UT iSchool Alumni E-News - February 2005

[alums at ischool.utexas.edu]

Alumni E-News
The University of Texas at Austin School of Information
http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/
Issue 10 - February 2005

Welcome! In this issue:

- Dean's Word
- iSchool Teaching Team at Educause
- Faculty, Alum teach in China
- Contributions to Orange Santa Recognized
- Alumni, Faculty, Student, and Staff News
- Upcoming Events
- Supporting the iSchool
- Contact Details


- Dean's Word

Welcome to the Spring e-newsletter for Alumni of the School of
Information.  The new semester finds the School in great shape.  We
admitted a new cohort of 29 students, bringing our current total to
297.  We anticipate a large group applying for admission in the Fall,
but since we can only really cope with 300 students, admission is
becoming highly competitive.  We also enter the Spring with a new
faculty colleague, Lynn Westbrook, who joins us from TWU.  A new search
has begun for another faculty member to join us in Fall.  As always, we
are seeking the very best faculty who can advance our research and
teaching mission. 

The last year ended on a high note.  The faculty submitted another
$1.25m in grants; we received approval of a proposal for a joint
portfolio in Communications, Information & Policy; and our proposal
for a new undergraduate minor in information studies was also
approved.  These are all indicators of our goal of becoming better
funded and better connected across the University.  My emphasis this
semester is on the development of a formal proposal to move the School
to new premises.  I'll keep you updated on how that goes.

Let me remind you all that we love to hear from you and invite you to
connect with the School through capstone projects and internship
supervision.  Also, as described below, we have an ongoing fundraising
drive to create the Julie Hallmark Honorary Fellowship.  Julie served
the School for over 30 years and fostered the development of a very
strong SLA chapter at Austin.  We feel the Honorary Fellowship is
thoroughly deserved and hope you will consider lending your support to
the fund, which will be used directly to assist students.


- iSchool Teaching Team Presents at Educause

The INF 312 six-member team composed of doctoral students and
lecturers presented "Scaling Information in Cyberspace: A Framework
for Developing Online Instruction to Meet the Demands of Large
Classes" at this year's Educause Southwest Regional Conference.  Find
out more at
http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/about/news/educause_02012005.php  
For an insightful look into INF 312 - Information in Cyberspace, go to
http://echo.ischool.utexas.edu/~i312/info/ 


- Faculty, Alum Teach Seminar in China

This winter, three iSchool faculty and one alumnus had the
extraordinary opportunity to interact with librarians, library
students, and preservation/conservation professionals at the Sun
Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, China.  To find out more about the
trip go to
http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/about/news/china_trip_02102005.php


- iSchool Contributions to Orange Santa Recognized

The iSchool received a special letter of recognition from UT President
Larry Faulkner for its generous contribution of books to the Orange
Santa Program.  Faculty, staff, and students contributed monetary
donations that were used to pay for the book Scholastic Book of World
Records.  More than a thousand children of the UT community benefited
from this contribution.


- Alumni News

Congratulations to Holly Koelling, a 1993 graduate whose book has been
published by Libraries Unlimited/Greenwood Publishing group.  The book
titled Classic Connections: Turning Teens On to Great Literature is
written for school and public librarians and for educators at the
secondary level.  Holly works as a teen services/reference librarian
at Bothell Regional Library in Bothell, Washington. 

To find out more about fellow alumni go to
http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/people/alumni_updates_index.php
If you would like to share your information with the more than 600
subscribers to this newsletter, please email chansen at ischool.utexas.edu

- Faculty News

Dr. Donald Davis, professor, contributed a ten-page article on
"Libraries" in the five-volume Berkshire Encyclopedia of World
History.  He is working with doctoral alumna Cheryl K. Malone ('96) on
research that will lead to a centennial history of the Association for
Library and Information Science Education to be published by Scarecrow
Press.

Dean Andrew Dillon will be giving the closing keynote address at this
year's Information Architecture Summit in Montreal on March 6th.
Further details of the summit can be found at:
http://www.iasummit.org/  Dean Dillon writes a regular column on IA
for the ASIST Bulletin.

Dr. Miles Efron, assistant professor, recently presented "The
Liberal Media and Right-Wing Conspiracies: Using Cocitation
Information to Estimate the Political Orientation of Web Documents" at
the ACM Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM)

Dr. E. Glynn Harmon, professor, is conducting research on the
development of evidence-based oriental medicine, in cooperation with
the Austin Academy of Oriental Medicine.  With co-author Elissa
Ballesteros, he is completing a book on Unconscious Cognition: The
Hidden Dimension in Information Seeking.  Dr. Harmon recently received
a UT Dean of Students award for working with handicapped students.

Dr. Barbara Immroth, professor, was interviewed for a feature story
that appeared on The University of Texas home page entitled "Not Just
Happily Ever After." The full article can be found at
http://www.utexas.edu/features/archive/2004/children.html  Both
Dr. Barbara Immroth and Dr. Bill Lukenbill, professors, were
interviewed for an article in the January 2005 issue of School Library
Journal titled "What Grad Schools Can Do for You".

Shirley Lukenbill, lecturer, was interviewed by the UT Center for
Instructional Technology about her use of Blackboard.  Her comments
can be viewed at
http://www.utexas.edu/academic/blackboard/examples/community.html

Dr. Lynn Westbrook, assistant professor, is the newest faculty member
to join the iSchool, and is teaching Introduction to Information
Resources and Services this semester.  Dr. Westbrook is currently the
chair of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL's)
Instruction Section (IS) Education Committee and a member of the
Library Research Round Table Steering Committee.   A brief biography
of Dr. Westbrook can be viewed at
http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/people/person_details.php?PersonID=73 


- Student News

Belinda Boon, doctoral student, was awarded first prize at the ALISE
conference held in Boston.  Read more at
http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/about/news/alise_01212005.php

Tatiana Nikolova Houston, doctoral student, won the 2005 ATLA
Bibliography Grant in the amount of $1500 for her project
"Bibliographical Guide to Slavic Religious Manuscripts."

As part of a conference entitled Internet, Culture, and Society:
French and American Perspectives, held on November 18, 19, and 20,
Libby Peterek ('04) and Patrick Williams, doctoral student, were
recognized for their contribution to the digital poster session.  The
students tied for 3rd place for "Mixed Numbers: The Hidden Meanings of
Everyday Digits" by Patrick Williams and "Texas 4000 For Cancer" by
Ryan Amos & Libby Peterek.

Lisa Kleinman, doctoral student, presented her co-authored paper (with
Dr. Dillon, Dr. Bias, Dr. Turnbull, and Gilok Choi, another doctoral
student) entitled "Reading and Searching Digital Documents: An
Experimental Analysis of the Effects of Image Quality on User
Performance and Perceived Effort" at the Annual Conference of the
American Society for Information Science and Technology, in Providence
last November.


- Staff News

Bette W. Oliver, has retired as the assistant editor of Libraries &
Culture, a position she has held since 1986.  She will continue her
work as a historian of 18th-century France with research and writing.
In addition, Oliver's seventh volume of poetry will be published later
in 2005.  She will continue her contacts with the editorial board of
L&C and with the faculty and staff of the iSchool.


Upcoming Events

Dr. Randolph Bias, chair of the Research and Colloquia Committee has
announced the following spring 2005 iForum presentations, which are
open to all:

March 1	   Dr. Oliver Chen will present "Construction of a Digital
Video Library: A Socio-Technical Pilot Study on College Students'
Attitudes."

March 22   Dr. Miles Efron will present "Think optimally, project
locally: An analysis of local projection methods for information
retrieval."

April 26   Dr. Lynn Westbrook will present "Layered Definitions:
Information in Context."

The iForums are held in SZB 468 from 3:30 to 5:00 p.m.


TLA Alumni Reception, Booth, and Alumni Dinner

Austin is the host city for this year's annual Texas Library
Association Conference.  To commemorate the occasion, the iSchool is
hosting events for alumni and sponsoring a booth.

On Tuesday, April 5, all alumni are invited to attend an Alumni
Reception which will be held at the Sanchez Building, Room 556 from
4:00 to 6:00 p.m.  The Sanchez Building is immediately north of the
Bullock Museum, across MLK Boulevard.  The reception precedes the TLA
All Conference Welcome Party held at the Bob Bullock Museum from 6:00
to 8:00 p.m.  Please join us to meet up with old friends and current
students, visit our open facilities, and enjoy snacks and beverages
before stepping across the street to the TLA opening reception.  

The iSchool will sponsor a booth staffed by faculty, staff, and
students in the Exhibition Hall at the Austin Convention Center during
the conference.  Please stop by booth #1827 and learn about the latest
happenings around the School.

On Thursday, April 7, at 6:30 p.m. the School will also host an Alumni
Dinner at the Shoreline Grill on Town Lake.  If you would like to
attend the dinner and did not purchase a ticket through the TLA
pre-registration process, contact Ron Pollock at 512/471-2623 or
rpollock at ischool.utexas.edu or Kathleen Adrian at 512/471-2492 or
kathleen at ischool.utexas.edu Tickets for the dinner are $30.  Please
make checks payable to UT Austin, and a receipt will be mailed to your
home address.  You do not have to participate in the TLA Annual
Conference to attend the dinner.  So please join us for great food,
great company, and a spectacular view of Austin's Town Lake. 


- Supporting the iSchool

Gifts to the School enable us to provide more than 20 named
scholarships each year as well as support student activities in
specialist areas such as archives, preservation, and services to
indigenous communities.  Endowments can also create professorships or
teaching fellowships to attract the very best faculty to our School.
Excellence funds allow us to innovate and react to changing needs.
Such gifts ensure that our school can continue to educate
professionals for careers that make a significant difference for all
of society, both now and in the future. 

All gifts are welcomed, but we are currently conducting a special fund
drive for one new fellowship.  To honor the contribution of Dr. Julie
Hallmark to our school for the last 30 years, we have created the
Julie Hallmark Honorary Graduate Fellowship to support students in the
area of special libraries.  To endow this fellowship, we need to reach
a target of $50,000.  Gifts from faculty have launched us toward this
total, but we now need your support to take us there.

For more details on how to support the School, including a link to
make a gift online, see http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/development/
If you choose to give online, be sure to specify School of Information
in the appropriate section of the form, and from there you can select
the Hallmark Fellowship for a specific donation.  Every dollar counts
and we are grateful for any amount you can provide to establish the
Hallmark Fellowship.


- Contact Us

If you know someone who has graduated from our program and is not
receiving this electronic newsletter, please forward a copy and point
them to the subscription page on our site at:
http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/mailman/listinfo/alums

Moving? Need to update your alumni records? An "Information for
Alumni" page has been set up with various links to help make it
convenient for you.  Please go to
http://www.ischool.utexas.edu/people/alumni.php to learn more.