Fall 2008 - Faculty of Information - University of Toronto

HOLDING THE FORTJens-Erik Mai, Acting DeanTHE FACULTY has gone through severalmajor transformations this year. First,we have successfully recruited a newdean who will begin on January 1, 2009.Seamus Ross comes to us fromGlasgow, Scotland, to take over fromBrian Cantwell Smith who steppeddown as dean on June 30, 2008, afterserving the Faculty for five years. Inthat time, he dramatically changed andexpanded the iSchool. Brian will be ona well-deserved sabbatical until nextsummer when he returns to the Faculty as Professor, andDirector of the Coach House Institute.Second, you will have noticed that we changed our name tothe Faculty of Information. This change follows the trend ofother North American (and a few international) InformationSchools. While this modification may not seem dramatic —merely dropping "studies" from the name — it does signalmore fundamental changes for the Faculty.We are broadening the scope of the Faculty and adding moreareas of specialization while maintaining our strengths inLibrary and Information Science, Archives and RecordsManagement, Museum Studies, and Information Systems.The third transformation relates to our faculty roster. I ampleased to welcome seven new faculty members: JenniferCarter, Alan Galey, Jenna Hartel, Heather MacNeil, andMatt Ratto, who joined us this summer, Aviv Shachak whojoined us in October 2007, and Kelly Lyons who was recruitedin January 2008. They will help us move the Faculty forwardand increase the number of subject areas we cover.This growth, however, requires more space. Thus, the fourthdevelopment is that the Faculty has acquired additional officefacilities on the third floor of the New College residence at 45Willcocks Avenue. We have dubbed this area "iSouth." Thisexpansion has almost doubled our space.Lastly, please join me at the Bertha Bassam Lecture by DavidWeinberger on October 23, 2008. Dr. Weinberger is the authorof the critically-acclaimed book, Everything Is Miscellaneous:The Power of the New Digital Disorder, which questions longheldassumptions about how information is catalogued andclassified. I enjoyed this book, and it has changed my thinkingabout information, classification, and the skills required ofgraduates of this Faculty. I hope you will find his lectureintriguing, and that it will make you think about what thefuture holds for us.INTRODUCING PROFESSOR SEAMUS ROSSINCOMING DEAN, FACULTY OF INFORMATIONA PASSION for preserving cultural heritage,teaching curation, and research into digital repositories,digital asset management, information technology, and digitalpreservation, landed him the job.In January 2009, the Faculty of Information will welcomeSeamus Ross, who will officially begin his seven-year termas Dean. Currently, he is Professor of Humanities Informaticsand Digital Curation at the University of Glasgow. BrianCantwell Smith stepped down as dean of the Faculty ofInformation in June. Prof. Jens-Erik Mai is Acting Dean untilProf. Ross begins his term.Prof. Ross is the Director of Humanities Computing andInformation Management at the University of Glasgow andruns the Humanities Advanced Technology and InformationInstitute (HATII), which he founded in 1997. HATII offersprograms of study at undergraduate level in Arts and MediaInformatics and postgraduate level in informationmanagement and preservation and computer forensics. Heconducts innovative research into the use of information andcommunication technology (ICT) within the humanities,archives, libraries, and museums, and promotes collaborativeIT-based research within the arts and humanities. Since 2004,Prof. Ross has also been the Associate Director of the UnitedKingdom’s Digital Curation Centre.Although Prof. Ross works in Scotland, he was born in theUnited States, where he earned his BA from Vassar College,and his MA from the University of Pennsylvania. He obtainedhis DPhil from the University of Oxford. Prof. Ross is acommitted member of a number of national and internationalorganizations, steering groups, and project committees,including the International Advisory Board for PreservingAccess to our Digital Future (University of North CarolinaChapel Hill), and the Virtual Knowledge Studio for theHumanities and Social Sciences (Royal Netherlands Academyof Arts and Sciences).We will be organizing a welcome reception for Prof. Rossshortly after his arrival. Watch for details!informed | september 2008 5