As I write this, UW is headed into Spring Break, and a few weeks later the 2023-2024 academic year will wind down. In the past two Spring Jottings, I’ve had a long list of new iSchool developments to share. I’m pleased that this year brings even more.
Most recently, we were thrilled to welcome Vice Provost and Dean of Libraries Erla Heyns to our faculty as the first-ever Professor of Practice in the iSchool and in CDIS. The addition of Dr. Heynes comes alongside a newly expanded partnership with UW-Madison Libraries. This closer relationship, which you can read more about in this issue of Jottings, will help enable the transition next year to our new home in the School of Computer, Data & Information Sciences (CDIS) building and its library, the CDIS Commons.
Many of you already know Bronwen Masemann, who was our collections librarian and iSchool teaching faculty for over 10 years. Bronwen is bringing her expertise back by joining us as iSchool Laboratory Library Collections Project Coordinator. In this role she is managing the move of the iSchool Library collections. This includes (among many other things) the meticulous transfer of archival documents from the iSchool Library to a new climate-controlled space, helping ensure their long-term preservation. It is fantastic that she can take on this challenge; her professional experience and deep knowledge of our collection will be invaluable. We also welcome Jeff Nyhoff, who joins us this semester as Teaching Faculty. Jeff will apply his decades of experience to lead the instruction of Introduction to Computing, a course that explores topics such as cybersecurity and artificial intelligence from an interdisciplinary perspective, as well as other classes in our growing undergraduate major. Welcome Jeff, and welcome back Bronwen!
Finally — as the stories in this issue highlight — our students, faculty, staff, and alumni continue to do amazing work with impact well beyond the university. For instance, Assistant Professor Ian Hutchins and his colleagues in the Metascience Research Lab are using big data to reveal inequities in the academic research enterprise. Meng Qu, an alum of our MA program, is charting new frontiers in library services by incorporating technology in inventive ways. And our graduate students are contributing to cutting-edge research across campus, including at the renowned Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.
Jottings can only report so much, and the iSchool community’s impact on the university, the state, and beyond is expanding and deepening across many domains. We are continuing to grow and diversify, and I am excited about our future of new collaborations, closer connections, creative scholarship, preparing new generations of information professionals and community members, and all manner of learning and research at the intersection of information, technology, and society.
I couldn’t be happier to be part of the iSchool, and I hope you enjoy this edition of Jottings.
On, Wisconsin!
Alan Rubel
Professor and Director
The Information School