bad he forgot to hit repeat after RC Music & DJ. His desire to merge Nascar and football never did pan out as the drivers couldn’t figure out how to down shift in shoulder pads.

Brandon William Born

Technician and Apple Troubleshooting/Repair

Put on some heels, pour some red wine and hide the milk. Bojana is here, prevent all damage and hit the beach.

“I LOVE to drink my milk from the gal-lon (when no one is watching).”

Bojana Gajic

Self-employed Web Developer

Flea isn’t a Beatle but he does love chili peppers, Matthew knows this. He’s a fan, the best kind of fan and secretly your brother. If he doesn’t fall off the wagon from his WoW addiction then he’s on track to graduate in a year. Catch him now before his guitar takes him beyond Summerfest.

Matthew William Harrison

Chief Awesome Offi cer


20 | Inside SOIS

Fall 2013 | 27

When Kid Cudi wanted to take Ernesto down to the Two Door Cinema Club, he had to wait till Beckham was done watching our man play some ball down at the gym where his buddy Neal Shuster thinks he books a little too much time.

Ernesto Ivar Thiel-Hernandez

IT Support

The first time the locals saw Montgomery riding an ostrich they were shocked. The second time when he came back with a chupa-cabra they were delighted. When he came back with a cheeseburger they were just confused.“I used to have two ostriches as pets.”

Montgomery Schmitt

Creative Director & Chief of Unicorn Division

Dustin’s a commanding officer taking down Diablo with the Master Chief and listening to Skillet fry up some Eggs Benedict up at Blue’s Egg.Wub wub wub Wub Wub wub wub DROP wub wub wub. - A Dubstep Song

Dustin Rae Schultz

Advance Technology Commander

Descriptions: Mathew Fey, Design: Gabriella Tato

When it comes to tech wizardry, SOIS has the best troops in all the lands. These mighty men and women are bringing it all to the table and pulling out all the stops to keep the sailing smooth and the gears of progress churning - all in an effort to keep the goblins out of your computer.

He cares not for state lines nor for petty things like system requirements. When the captain wants Whataburger all he needs to do is look to Rob to make it so. To some he is known as the destroyer of the CMS, but to most he is a hero to designers everywhere.

Robert Lee Nunez

Professional Destroyer of the CMS

Famous for his iron stomach and will-ingness to fight off would be thieves, Jim spends much of his time enjoying the company of his home theatre.Counter Incoming Attack! “I had a fist fight with a thief who tried to break into the tech office in 2009.”

James R Schultz

Chief Technical Wizard



Summer 2014 | 21

22 | Inside SOIS


The iConference 2014 Berlin, Germany, 2014 March 3-7

The iConference is an annual meeting of scholars and research-ers from around the world who are interested in critical information issues in contemporary society. The iConference series was estab-lished in 2005 by the iSchools organization, a growing worldwide association of Information Schools dedicated to advancing the information field. The conference was held at Humboldt University in Berlin where the famous philosopher, Hegel, is from. It is located near the center of Berlin. Most of the sessions were hosted in the building, Hegelplatz, which is named for Hegel.

On the first day I participated in two workshops, “Advances in Spatial Information Science” and “Digital Youth: Towards a New Multidisciplinary Research Network.” In the workshop, cutting edge areas of Spatial Information Science were introduced: the use of shared spatial information, location-based privacy, big (spatial) data, volunteered geographic information, empirical studies on

spatial cognition, and other recent developments in the field.

On the second day, I presented a poster about virtual refer-ence services with the topic “Situational virtual reference when users need it.” Some scholars gave their advice and pointed out various perspectives to sup-plement our research. Because there have been previous studies, the advice and opinions were very helpful in designing our future study.

The conference was an exciting experience for me. It will be very helpful to improve my research, and widen my sight and perspec-tive. Someday, we could organize the conference in our school.

Sukjin You MLIS Spring 2014

Student Conference Report - iConference 2014

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SOIS offers travel funding and support for students to attend and present at various conferences thourghout the year.

Did you know?

SOIS Staff RetreatIn July, the hard working SOIS staff participated in the second annual all staff

retreat. The group (more than 35!) met at Antigua Mexican and Latin Restaurant

in Milwaukee for a “Hands-On” Cooking Class and team-building experiment.

The staff was broken into 6 teams based on functional areas/job duties. Each

team was provided with ingredients and limited instruction to make two or three

unique latin dishes that was served to the whole group. In the end... we all had

a feast like no other! We are SOIS. We are the Best. We eat good!

2nd Annual

Kelce Gold and Laura Meyer goofi ng off while Evelyn does all the work!

The SOIS Tech Team... our technicians can fi x comput-ers and fi x a great salad!

SOIS Staff at Antigua Mexican and Latin Restaurant - Milwauke, WI

Summer 2014 | 23



The SOIS Tech Team... our tr t hechech inicnicianianians cs cs canananan fifixfixfi xfi x cococococ mmpmpmpumput-

Kelce Gold and Laura Meyer goofing

a feast like no other! We are SOIS. We are the Best. We eat good! ers a

SSOI-- Mi

SOIS Advisors having fun cooking up 3 fabu-lous dishes. They were the most popular team because they made dessert!!

Center for Information Policy Research Events, Research and Funding Opportunities

24 | Inside SOIS

The Center for Information Policy Research (CIPR) enjoyed a dynamic 2013-2104 academic year that featured global Internet scholars, a focus on intellectual freedom, and the launch of the world-recognized “The Zuckerberg Files.”

Visiting Fulbright ScholarDuring the Fall 2013 semester, CIPR was privileged to serve as host for Dr. Alexei Krivolap, a Fulbright Fellow visiting from European Humanities University in Vilnius, Lithuania. During his time at CIPR, Dr. Krivolap pur-sued a research project entitled “Internet: Local Aspects of Global Technology,” making use of the resources in campus library and archives and collaborating with var-ious local scholars to better under-stand implications of his project outside the sphere of Belarus. He also worked on a book project enti-tled “Opening a New Constellation

in the Internet’s Galaxy,” about social and cultural differences in national segments of Internet in former USSR countries. While in residence, Dr. Krivolap presented at a CIPR Research Lunch on “The Potential of the Internet for Social Change in Former Soviet Countries: Case of Belarus,” and he participated in other campus events.

Intellectual FreedomCIPR engaged in numerous initiatives focusing on intellectual free-dom over the past year. The Center organized a Banned Books Week event on September 22, 2013, featuring Barbara Jones, Director of the ALA Office of Intellectual Freedom, on the topic of “Canaries in the Coal Mine: How Libraries Fight for Free Speech,

Freedom from Surveillance, and Democratic Values.” The event was in collaboration with Milwaukee Public Libraries, and was funded by the Sweetland Intellectual Freedom Fund.

CIPR again was a co-sponsor of the Intellectual Freedom Award presented jointly by the Wisconsin Library Association (WLA) and the Wisconsin Educational Media and Technology Association (WEMTA). The 2014 award was given to Megan Schliesman, a long-time librarian at the Cooperative Children’s Books Center (CCBC) of the School of Education at UW-Madison and manager of its intellectual freedom services for the past eleven years.

With the assistance of Dr. Joyce Latham, CIPR launched a new digital archive of challenges to public library materials, including all relevant complaint materials, news reports, public comments, and communications available through public records requests. This project currently contains materials related to the 2009 West Bend library challenge, and materials related to the 2013 Orland Park library challenge.

The Zuckerberg FilesCIPR Director, Michael Zimmer, launched a new project called “The Zuckerberg Files,” a digital archive of all public utterances of Facebook’s founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. It includes tran-scripts and bibliographic data of all publicly-available content rep-resenting the voice and words of Zuckerberg, including blog posts, letters to shareholders, media interviews, public appearances and product presentations, and quotes in other sources. The project has drawn wide media attention, including CNN, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

i th I t t’ G l ” b


The Social Studies of Information Research Group (SSIRG) held a suc-cessful full day workshop, “Exploring the Social Studies of Information,” at the 2014 iConference in Berlin, Germany, in March. Over 50 scholars attended the event. The goals of the workshop were to discuss the social studies of information as it is currently practiced in iSchools and foster communication among a diverse array of scholars who are researching topics related to the social study of information. Traditionally, scholars have worked in distinct subfields within information studies, often not conversing across disciplinary boundaries. The workshop provided opportunities for scholars in these subfields to meet each other, discover unexpected commonalities, and foster new collaborations. The event brought together scholars in information science, history, archival stud-ies, ethics, philosophy, policy, and social informatics. Due to the success of the day, participants asked the SSIRG to plan a follow-up social stud-ies of information event.

In the fall semester, SSIRG hosted Paul N. Edwards for a two-day visit to campus as part of the SSIRG Speaker Series. Edwards is Professor in the School of Information and the Department of History at the University of Michigan and author of A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (2013, MIT Press) as well as The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (1997, MIT Press). To coincide with Edwards’ visit, the SSIRG held its first reading group, where interested members read and discussed Edwards’ A Vast Machine. Fall events also included two co-sponsored film screenings “My Perestroika” (2010), with an introduc-tion and discussion by director Robin Hessman, and “A Belorussian Dream” (2011, Ekaterina Kibalchich). On December 6, 2013, SSIRG hosted its second Social Studies of Information Social to bring on cam-pus SSIRG participants together for networking.

For information about the Social Studies of Information Research Group as well as its current and past events, please visit http://www.socialstudiesof.info/.



RGIR UPDATESResearch Group for Information Retrieval

RGIR sponsored two presentations during the Spring Semester. Dr. Catherine Blake, Associate Professor in the iSchool (GSLIS) at the University of Illinois spoke on “ Representing Biological Responses to Chemical Exposures using the Claim Framework” and Dr. Soo Young Rieh, Associate Professor at the University of Michigan who presented on “Credibility Assessment of User-Generated Content”. For information about the Research Group for Information Retrieval as well as its current and past events, please visit http://research.sois.uwm.edu/rgir/.

Sunday, October 12, 20148:30am - 12:00pm

Last year SOIS took home the award for the largest team! Let’s do it again this

year!

Sign-up Today to be a part of the SOIS Panther Prowl Team

“The Red Elevators”

Register online at:https://www4.uwm.edu/pantherprowl/

Summer 2014 | 25

26 | Inside SOIS


Presentations

Kozak, N., Co-organized full day workshop on “Exploring the Social Studies of Informa-tion” at the iConference, Berlin, Germany (March 4, 2014).

Peekhaus, W. (June 2013). Conceptual-izing and Challenging the Capitalist Aca-demic Publishing Model. International As-sociation for Media and Communication Research Annual Conference in Dublin, Ireland

Peekhaus, W. (January 2014). Presented a paper as part of the following panel: Part-time and Adjunct Faculty SIG Panel: “Ca-sualties and Collateral Damages: A Critical Look at Educational Entrepreneurship in LIS” Title of paper: ““Educational Entrepre-neurship”: Undermining LIS’s Professional and Disciplinary Foundations”. ALISE 2014 Annual Conference in Philadelphia, PA

Peekhaus, W. “‘Educational Entrepreneur-ship’: Undermining LIS’s Professional and Disciplinary Foundations”, Association for Library and Information Science Educa-tion Annual Conference. Philadelphia, PA (January, 2014).

Wolfram, D. (July 2013). The Symbiotic Relationship Between Bibliometrics and Information Retrieval. 14th International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics Vienna, Austria.

Wang, F., Wolfram, D., & Zhao, Y. (No-vember 2013). The Use of Citing Journal Topicality to Assess Journal Relatedness: Results from Two Investigations. American Society for Information Science and Tech-nology Annual Meeting. Metrics 2013 Work-shop. Montreal, Canada.

Wolfram, D. (2013). The Symbiotic Rela-

tionship Between Bibliometrics and Infor-mation Retrieval. 14th International So-ciety for Scientometrics and Informetrics Pre-conference. Vienna, Austria. (July 15, 2013). Wolfram, D., Wang, F., & Zhao Y. (2013).The Use of Citing Journal Topicality to As-sess Journal Relatedness: Results from Two Investigations. American Society for Information Science and Technology Annu-al Meeting. Metrics 2013 Workshop. Mon-treal, Canada. (November 2, 2013).

Publications

Hooper, L. and Force, D. Keeping Time: An Introduction to Archival Best Practices for Music Librarians. Madison, WI: A-R Edi-tions, Inc., 2014.

Kozak, N. (2014). Local Communities and Home Rule: Extending the Alberta Super-Net to Unserved Areas. The Journal of Community Informatics. 10(2).

Lor, P.J. 2013. Burning libraries for the people: questions and challenges for the li-brary profession in South Africa. Libri 63(4): 359-372.

Lor, P.J. 2014. Revitalizing comparative library and information science: theory and metatheory. Journal of documentation 70(1):25-51.

Peekhaus, W. (2013). Resistance is fertile: Canadian struggles on the biocommons. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.

Lu, K., Ajiferuke, I., & Wolfram, D. (2013). Extending citer-based analysis to journal impact evaluation. In J. Gorraiz et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 14th International So-

ciety for Scientometrics and Informetrics Conference (pp. 755-768).

Han, H.J., Joo, S., & Wolfram, D. (2013). Tales from transaction logs: User search session patterns in an image-based digital library. In Proceedings of the 35th Annual Conference of the Canadian Association for Information Science. Available: http://www.cais-acsi.ca/proceedings/2013/HanJoo-Wolfram_submission_23.pdf.

Lu, K., Ajiferuke, I., & Wolfram, D. (2013). Extending citer-based analysis to journal impact evaluation. In J. Gorraiz et al. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 14th International So-ciety for Scientometrics and Informetrics Conference (pp. 755-768).

Hong, Yi, Zeng ML,Zhang J, Dimitroff Aand Kahn CE. (2013). Application of stan-dardized biomedical terminologies in radiol-ogy reporting templates. Information Ser-vices & Use 33(3-4):309-323.

Zimmer, M. (2014). Librarian attitudes re-garding information and Internet privacy. Library Quarterly, 84(2), 123-151.

Zimmer, M. (2014, February 4). Mark Zuck-erberg’s theory of privacy. The Washington Post, C1-C2.

Service

Wolfram, D., Papers and Notes Co-chair for the iConference. Berlin, Germany. (March 2014).

Faculty/Staff UPDATES

BOOKS... New Directions in the Middle EastMohammed M. Aman (Author), Mary Jo Aman (Editor)

6/16/2014Publisher: Westphalia PressISBN-10: 194147201X

Middle East Conflicts & ReformsMohammed M. Aman (Author), Mary Jo Aman (Editor)

6/16/2014Publisher: Westphalia PressISBN-10: 1941472001

Keeping Time: An Introduction to Archival Best Practices for Music LibrariansLisa Hooper (Author), Donald C Force (Author)

01/01/2014Publisher: A-R Editions, IncISBN-10: 0895797860

Recent publications by SOIS faculty

Summer 2014 | 27



Measuring Scholarly Impact: Methods and PracticesYing Ding (Editor), Ronald Rousseau (Editor), Dietmar Wolfram (Editor)

11/14/2014Publisher: Springer, 2014 editionISBN: 3319103768

Cultural Synergy in Information InstitutionsRichard P. Smiraglia

7/15/2014Publisher: Springer, 2014 editionISBN-10: 1493912488

The entire issue is a case study of the controversies in West Bend, WI in 2009 which centered on YA materials for gay youth. The collection involves a stellar configuration of scholars address-ing the various aspects of the conflicts involving the West Bend Community Library. Michael Zimmer and Adriana McCleer situ-ate the library challenge in the larger social context; Loretta M. Gaffney addresses the issue of YA literature and its relationship to conservative activism; Emily Knox engages an analysis of the various interpretations of “censorship” as a broader concept, and a specific one within the West Bend debates; Mark C.E. Peterson explores the role of the counter-movement within the controversy, and the question of whether a public sphere can actually function

in American society; Jean Preer surveyed the challenge process within Wisconsin public libraries, and produces a trenchent analy-sis of “best practices” for addressing intellectual freedom practices within a public library’s community.

This issue provides an in-depth analysis of multiple strands that comprise an IF challenge today and will hopefully be useful not only in stimulating further study of IF and public libraries and the public sphere, but also provide a resource for studying the impact of IF on the role of the public library.

Library Trends, Volume 62, Number 4, Spring 2014The West Bend Challenges: Open Access and Intellectual Freedom in the Twenty-First CenturyIssue Editors: Joyce M. Latham and Barbara M. Jones

LinkedInhttp://linkedin.com(UWM-SOIS:Student Organization)Facebook - Gradhttp://facebook.com/soisstudentorgFacebook - UGhttps://www.facebook.com/SOISUGStudentOrgTwitterhttp://twitter.com/soisorg

STUDENT ORG SOCIAL MEDIASOIS Student OrgsP A R T I C I P A T E !The SOIS Student Organizations plan social and academic events, help develop academic programs, bring student issues to administrators’ attention and much more! Examples of past events and activities include: LAN Parties, SOIS Town Hall Meetings, Summer BBQs, Resume Building Workshops and the mighty SOIS Dodgeball Team!

If you have an idea for a new event or just want to get involved, now is the time! Contact the SOIS Student Orgs online at soisorg.uwm.edu or by email at [email protected].

SOIS Assistant Professor Shana Ponelis attended and presented at the 20th Annual Conference & Exhibition of Special Libraries Association (Arabian Gulf Chapter) held in Doha, Qatar.

Dr. Ponelis’ presentation, “Librarians as Changemakers: the Role of Intrapreneurship in Librarianship” was part of a discussion panel entitled, The Role of Information Professionals in the Knowledge Based Society. Other panelist included, David Rooney, Associate Professor at UQ Business School, The University of Queensland, and Dr. Khaled A Mohamed, Associate Professor, Dept. of Library and Information, Fayoum University. Prof. Hesham Azmi, Dean, College of Media & Mass Communication, American University in the Emirates (AUE) was the session chair. Dr. Azmi previously spent time at UWM during his doctoral research.

An additional highlight of the conference was the keynote address, “A New Generation of Technologies for Libraries and Information Centers,” by Marshall Breeding, creator and editor of Library Technology Guides and the lib-web-cats online directory.


28 | Inside SOIS

20th Annual Conference & Exhibition of Special Libraries Association (Arabian Gulf Chapter)

Pictured above (L to R) - Dr. David Rooney, University of Queensland; Dr. Hesham Azmi, American University in the Emir-ates, Dr. Shana Ponelis, UW-Mlwaukee

“I very much appreciate the opportunity to participate in

the conference, meet and interact with the other delegates

and learn about the many exciting library initiatives under

way in the Gulf region. Our panel linked well to the the host

country’s national development plan, Qatar National Vision

2030, which seeks to transform Qatar from a carbon-based

economy to a knowledge-based one by unlocking human

potential.” Shana Ponelis, Assistant Professor

We’d love to hear from you! We invite all SOIS

students, alumni and friends to send us your

news and updates for possible inclusion in future

issues of Inside SOIS. Do you have an idea for a

story? Let us know! Visit the Alumni & Friends

website to contact us and share your news!

www.uwm.edu/sois/alumni_friends/update.cfmor Email: [email protected]

Share Your News & Updates!Stay Connected...



Summer 2014 | 29

It has been a pleasure meeting so many SOIS alumni this past year. Whether it has been at SOIS reunions at conferences or the new Happy Hours SOIS has been sponsoring, I have very much enjoyed seeing the wide variety of profes-sionals SOIS has sent out into the world.

Equally exciting is the commitment showed by friends and alumni alike to the mission of both the SOIS undergraduate and graduate programs. There are many ways alumni can get involved but one of the most important is philanthropy.

Many people think philanthropy involves a lot of money but this is not the case. Any contribution to the School helps promote our undergraduate and graduate program by making both more accessible to students. In addition planned giving is another vehicle that allows you to have a significant impact on SOIS and the future of information education. Planned giving is a way to create new scholarship opportunities while making the gift in a deliberate manner years from now.

Give me a call or send a note. Let’s start a conversation. I look forward to meeting you or seeing you again at conferences, happy hours or any of our gatherings.

Richard Kessler, Development [email protected] | 414-229-6890

CONNECTING to SOIS

Brittany Dudek, MLIS 2011Named to Library Journal’s list of “Mover’s & Shakers (Marketers) 2014http://lj.libraryjournal.com/category/people/movers-shakers-2014/

Catherine Sering, MLIS 2013Job Update: Reference Librarian, Sioux City Public Library

Alexis Logsdon, MLIS 2011Job Update: Reference & Instruction Librarian, Macalester College

ALUMNI UPDATES

Makiia Lucier’s debut novel, A DEATH-STRUCK YEAR, about a seventeen-year-old student in Portland, Oregon who risks her heart and her life when she volunteers for the Red Cross dur-ing the Spanish Influenza epidemic of 1918, will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on March 4, 2014.

Makiia grew up on the Pacific island of Guam. She received a bachelor’s

degree in journalism from the University of Oregon and a masters in library and information studies from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. For more information, please visit www.makiialucier.com.

Makiia Lucier, MLIS ‘07Publishes New Book

PO Box 413Milwaukee, WI 53201

ONLINE DIRECTORY

Alumni Directory.UWM.edu

New

DIRECTORYEST. 2013

AlumniUpdate your profile, register for events, join a chapter and reconnect with classmates all by

using the new UWM Alumni Directory. It’s the new way to access a network of more

than 150,000 alumni who live in your community and around the world.

Visit AlumniDirectory.UWM.edu and get started today!

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inside sois summer 2014

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