Check out my new book!
Coming Summer, 2024
Focusing on needs and services outside the library walls, this book outlines a fresh approach to how libraries can think about and effectively reach underserved populations. Readers will discover strategies for identifying information needs where underserved populations are and learn about many successful services, programs, and partnerships.
Available Summer 2024 from ALA Editions
Focusing on needs and services outside the library walls, this book outlines a fresh approach to how libraries can think about and effectively reach underserved populations. Readers will discover strategies for identifying information needs where underserved populations are and learn about many successful services, programs, and partnerships.
Teaching and Research Philosophy
I am passionate about my work as an educator and about my research in information literacy. I can think of nothing more important in my professional life. These values guide both my teaching of professionals and my research projects.
Teaching Philosophy
I believe that our students deserve the best possible education that we can provide. Because our program is completely online, nearly 50% of our student body is located outside of the state of Mississippi. Therefore our program is persistently compared to other, bigger and better funded programs in other areas of the country. Consequently, it is incumbent upon me to demonstrate every semester that our online education is comparable to, if not better than, other programs. This is what motivates me.
​
I constantly strive to find and adopt into my classes the expertise that will make our students competitive job seekers. Library and Information Science is a technology based field. All the skills that that our students need to learn for their professional life are based on technology. Therefore I must stay current on developments in order to teach them the most up to date best practices. I understand that if I teach outdated practices our student’s education, and degree, is devalued. In my technology course, students are required to investigate, learn, and demonstrate mastery of latest teaching technologies. In my service learning class I adapted a teaching intense pedagogy to a completely online format using online journals, web pages and other learning technology to make the experience relevant and useful to the students.
​
In 2002, the School of Library and Information Science was the first program at Southern Miss to be completely online, and one of the first LIS schools in the nation to offer a completely online program. I joined the SLIS faculty in 2003, and I have been a fierce advocate and defender of online education since that time. We started teaching online in WebCT, and then migrated to Blackboard when the two companies merged, and added Collaborate when it first became available. In 2018, USM adopted Canvas as the LMS university-wide. Throughout it all, my focus has been on serving our students where they are in the best possible manner, and I am proud to be part of this effort.
Literacy
​
Libraries can be the great equalizer in a democratic society by providing access to information and services to those who would not otherwise have it. It is in the best interest of our democracy that all citizens be educated, and that that education begins at birth with parents reading to their children. This belief has guided my research and service work in emergent literacy and parent education. Over the past two years I have worked with Dr. Alicia Westbrook to develop initiatives to increase literacy rates among children in the Hattiesburg community. Starting with a small grant from Target, we devised a program to teach parents about the importance of reading out loud to children and how to do it effectively. Money from the grant provided home libraries of 20-25 books for each child to take home, and the results of the program are published in the Delta Journal of Education. The project served more than 40 children and was so successful that we received a second grant to do a similar program at the Hattiesburg Public School District (HPSD) Zero to Three Literacy Center. The relationship that I have developed with HPSD, which was enriched by my service learning work at the Center, has led to my invitation to sit on the steering committee of the Hattiesburg Excel by 5 program. My hope is that my work there will be the impetus for putting the literacy initiatives that Dr. Westbrook and I designed into place, with research into viability and effectiveness being our academic outcome.
​
Smartphone App Use
​
My passion for the democratic principles of equality and intellectual freedom has also guided my app use research. Smartphones and other mobile devices are readily available tools through which libraries can assert their usefulness in providing authoritative information. My first line of inquiry was to find out how undergraduates were using mobile devices to get information for their academic work. This research found that students were using Google most frequently. These results lead to the next question; what are academic libraries offering to their students on a mobile platform? The answer to this question, considering the ubiquity of mobile devices, was disheartening. This line of inquiry is guided by my firm belief in the importance that libraries meet their users at their own point-of-need.
EDUCATION
CONTENT SPECIALTIES
2003
Ph.D. University of Alabama
Dissertation: The Information Behaviors of Early Childhood Caregivers: Constructing Child Development Knowledge
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Emergent Literacy
Service Learning and Social Justice
Children's and Young Adult Literature
1993 Master of Science (Library and Information Science) University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
​
1992 Master of Arts (Art History)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Thesis: Misogynist Images in Northern Renaissance Woodcuts
​
1989 Bachelor of Arts (Art History) Illinois State University
Teacher Certification
Mississippi Teaching License
5A, K-12 School Library Media