SIS Professor Dania Bilal, along with collaborators at two other universities, received a $208,142 Institute of Museum and Library Services grant to create the IDEA (Innovation, Disruption, Enquiry, Access) Institute on Artificial intelligence (AI).

After a year in the MSIS program, student Kay P Maye is seeing information in a new light, through what he says is a critical lens that he’s learned to use.

“I got into [information sciences] because I wanted to do something different, but still related to the social sciences, and now I feel like I’m getting a lot of personal stuff out of it,” he said.

Jennifer Chilcoat (’89) admits she didn’t follow a rule handed to her and other SIS students by their professor at the time, Mike Pemberton. He told them to stay at their first job out of grad school for 3-5 years, and then move onto something new…but she ended up staying at the Central Arkansas Library System for 28 years after graduating. Chilcoat, however, may be an exception to that rule, seeing as she just moved into her new role as director of the Arkansas State Library. She replaces Carolyn Ashcraft, who retired July 1.

Lecturer: Plato Smith

Location: University of Florida, Gainesville

Education: MLIS, North Carolina Central University; PhD, Florida State University

Kelly Passek loads books into packages to be delivered to students via Wing drone delivery. Photo courtesy of Wing.

Imagine a middle school student looking out their front door to see a drone hovering above them, a long tether attached to a box extending from the small flying machine – when the box is released, the child opens it and inside is a library book from their middle school librarian. This small sci-fi adventure is playing out right now in the Christiansburg, Virginia area, after middle school librarian and SIS alum Kelly Passek (’11) brought the idea to fruition.

Director of Voices Out Loud and Research Librarian Donna Braquet 

Voices Out Loud is an archives and oral history project started by UT Research Librarian Donna Braquet, who felt like there needed to be a resource chronicling the history of LGBTQ+ people in East Tennessee. Various pieces make up the collection, including three projects SIS students have worked on over the past year.

SIS alum and Seattle Public Library Executive Director and Chief Librarian Marcellus Turner credits the library’s staff for earning it the 2020 Gale/Library Journal Library of the Year Award.

“This is well-deserved recognition of their commitment to involving community voices in programs, reducing barriers to access and actively pursuing key partnerships. It’s our staff that has been leading the way,” Turner stated in a news release.

Brianna Blackwell already had an undergraduate and graduate degree in English when she decided to earn her MSIS degree at the University of Tennessee starting in the fall of 2019. Her desire to further pursue research that can be applied in real-world scenarios is part of what piqued her interest in the field of information sciences.

“I wanted to learn about these more directly applicable skills like statistics and programming and qualitative and quantitative research that I could use in digital humanities,” she said.

Dear UTK School of Information Sciences Students, Alumni and Friends,

We know that SIS students, alumni, and friends, particularly African-American students, alumni, and friends, are hurting right now. We are hurting with you. Many of you are suffering due to the recent killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery, which sadly join a long list of extrajudicial killings of African-American men and women. Our hearts go out to you, and to all those who have suffered from the discrimination, bias, and brutality that are deeply woven into the fabric of our country.