News and Activities

IIS PhD Student Won a Travel Award at DISC 2016 in South Korea

 

Mi Young Chong, a student in the Interdisciplinary Information Science PhD program in the Department of Information Science, presented her work at DISC2016: Beyond Data, Innovation, Social Network, and Convergence International Conference in Daegu city, Korea. She was also awarded a travel grant for her work at the conference in the closing ceremony. Congratulations to Mi Young Chong. 

 

 


Alumnus Roosevelt Weeks is recipient of ALA " I Love My Librarian" Award

IS alumnus, Roosevelt Weeks is among the 10 winners of the prestigious American Library Association I Love My Librarian 2016 Award. This award 'recognizes librarians for their exceptional contributions to transforming lives and communities through education and lifelong learning.' Nominations are from the public who detail how their favorite librarian works in their libraries and connected them to information, opportunities and technology to help improve the quality of their lives.

Weeks is currently the Deputy Director of Administration and Chief of Staff at the Houston Public Library. He received his Master's of Library Science degree in 2014 from UNT. He has worked for the Houston Public Library for over 11 years and also serves as a member of the Houston Public Library’s Executive Leadership Team. 

"I am very humbled and honored to receive such a prestigious award. I owe this award to my director, Dr. Rhea Lawson, the staff of the Houston Public Library, my UNT family, and to the many leaders of the Texas Library Association who helped shaped me to serve," said Weeks.

Weeks was promoted to the Deputy Director position in 2006. In this role, he oversees policies and procedures, oversight of all audits, leadership development, training, facilities, employee relations, compensation, benefits, outreach initiatives, budgets, and financial reports. As Chief of Staff, he works closely with the Library Director in managing the Houston Public Library System and has responsibility for overall service delivery for the Houston Public Library System.

Prior to this assignment, Weeks served as Chief Technology Officer for the Houston Public Library, where he was responsible for upgrading the computer technology in the library, providing wireless connectivity in all 42 library locations, installing a patron reservation system and implementing videoconferencing. Prior to working for the City of Houston, he worked for the Pasadena Public Library, Accenture and Aetna. 

Weeks serves on a number of non-profit and city committees and has been recognized for his leadership and contribution to these organizations. He is passionate about improving technology, literacy and education, both inside and outside of the library. He also works directly with community leaders to agree on shared values, vision, and measures of success. This furthers the combined goal of ensuring a future workforce capable of the complex critical thinking skills necessary to succeed in an ever-changing competitive market. He is also a member and serves on several committees within the American Library Association (ALA), Public Library Association (PLA), Texas Library Association (TLA), and Urban Library Council (ULC).

 

For more information about the award and this year's winners, visit http://www.ilovelibraries.org/lovemylibrarian/2016/16winners 


Faculty from IS Department present at Asia-Pacific conference

Drs. Yvonne Chandler and Yunfei Du from the College of Information Department of Information Science presented papers at the 7th Asia-Pacific Conference on Library & Information Education and Practice (A-LIEP), hosted by Nanjing University, School of Information Management, November 4 - 5, in Nanjing, China. Their papers, “12,991 Kilometers or 8072 Miles Across the Ocean – Library & Information Science Education for the US-Affiliated Pacific”, and “The Role of Library and Information Education in Promoting Data Science”, were well received and reviewed by the LIS educators of Asia and the Pacific area. Educators from more than 20 Asian/Pacific LIS and iSchool programs attended the conference. 

 

Photos: Left: Dr. Du presenting

          Top right: Dr. Chandler and Dr. Christopher Khoo

          Bottom right: Dr. Chandler & LIS students

 


IS Department well represented at ICKM & ASIS&T annual conference

The Department of Information Science (IS) was well represented at both the 12th International Conference on Knowledge Management (ICKM) and the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) conference held in Vienna, Austria and Copenhagen, Denmark, respectively. Students and faculty of the IS Department attended and presented papers at both conferences.

At ICKM, Dr. Suliman Hawamdeh, Dr. John Edwards and Dr. Hsia-Ching Chang organized a panel in Analytics and Knowledge Management. The panel was very successful, with panelists and participants from both academics and industries engaging in thoughtful and informative discussions. In addition, Dr. Chang and Dr. Hawamdeh presented a work-in-progress paper entitled "Envisioning the Role of Data Analytics in Knowledge Management." 

Dr. Oksana Zavalina also presented a paper "Developing an Empirically-Based Framework of Metadata Change and Exploring Relation between Metadata Change and Metadata Quality in MARC Library Metadata" a paper written with three doctoral students: Slava Zavalin, Shadi Shakeri, and Priya Kizhakkethil. 

PhD students shined at the ASIS&T conference. The UNT student chapter was recognized at the conference for their first place win for Membership Growth in 2016, an impressive accomplishment considering it was their first year reinstating the chapter. Hillary Stark, doctoral student and vice president of the student chapter, was also the recipient of the New Leader Award, a recognition given to ASIS&T members who show leadership potential within the field. This is a 2-year award, inclusive of taking a leadership role with one of the ASIS&T special interest groups, of which Hillary chose the Social Informatics group and will be the Communications Director for the group. 

Miyoung Chong, a doctoral student, presented a paper and poster entitled “Sentiment Analysis and Topic Extraction of the Twitter Network of #Prayforparis."

Dr. Oksana Zavalina co-presented a poster "Quality Over Time: A Longitudinal Quantitative Analysis of Metadata Change in RDA-based MARC Bibliographic Records Representing Video Resources", coauthored with Dr. Shawne Miksa and doctoral student Slava Zavalin.

For more photos, visit our Flickr page


Dr. Villagran Presents and Connects with IS Alumni and Students at CLA Conference

 

 

The Department of Information Science is exhibiting and taking part in the annual California Library Association Conference. Dr. Villagran's presentation on cultural intelligence at the conference was well received and she looks forward to sharing the presentation with more library and information science communities.  Dr. Villagran met with current students in the California Cohorts and hosted the Alumni Reception.