University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Library and Information Science Program

Month: April 2022

  • LIS Alumna Shelley Lau Awarded 2022 HASL Golden Key Award

    LIS Alumna Shelley Lau Awarded 2022 HASL Golden Key Award

    Shelley Lau, an LIS alumna, was awarded the 2022 Golden Key Award by the Hawaii Association of School Librarians. The Golden Key Award recognizes school librarians who have provided exemplary service to the profession. She was presented with a framed certificate of recognition at the HASL spring social on April 23.

    Lau was nominated by Betty Arai, librarian at Mililani High School. In her nomination, Betty wrote:

    Shelley has mentored and inspired so many librarians throughout her career. She exemplifies 21st century library skills and her schoolwide literacy programs highlight the value of having a certified school librarian. Her schoolwide literacy programs highlight the value of having a certified school librarian. Her lesson plans are the best that I’ve ever seen. I am also so inspired by her workshops that she leads at numerous past HASL conferences which help to elevate our profession. Thankful to know someone as dedicated and knowledgeable as her in the field.

    In addition to supporting HASL, Lau has been an invaluable resource for preparing Hawaii’s future school librarians. She has visited several LIS courses to share insights about her role as an elementary school librarian, and has been a cooperating librarian for LIS students completing their school library practicum. We thank Shelley for her support of the LIS program at UH Manoa and are delighted to hear about her recognition as the 2022 Golden Key Award recipient.

    Congratulations, Shelley!

  • LIS Alumna Kelly McDermott Wins Outstanding Paper Award at Teaching, Colleges & Community 2022 Worldwide Conference

    LIS Alumna Kelly McDermott Wins Outstanding Paper Award at Teaching, Colleges & Community 2022 Worldwide Conference

    Congratulations to LIS alumna Kelly McDermott, who won the Outstanding Paper Award at the Teaching, Colleges & Community 2022 Worldwide Conference. Her paper, Beyond Content Knowledge: Best Approaches to Improve Student Application of Information Literacy Instruction, highlighted instructional approaches to improve students’ application of information literacy skills using quantitative and qualitive data sets. The article will be published in the conference proceedings and in the International Journal of Educational Media and Technology.

    Kelly is a recent LIS graduate with a strong interest in academic librarianship, information literacy, student development, and programmatic efforts. In winning this coveted award, Kelly said, “I am grateful for all of the support I received in the LIS program. The faculty are top-notch and really helped me to learn, apply, and research. This award is a reflection of the UH LIS program and community and is a nice launching point for the next stage of my career.”

    Kudos, Kelly! We are proud of your achievements and are fortunate that you chose to serve the library community.

  • LIS Alumna Helen Wong-Smith Becomes SAA Vice-President

    LIS Alumna Helen Wong-Smith Becomes SAA Vice-President

    Text from UH News: https://www.hawaii.edu/news/2022/04/05/helen-wong-smith-elected-to-saa/

    University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Library Archivist Helen Wong Smith has been selected as vice president/president-elect of the Society of American Archivists (SAA), the oldest and largest national organization of professional archivists in North America. She becomes the first person from Hawaiʻi to hold this position. She will begin her one-year term in August and will become SAA’s 78th president in 2023–24.

    Widely known for her work on cultural competency, Wong Smith is excited to be serving in this new role at SAA. “I see it as an opportunity to inform and share with the rest of the country and profession the wealth of resources we have here in the islands, including records reflecting five governments (kingdom, provisional, republic, territory and state) and their impacts on the kānaka maoli and the diverse cultures and communities who selected to make Hawaiʻi their home, and the caliber of archivists, both professional and community, and repositories we possess,” she said.

    A product of UH Mānoa, Wong holds a bachelor’s degree in Hawaiian Studies and a master’s in Library and Information Science. She has served as university archivist at UH Mānoa since 2018. Her prior UH positions include researcher at Nā Pua Noʻeau: Center for Gifted and Talented Native Hawaiian Children at UH Hilo, recruitment coordinator for the Native Hawaiian Center of Excellence at the John A. Burns School of Medicine, Hawaiian Collection Librarian in UH Hilo’s Edwin H. Mookini Library, and Pharmacy & Health Sciences Resources Coordinator at the Daniel K. Inouye School of Pharmacy.

    Wong has been involved with SAA since 2003 and has served in a number of capacities, including her involvement on several committees, being elected to the SAA council and delivering a number of presentations at the annual conferences. A 2015 plenary address calling for cultural competency training allowed her to develop a workshop she has delivered across the country since 2017.

    For more than 35 years, Wong has highlighted Hawaiian collections through research and presentations and has written extensively on Hawaiian cultural resources. In addition to her previous UH appointments, she was also lead archivist for the Pacific Island Network of the National Park Service, cultural specialist for Kamehameha Schools and librarian archivist for the State Historic Preservation Division.

    “Teaching cultural competency while at UH Hilo, I recognized how cultural competency can advance the archival profession. This framework has extended to the museum sector through a series of webinars for the Hawaiʻi Museum Association and to private companies,” Wong said. “It is an inherent framework kamaʻāina have utilized to live and work with the diverse cultures living closely together and its employment has proven benefits in multiple sectors such as health services, education and business.”

    Among Wong’s project highlights as university archivist include the Mitsuo Aoki Papers, which include the collection of the theologian, minister, college professor and founder of UH Mānoa Department of Religion, and the Luciano Minerbi Papers, which exceed 50 linear feet and captures the earliest community-based planning activities in the islands.

  • In Memoriam: Dr. Luz Marina Quiroga

    In Memoriam: Dr. Luz Marina Quiroga

    The UHM LIS Program is sad to announce the passing of our former colleague Associate Professor Dr. Luz Marina Quiroga who taught at UH from 2000 until 2019 in areas related to Information Retrieval, Databases, Library Systems, and website design.

    Celebrating Dr. Quiroga’s promotion and tenure in 2011.

    She was born in 1947 in Manizales, Colombia, and earned a B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering at the Universidad Industrial de Santander, Universidad de los Andes in 1971. She later obtained an M.Sc. in Computer Science from the Autonomous National University of Mexico (1984), and a Ph.D. in LIS from Indiana University (1999). The following year she came to the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in 2000 as the first crossover faculty position between the recently merged Library and Information Science Program and Information and Computer Sciences Department. She taught courses in database design, digital libraries, personalization, and information architecture. She also was a frequent instructor at the international training program for developing nations librarians at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels. She wrote on a number of scholarly articles, some of which are highly cited, such as a 2004 HICSS paper with Martha Crosby, “Reducing cognitive load” that has been cited over 50 times. Her Spanish language articles are also well cited, as a reflection of her international agenda. Her research and teaching always focused on advancing ICTs (preferably open source) to help society address social problems like the information needs of the unhoused. UH Mānoa Communications Professor Wayne Buente recalled that “Luz was one of the first CIS faculty members to work in the area of community informatics ,and it is my hope that her never-ending passion toward social change will always be remembered in CIS.”

    Professor Emerita Violet Harada summed up many of our thoughts with “Luz’s passion for serving needy communities influenced our LIS courses in community engagement. I enjoyed our many conversations about teaching and how we might help our students take a deeper look at what librarians can contribute to our larger world. She has left all of us who knew her, just a little bit better for her friendship.”

  • LIS Invites Applications for Public Broadcasting Preservation Fellowship

    LIS Invites Applications for Public Broadcasting Preservation Fellowship

    The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Library & Information Science Program invites applications for one (1) paid fellowship to run from August 2022 through May 2023. This IMLS grant-supported fellowship is for students with a demonstrated interest in audio and visual media archives. The fellow will engage in the digital preservation of public media collections held at ʻUluʻulu: The Henry Ku‘ualoha Giugni Moving Image Archive of Hawaiʻi at the University of Hawaiʻi-West Oahu, using equipment that is located in ʻUluʻulu.

    • Each fellow will receive a stipend for their work over the course of the fellowship, at the rate of $23/hour for $5,152 per semester
    • Fellows are expected to work 16 hours/week on the fellowship over fourteen weeks in the Fall and fourteen weeks in the Spring semester, for a total of 224 hours per semester.
    • This an in-person fellowship and includes an archivist mentor and a faculty advisor. The weekly fellowship work site is at ʻUluʻulu.
    • The fellowship will begin with a three-day, in-person Immersion Training, with all travel costs covered and organized by the fellowship. Dates, locations, and schedule for the Immersion Training will be finalized by May 2022.
    • Fellows will receive travel funding to attend the AMIA 2022 Fall Conference.
    • Prior to the start of the fellowship, fellows will be included in a series of free educational webinars over the summer of 2022 to provide basic training in audiovisual preservation concepts.
    • Fellow will inventory, assess, digitize, create metadata records, and submit materials to the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. Fellows may also create manuals, blog posts, workshops, and conference presentations.

    Eligibility Requirements:

    • Applicants must be students in the UH Mānoa Master of Library & Information Science Program at the time of appointment and must have a demonstrated interest in archives, preservation, and/or broadcast media
    • Must have a GPA of 3.0 or higher
    • Be able to attend a three-day immersive training out of state (fully funded)
    • Students from historically marginalized communities are especially encouraged to apply

    Submission Requirements:

    • Statement (no more than 2 pages) that addresses the class taken and/or work experience that shows your interest in working with AV materials and digital preservation; and reason for interest in the Fellowship, especially work and/or experience with Hawaiian materials or communities
    • Please submit all application materials to Dr. Rich Gazan (gazan@hawaii.edu) by April 22, 2022.

    This is an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant awarded to WGBH (GBH) Educational Foundation in Boston for the Public Broadcasting Preservation Fellowship. The UH Manoa LIS program is one of several project partner programs around the country.