School of Information Sciences

SIS Student Rose Borden Selected as ESIP Community Fellow

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Rose Borden at Grand Canyon

SIS student Rose Borden has been selected as an Earth Science Information Partners Community Fellow, which is a national-level fellow that names five to six students a year to its program. Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) is an open, networked community that brings together science, data and information technology practitioners, according to its website.

“The ESIP Community Fellowship is a national honor that recognizes a student’s ability to contribute to the earth science community and their commitment to actively participate in assuring that scientists and others have reliable and accessible information into the future,” said Suzie Allard, SIS Chancellor’s Professor.

Student Spotlight: Long-time Lawyer Follows New Path to the Library

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Featured student: Stephen Spann Location: Franklin, Tennessee Past Job: Lawyer Current Job: Working as a substitute librarian and doing a practicum at Vanderbilt Libraries in Nashville Why SIS: I’ve been a lawyer for several years, and I realized a few years ago I wanted to do something different with my degree than just practice. Librarianship […]

SIS Director Kelly’s Speaking Tour in China

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Tsinghua University Computer Science Department Professor Yiqun Liu (pictured on right) served as Director Kelly’s main host, where Kelly gave a talk as part of a series celebrating the 60-year anniversary of the department.

In the spirit of advancing cross-cultural research collaborations, SIS Director Diane Kelly toured Beijing, China last week and was a featured speaker at several academic institutions and China’s largest online retailer. She shared her expertise on interactive information search and retrieval, information search behavior, and research methods.

Her talk “On the Generalizability of Results from Interactive Information Retrieval Research” focused on reasons why it can be difficult to use results from one research study to make predictions about what will happen in another research study.

Professor Mehra’s Promotion Recognized at the UT Faculty Bookplate Reception

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The University of Tennessee, Knoxville School of Information Sciences Director Diane Kelly poses with SIS Professor Bharat Mehra.

The University of Tennessee Libraries and the Provost’s office honored SIS Professor Bharat Mehra’s recent promotion from Associate to Full Professor earlier this week at the Faculty Bookplate Reception. The Faculty Bookplate Reception celebrates faculty promotions by allowing honorees to choose a book to include in the University Libraries’ collections. A bookplate is placed in the book to commemorate the faculty member’s achievements, and the catalog record for the book notes it was selected to honor the faculty member.

Mehra selected Progressive Community Action, a book he co-edited with Kevin Rioux, because it represents the basic philosophy behind his work by detailing how action-oriented research strategies can generate socially relevant impacts through information work. His research has focused on the role of rural public libraries and librarians in the Appalachian region, and his grants have provided funding for the graduate education of more than 25 rural public librarians equipping them to better serve their communities.

Alumni Natalie Hansen Switches from Medieval Art to Nuclear Archiving

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What do medieval stained-glass pieces have in common with old film from the Y12 National Security Complex? Both should be archived properly, according to Natalie Hansen (‘12), an SIS alumni. Hansen started her academic career studying art history, and moved into medieval art as she attained her master’s degree in medieval studies at the University […]

Where Digital Literacy, Social Media, and Fighting Corruption Converge

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Social media is a tool for people across the world to utilize in versatile ways – and in some cases, it can change countries. One aspect of this phenomenon was recently studied by School of Information Sciences Associate Professor Devendra Potnis and two SIS students, Hilary Jasmin and Lindsey McLennan. They undertook the research for the […]

Student Spotlight: Technical Writer Caitlin Carroll Takes a Dive Into Special Collections

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Featured Student: Caitlin Carroll (’12) Location: Nashville, Tennessee Current job: Technical Writer Why UT Knoxville?: I got my undergraduate degree from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in English-Creative Writing. So when I was deciding to go back for information sciences, what I knew I wanted to look for is that I could do 100 percent […]

Alumni Q&A: Laura Frizzell, from Coca-Cola Archives to the CDC

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Laura FrizzellOctober is National Archives Month, and we’ll be running a series of articles celebrating the importance of this area of information sciences. “National Archives Month is an opportunity for us all to think about the importance of archives and archival collecting in our world of information. Archivists collect, arrange, describe, and preserve documents that reflect every aspect of our lives, from our work time to our recreation time, our families, friends, and neighborhoods. For me, being an archivist means looking deeply into the experience of human life and finding what stories need to be kept, nurtured, and shared with future generations. When I teach Introduction to Archives and Records Management, I have a chance to share that passion with the next generation of archivists, and am delighted to find the same passion for keeping and sharing stories in others!”- Emil Hoelter, information sciences lecturer at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Diversity & Inclusion: Watch Jessa Lingel’s Presentations on Video

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Did you ever wonder how extreme body modification enthusiasts were able to find others in their niche community, and how that played out with the advent of the internet? Jessa Lingel, assistant professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and is core faculty in the Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies Program at the University of […]

Alumni Q&A: Taylor Hixson, a librarian in the Middle East

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Taylor Hixson

Alumni Q&A’s introduce us to School of Information Sciences graduates and lets them describe, in their own words, why they went into Information Sciences, and what they’re doing with their degree.

Alumni: Taylor Hixson (’14)

Position: Librarian for Geospatial Services at New York University Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates

What does your current job entail? As the Librarian for Geospatial Services at NYUAD, my primary focus is to make sure library patrons and the campus community are able to access and use the geospatial software, data, and resources they need to do coursework or research. I work with faculty to incorporate geographic information–from desktop and web GIS (geographic information system) to physical maps and spatial datasets–into courses. I assist students who are using GIS in courses and capstone research. I also do a lot of drop-in workshops that introduce attendees to geospatial data, tools, and research. I work in a small library, so I have shared library responsibilities, too, such as reference shifts and general library programs.