Bharat Mehra is the EBSCO Endowed Chair in Social Justice and professor in the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Alabama, USA. [1] [2] He is an India-born American library school educator, known for his theoretical and action research, [3] and is author of the Social Justice Laws of Librarianship, which extends Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan's Five Laws of Library Science to address contemporary inequities. [4] Since January 2021, Mehra has been the Series Editor of Advances in Librarianship . [5]
Mehra received his PhD in library and information science from the University of Illinois School of Information Sciences in 2004. He also earned an M.A. in South Asian and Middle Eastern studies (1999) and an MLA in landscape architecture from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a B.A. in architecture from the School of Planning and Architecture in New Delhi, India. [6]
His academic experience includes being an assistant professor (2005–2011) and associate professor (2011–2018) at the School of Information Sciences, University of Tennessee, Knoxville. [7] Since January 2019, he has been the EBSCO Endowed Chair in Social Justice and professor, at the School of Library and Information Studies, University of Alabama. [8]
Mehra was one of three people, along with Donna and George Hoemann, who made the proposal for the Commission for LGBT People at the University of Tennessee, [9] resulting in the creation of the university's first commission for LGBTQ+ communities. [10] Mehra was interviewed by personal story as a nonwhite gay man in academia is also available in an oral interview. [9]
Colon classification (CC) is a library catalogue system developed by Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan. It was an early faceted classification system. The first edition of colon classification was published in 1933, followed by six more editions. It is especially used in libraries in India.
The University of Illinois System is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Illinois, consisting of three campuses located in Chicago, Springfield, and Urbana-Champaign. Across all campuses, the University of Illinois System enrolls more than 94,000 students. It had an operating budget of $7.18 billion in 2021. Its oldest university, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, was established as the state's land grant university in 1867.
Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan was an Indian librarian and mathematician. His most notable contributions to the field were his five laws of library science and the development of the first major faceted classification system, the colon classification. He is considered to be the father of library science, documentation, and information science in India and is widely known throughout the rest of the world for his fundamental thinking in the field. His birthday is observed every year as National Librarian Day in India.
The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (LAS) is the largest college of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The college was established in 1913 through the merger of the College of Literature and Arts and the College of Science. The college offers seventy undergraduate majors, as well as master's and Ph.D. programs. As of 2020, there are nearly 12,000 undergraduate students and 2,500 graduate students attending the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
The School of Information Sciences, also The iSchool at Illinois, is an undergraduate and graduate school at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign. Its Master of Science in Library and Information Science is currently accredited in full good standing by the American Library Association. The school is a charter member of the iSchool initiative.
Beta Phi Mu is an American honor society for library & information science and information technology. Founded by a group of librarians and library educators, the society's express purpose is to recognize and encourage "superior academic achievement" among library and information studies students. Beta Phi Mu now has 31 active chapters in the U.S. and abroad, continues to sponsor various publications, and funds several scholarships.
The Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) is an annual international forum focusing on digital libraries and associated technical, practical, and social issues. It is jointly sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery and the IEEE Computer Society. It was formed in 2000 by combining the ACM Digital Libraries Conference (DL) and the IEEE CS Advances in Digital Libraries (ADL) Conference.
Frederick Wilfrid ("Wilf") Lancaster was a British-American information scientist. He immigrated to the US in 1959 and worked as information specialist for the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland, from 1965 to 1968. He was a professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana, from 1972 to 1992 and professor emeritus from 1992 to 2013. He continued as an honored scholar after retirement speaking on the evolution of librarianship in the 20th and 21st century.
The Alice G. Smith Lecture, established in 1989, is sponsored by the University of South Florida School of Information. The lecture is an annual recognition of a scholar or author whose achievements have been instrumental in the development of librarianship or information studies. The lecture series honors the memory of the School's first director, Alice Gullen Smith, known for her work with youth and bibliotherapy. The Lecture Fund was created with the purpose of memorializing the work of Smith, who was central to the School's first accreditation by the American Library Association in 1975. Florida Library Association archivist, Bernadette Storck has provided an oral history of the development of libraries in Tampa, Florida that details the contributions of Smith including her establishment of the Tampa Book Fair that encouraged thousands of children to foster a love for books and reading
Warden Boyd Rayward is an Australian librarian and scholar, best known as the biographer of Paul Otlet.
Kathleen de la Peña McCook is a library scholar and librarian. She is a Distinguished University Professor in the School of Information at the University of South Florida. Much of her work centers around human rights, First Amendment issues, and the freedom of information.
The University Library at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign comprises a network of physical and digital libraries. It provides resources and services to the university's students, faculty, staff, and the broader academic community.
John W. Berry is an American librarian. Berry served as president of the American Library Association from 2001 to 2002, leading the profession's response to the Children's Internet Protection Act.
Edward Gailon Holley was an American librarian, library historian, and educator. Holley graduated from David Lipscomb College in Nashville, Tennessee in 1949 with a bachelor's degree in English. In 1951 he graduated from George Peabody College for Teachers in Nashville, Tennessee with a master's in library science. Holley went on to receive his Ph.D. in library science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1961. He wrote Charles Evans: American Bibliographer.
Barbara J. Ford is an American librarian who served as president of the American Library Association from 1997 to 1998. She earned a bachelor's degree from Illinois Wesleyan University, a master's degree in International Relations from Tufts University and a master's degree in library science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Beverly P. Lynch is an American scholar, professor, librarian, and administrator. She was president of the American Library Association from 1985 to 1986.
Abigail A. Salyers was a microbiologist who pioneered the field of human microbiome research. Her work on the bacterial phylum Bacteroidetes and its ecology led to a better understanding of antibiotic resistance and mobile genetic elements. At a time where the prevailing paradigm was focused on E. coli as a model organism, Salyers emphasized the importance of investigating the breadth of microbial diversity. She was one of the first to conceptualize the human body as a microbial ecosystem. Over the course of her 40-year career, she was presented with numerous awards for teaching and research and an honorary degree from ETH Zurich, and served as president of the American Society for Microbiology.
Nicole Amy Cooke is an African-American librarian and the Augusta Baker Endowed Chair at the University of South Carolina. Her research focus on critical cultural information studies in libraries and her advocacy for social justice have earned recognition in the library profession.
Mary Niles Maack was an American librarian and scholar known for her work on comparative librarianship and the history of the book.
Leigh Stewart Estabrook is Dean Emerita at the University of Illinois School of Information Sciences. She is a sociologist and library and information science professor, noted for her innovations in research, including building a diverse faculty actively engaged in research ranging from historical work to digital library initiative projects. She was president of the Association for Library and Information Science Education in 1988-1989.