University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Library and Information Science Program

Month: May 2022

  • So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (by Cheri Ebisu)

    So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (by Cheri Ebisu)

    Numerous faculty asked if I wanted them write a post for my departure as Program Coordinator and I felt bad about asking them to do more work, but what they also didn’t know is that they have already given me too much power and all I sow is chaos carefully crafted as normalcy. I might as well wield this power one last time on our website (newly updated and designed by current LIS student, Michelle Carino!)

    My experience as PC in the last several years? 10/10, would recommend. Thank you for letting me be your cheerleader, chocolate-supplier, unqualified tech support, anxious instructor, and that annoying presence in your inboxes, you know, the one with all the frogs.

    If my only legacy is an actual LIS frog mascot, I would be so honored. Don’t let the dream die in my absence. Do not let the LIS frog go gentle into that good night.

    My Work Dad, Rich Gazan, has always encouraged me to post updates on some cool stuff I’ve been doing outside of LIS, but I screeched like a panicked pterodactyl every time, and though that has not deterred him thus far, he has suggested it one last time. And who am I to deny my overlord, on this, my last day?

    So, anyway, I published a short story with Tor.Com last year, entitled “Blood in the Thread.” That was pretty nuts and lots of nice people read it! It is now in two Best Of 2021 anthologies, one with Tor.Com and another with Neon Hemlock. Radical.

    Another short story, “Monsters Calling Home” found a place in a horror anthology, What One Wouldn’t Do, edited by Scott J. Moses, which became a whole physical book that you can buy. Wild!

    I somehow got a literary agent through all of this, which also seems like a prolonged hallucination and yet it continues to be so in reality. The good news is this has enabled me to work on two short novellas (one a botanical space horror, the other a queer, mecha Urashima Taro retelling), and a whole mess of a novel that will be something, someday, maybe. The bad news is that to do dangerous things like follow my dreams or whatever, I have to give up this crazy rewarding job with LIS.

    Thanks for letting me run around asking questions, sharing questionable YouTube videos, learning a bunch of stuff about the UH System (a never-ending labyrinth), doing a bunch of things as the Kid Behind the Curtain, teaching a class (haha, whose idea was that?), and basically having fun for the past four years. It’s been a really good time.

    Thus, in the immortal words of Douglas Adams: So long, and thanks for all the fish.

     

  • Aloha Dr. Irvin!

    Aloha Dr. Irvin!

    Associate Professor and Associate LIS Chair Dr. Vanessa Irvin will be joining the faculty of East Carolina University in Fall 2022.  Since she arrived at LIS in 2015, we’ve all benefited from Dr. V’s dedication to the highest standards of LIS research, education and practice, and her efforts in building communities of reflective LIS professionals in Hawaiʻi continue to have a positive impact on local practice.  We invite you to view a Padlet with some messages of appreciation from LIS students, staff, alumni and faculty.  Please join us in wishing her well on her next adventure!

  • LIS Students Help Raise Over $5K to Support School Librarianship

    Students in Dr. Wertheimer’s LIS 650 Management of Libraries and Information Centers class this spring completed service projects in the local community to practice their managerial skills. Jennifer Duncklee, Michelle Hatami, Lori Misaka, and Jesse Shiroma worked with Kalani High School librarian Daphne Miyashiro to raise funds for the Hawai‘i Association of School Librarians (HASL). Daphne was the HASL National Library Week chair, and set up a fundraiser at Barnes & Noble; the LIS student group helped coordinate marketing, scheduled volunteers, created promotional and advocacy materials, and worked at the book fair. They are pleased to report that this year’s fundraising total is $5056.46 from in-store and online sales, which will go toward supporting HASL’s efforts for school libraries. A big mahalo to the volunteers, Barnes & Noble, and Daphne for helping to make Jenn, Michelle, Lori, and Jesse’s project a success! 

    Other student team projects included a “Lei Making 101” event at a local library (Kylee Munro & Jessika Ross), WCDI / Salawaket Crossing (Michelle Carino),  “Ka Hana Mana a Nā Haumāna”(Ikaika Keliiliki), and creating a plan for a STEM-lego event on a Hawaii Island Public Library (Hayley Barte, Bianca Nabarrete-Lopez, & Bonnie Barron). Wertheimer explained that these projects highlight our program’s interest in community engagement and also let students experiment with doing real-world projects and employing  different managerial competencies. He added that all of these projects demonstrate the importance of developing leaders who can help libraries to meet local problems with innovative solutions. 

  • Jason Ford defends thesis “Indigenous Voices Informing Academic Information Literacy: Critical Discourses, Relationality, and Indigeneity for the Good of the Whole”

    The LIS Program is pleased to announce that Jason Ford successfully defended his thesis on how Indigenous research methodologies can better inform information literacy. His abstract follows:
    Instructional librarianship in public post-secondary institutions requires that librarians be responsive to a diversity of paradigms and student needs, including Indigenous contexts. Although constrained by institutional infrastructures, Indigenous research methodologies and epistemologies provide frameworks for Indigenous students and librarians to practice and support inquiry in ways that are responsive to their culturally- specific needs. Currently, research in library and information science about how Indigenous research methodologies and epistemologies can support academic librarianship is limited, especially concerning how Indigenous voices can inform information literacy as a whole. Using semi-structured interviews, 4 Indigenous LIS and academic professionals and an Apache-Comanche elder were interviewed to better understand how Indigenous voices can inform information literacy in the public academy. Responses were coded using thematic analysis, and results demonstrate that Indigenous voices can inform information literacy in consideration of relevancy, value neutrality, positionality, through being critical of hegemonic infrastructures including technology, prioritizing native voices, and centering relationality. This has implications in strategic planning, curriculum development, and informing social paradigms that support Indigenous people in post-secondary education while addressing modern issues for the good of the whole.
    Committee: Tonia Sutherland (Chair), Meera Garud, Keahiahi LongCongratulations, Jason!