Adding a fresh perspective to this year’s spring Doctoral Colloquium, held April 8 at SC&I, the Department of Library and Information Science shifted the spotlight to faculty scholarship, inviting three current faculty members and one emerita faculty member to share their newly published books with the SC&I community.
The scholarly book talk featured Associate Professor Amelia Acker, Professor Marija Dalbello, Associate Professor Britt Paris, and Distinguished Professor Emerita Carol C. Kuhlthau. More than 60 SC&I faculty, students, and community members attended.
"This colloquium was meant to highlight recent academic press book works that have coincided in publication in a short timeframe among four LIS tenured faculty members. The talks were poignant in revealing many linkages among related socio-technical and information phenomena across over a century of history," said Chair and Associate Professor of Library and Information Science Rebecca Reynolds. "The talks provided the doctoral student audience with many new and evergreen examples of human expression of agency in the inscription of meaning-seeking and meaning-making with information, texts and technology – especially among women, and among groups who have been historically under-resourced, marginalized and minoritized societally in relation to infrastructures, and in the face of wider societal forces of challenge. I’m extending congratulations to my dear colleagues, the authors, on their important works."
The authors’ topic coverage viz their book works included identification of some of the primary questions or thought streams in the LIS field of scholarship that their work inter-plays with, responds to, and posits challenges for. Further, several addressed factors such as research method(s) and stylistic choices that were influential in shaping the design and structure of their books.
The author's talks were followed by a Q&A with the audience.
As the final presenter, Kuhlthau noted at the end of her talk that she is proud to be able to continue contributing to the scholarly life of LIS and SC&I, and she provided advice to faculty and students alike.
"I am 88 years old and here I am standing before you so excited about these ideas," Kuhlthau said. "It's so amazing and such a gift. Thank you all for being here, thank you for the wonderful work you are continuing to do, and thank you so much for still finding these ideas interesting and worth thinking about. Go for it! [In your own work,] Go for something that is going to be lasting."
The Authors and Books
Amelia Acker
"Archiving Machines: From Punch Cards to Platforms"
Published by MIT Press, Acker's book chronicles "The story of the rise of networked data through the evolution of archiving and digital storage. 'Archiving Machines' advances our understanding of memory, information, and data by charting the struggle between the computing technologies that archive data and the cultures of information that have led to platforms that assert control over its use."
Marija Dalbello
"Global Voices from the Women’s Library at the World’s Columbian Exposition: Feminisms, Transnationalism and the Archive"
Co-edited with Sarah Wadsworth, and published by Palgrave Macmillan/Springer Nature, the book "extends our understanding of women’s contributions to global print culture and the extension of women's rights up to 1893, when the Chicago World's Fair (World’s Columbian Exposition) became the site of the first large-scale international library of writing by women."
Carol C. Kuhlthau
"Seeking Meaning: A Process Approach to Library and Information Services, 30th Anniversary Edition"
Bloomsbury, the publisher, wrote, "For the first time in this anniversary edition, Kuhlthau's canonical research is supplemented with new essays by scholars influenced by her work, making it timely and required reading for students of library and information science and an invaluable resource for anyone providing library and information services."
Britt Paris
"Radical Infrastructure: Imagining the Internet from the Ground Up"
Published by the University of California, in the book, the publisher wrote, "Paris critically examines the myriad and contradictory promises, utility, and obstacles to building a completely new Internet. 'Radical Infrastructure' locates and analyzes the boundaries of how people and groups imagine, build, deploy, maintain, and use the Internet as they survive—and even dare to thrive—in challenging political, economic, and environmental contexts."
