SIS Research Forum with Professor Janet Swan Hill

The University of Tennessee School of Information Sciences (SIS) invites you to hear Janet Swan Hill speak on the necessary practice of making LIS research intriguing and rewarding on October 21, from 12:00 – 1:00, in the Haslam Bldg., Room 202.


Professor Janet Swan Hill is the Associate Director for Technical Services at the University of Colorado Libraries in Boulder. See her full biography below. This talk is free and open to the public.

What: SIS Research Forum with Professor Janet Swan Hill
When: Wednesday, October 21, 12:00 – 1:00 pm
Where: Haslam Bldg. Room 202 (UT Campus)

The Research Forum will be available to SIS distance education students through Centra:

Guest Attend URL: http://asp8.centra.com/GA/main/00000189b9390000012413a797db9358

Guest Playback URL: http://asp8.centra.com/GP/main/00000189b9390000012413a797db9358

Title
“Curiosity, Communication, Delight, Obligation, and Possibly Fame: A Practitioner’s Role in the Growth and Evolution of the Discipline.”

Abstract
Although the effectiveness and relevance of an individual institution may be improved by the efforts of its staff, a profession advances through contributions that reach beyond the boundaries of one institution. Contributions may begin with problems, solutions, and ideas that arise at a particular institution, but when they are communicated to the profession at large through publication, the profession as a whole benefits. Faculty in library and information science programs conduct research and publication, but they are a small segment of the LIS profession, and their research is often theoretical and philosophical rather than immediately practical. Not only are library practitioners more numerous than LIS faculty and in closer touch with the things that matter and the things that work in an actual work setting, they also have ready access to the true laboratories of the field: the libraries themselves. Although research and publication may sound like drudgery to a student currently in pursuit of a degree in LIS, to a practitioner on the job, they are often inseparable from the work itself, and can be intriguing, rewarding, immensely satisfying, and even close to addictive.

Biography
Janet Swan Hill is the Associate Director for Technical Services at the University of Colorado Libraries in Boulder. She has served as an elected member of the ALA Executive Board, and has been elected at large to five terms on ALA Council. She represents ALA on the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control. She began her professional career as an intern at the Library of Congress. She then joined the Geography and Map Division as a map cataloger, and later became head of the Map Cataloging Unit. In 1978 she went to Northwestern University Library as Head of Cataloging, and in 1989 she returned to the west, joining the University of Colorado Libraries in Boulder, where she is Associate Director for Technical Services. Hill has published and spoken on topics ranging from cataloging, education for cataloging, technical services, and faculty status and tenure for academic librarians. She has been active in the American Library Association (ALA) for over thirty years.

Hill is also a judge of figure skating singles, pairs, and ice dancing for the United States Figure Skating Association, founder of the La Furia Masters synchronized figure skating team, which earned the bronze medal at the 2006 US National Championships, and current member and captain of La Furia’s Adult Open synchronized figure skating team, which earned a silver medal at the 2008 and 2009 Pacific Coast Synchronized Skating Sectional Championships.