Fall 2023 Issue

Top Stories

Faculty and Staff Accomplishments, 2023

Kristen Becker, EdD, was interviewed for Podcast with CITI Programs.

Becker published an article with Leah Andrah Beckworth (MLS 2021), titled “Gender-Based Salary Differentials Among Administrators in Arizona Community Colleges,” in Community College Review (2023).

Aaron Elkins, PhD, published a book chapter: Simons, R. & Elkins, A.J. (2023). Treating a Viral Culture: Using Cultural Competency and Social Informatics to Design Contextualized Information Literacy Efforts for Specific Social Information Cultures. In S. Yang, X. Zhu, & P. Fichman (Eds), The Usage and Impact of ICTs during the Covid-19 Pandemic (pp. 98-134). Routledge.

Cindy Englehart, MEd, (SLIS Senior Academic Advisor & Retention Specialist) won the TWU 2023 Advisor of the Year award.

Kerol Harrod, MLS, was quoted in a story about book bans that appeared in Le Devoir, a French-language publication distributed throughout Canada. The article, “37 projets de loi pour réduire des livres au silence au Texas,” also was published in English, April 7 in The Times Hub.

Harrod was the keynote speaker at the Oct. 14 Program Meeting of the Northeast Tarrant County Branch of the AAUW. His presentation, “Book Banning: The Case for Intellectual Freedom,” was well-received.

Gretchen Hoffman, PhD, presented at the Texas Council of Academic Libraries (TCAL) conference, held Sept. 18 in College Station.

Ling Hwey Jeng, PhD, was elected Chair of the City of Denton Library Board for 2023.

Jeng’s article, “Grassroots Leader Librarianship,” was published in Children & Libraries, (Spring 2023), 4-5.

Jeng gave a COPE Research Talk on Faculty Development: A Time for Enrichment, with Abraham Hwang of HDFSC and Lin Moore of Literacy & Learning, on March 28, 2023.

Jeng gave several presentations:

She presented “In the Shoes of the Community: The Person-Centered Approach in Public Service” at the Texas Library Association 2023 Annual Conference, held April 22 in Austin.
She designed and presented a series of four workshops on “Building Successful Collaborations with Communities,” sponsored by Network of National Library of Medicine, Region 4. The workshops were held online June 16-July 20.
She was an invited speaker of the Association of Library Services for Children Presidential Program at the American Library Association 2023 Annual Conference, held June 22-27 in Chicago. Her presentation was titled “Leading with Your Hands and Your Heart: A Conversation about Leading from Wherever You Are.”
She gave a presentation entitled “Rethinking Training for Librarians in Community Engagement,” at the Network of National Library of Medicine (NNLM), on the staff development day, Nov. 13, 2023.

Priya Kizhakkethil, PhD, was selected for the 2023-2024 TWU Hanover Grant Academy. The Hanover Grant Academy “seeks to discover and encourage individuals of outstanding talent with a keen interest in research.” It is supported by the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs (ORSP) and the Center for Research Design and Analysis (CRDA).

Amy Lanier, MLS, presented on “Trigger Warnings in Book-related Facebook Groups as Information Grounds” at the Multidisciplinary Information Research Symposium (MIRS 2023) at UNT Dec. 1, 2023.

Hyuk-Jin Lee, PhD, was awarded the “Best Presentation Award” at the International Conference on Cultural Heritage (ICCH 2023, October 30-31, 2023) for his virtual poster presentation, “Emphasis on difference: Ethnic and National Cultural Heritage Identities and issues in East Asia focusing on Korea cases.”

Lee also presented a virtual panel presentation: “Phenomenological analysis of sonic heritage and the role of Virtual Reality” at the Digital Research in Humanities and Art Conference 2023, Turin, Italy, Sept. 11-13, 2023.

Lee published a peer-reviewed article: Lee, H. J. (2023). Discourse on Dokkaebi horns and a consideration on the direction of Korean studies. The Journal of Korean Studies, 85, p. 89-132.

Katie Loomis, PhD, and Lanier teamed to presented a session at the TLA 2023 annual conference, along with SLIS adjunct faculty Kelly Born, on “School Librarians as Collaborators.”

Loomis continued her presentations with a COPE Research Talk Feb. 9, 2023, on “Exploring Agency Development through Literature.”

Loomis also presented a preconference at the TLA 2023 annual conference, with Born, on “Exploring Agency in Children’s Literature.”

Ahmet (Meti) Tmava, PhD, received the 2023 COPE Outstanding Teacher Award.

Tmava had a refereed journal article published: Tmava, A.M. and Ryza, S. (2023), "Faculty participation in open access repositories (OARs) based on their individual traits", Digital Library Perspectives, Vol. 39 No. 2.

Vyacheslav (Slava) Zavalin, PhD, had a refereed journal article published: Zavalin, V. (2023). Exploration of Subject and Genre Representation in Bibliographic Metadata Representing Works of Fiction for Children and Young Adults, Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, DOI: 10.1080/01639374.2023.2175403.

Zavalin had a conference paper published: Zavalin, Vyacheslav & Zavalina, Oksana L. (2023). Exploration of accuracy, completeness and consistency in metadata for physical objects in museum collections. In Wang, X. et al. Information for a Better World: Normality, Virtuality, Physicality, Inclusivity. iConference 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13972. Springer, Cham.

Zavalin also had a refereed article published in a conference proceedings: Zavalin, V. (2023). Ukrainian Archival Metadata in WorldCat: Exploratory Analysis. JCDL 2023. ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries. This was also a presentation and included participation in a workshop.

Tara Zimmerman, PhD, received the 2023 COPE Above and Beyond Faculty Award.

Zimmerman presented “Bridging the Literal Gap to Develop New Research Partnerships” at the 2023 Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) conference held Oct. 2-5 in Milwaukee, Wis.

Zimmerman had several publications:

Shiroma, K., Zimmerman, T., Xie, B., Fleischmann, K.R., Rich, K., Verma, N., & Jia, C. (in press). Older adults’ trust and distrust in COVID-19 public health information: A critical incident interview study. JMIR Aging.
Zimmerman, T., Shiroma, K., Fleischmann, K.R., Xie, B., Jia, C., Verma, N., and Lee, M.K. (2023). Misinformation and COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. Vaccine, 41 (1), 136-144.
Slota, S. C., Fleischmann, K. R., Lee, M. K., Greenberg, S. R., Nigam, I., Zimmerman, T., Rodriguez, S., & Snow, J. (2023). A feeling for the data: How government and nonprofit stakeholders negotiate value conflicts in data science approaches to ending homelessness. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology.

Alumni News, 2023

Four SLIS alumni were accepted to the 2023 Class of the Texas Library Association TALL Texans Leadership Development Institute (TALL Texans).

Heather Garaviglia (MLS 2011), Prosper ISD
Kimberly Kinnaird (MLS 2003, PhD 2016), Lewisville ISD
Natalie Watts (MLS 2007), North East ISD
Leslie Whitaker (MLS 2014), Claude ISD.

The 2023 TALL Texans retreat was held at the Montserrat Retreat Center, in Lake Dallas, on November 12-16.

Nikki Darcy (MLS 2023) was awarded a 2023 Texas Book Festival Texas Library Grant to create a Borderlands Heritage Collection at the Rio Grande City Public Library. She wrote the grant as part of her SLIS Practicum, and it was based on assignments from the Collection Development and Management course and Grant Writing and Management course.

Sam Johnson (MLS 2016) accepted a position as Director of Library Services at Wilberforce University, the first privately owned Historically Black College and University.

Tyler Moses (MLS 2016) was elected as the Chair-Elect of the Social Justice and Health Disparities Caucus of the Medical Library Association. Moses graduated from the TWU dual degree program with both MLS and MS in Health Studies degrees. She was an Associate Fellow at the National Library of Medicine and currently works as a subject librarian for Emory College, the Biology Department, and the Neuroscience & Behavioral Studies Department.

Adrienne Warner (MLS 2009) was named the inaugural recipient of the Hulsman Librarianship for Student Success endowment at the University of New Mexico, where she has worked in the University Libraries since 2014 and is currently a First Year Experience Librarian.

Page last updated 8:30 AM, January 31, 2024