Tag: Illinois

278: Fighting for Academic Librarians: the Impact of Underfunding 

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Guest host Troy Swanson chats with guests Elizabeth Kamper, Gail Porter, and Hunter Dunlap about the ongoing challenges faced by higher education in Illinois due to decades of underfunding, including the devastating impact on librarian positions, particularly at Western Illinois University, which recently eliminated all its faculty librarian roles.

Read the transcript!

Elizabeth Kamper has been teaching information literacy in libraries for 10 years and received their MSLIS from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. They are currently the Information Literacy Librarian and an Associate Professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Elizabeth also teaches in the University Honors Program on ‘Questions and the Spirit of Inquiry’ and ‘the Nature of Liberal Education’. Elizabeth has served on several university and national committees focusing on information literacy in university curriculum and held faculty fellowships supporting the campus freshman experience. Their research interests include criticality in information literacy, LGBTQIA+ librarians, wonder-led inquiry for research and writing, as well as using tabletop gaming to roleplay empathy in the classroom.

Gayle Porter holds the rank of Assistant Professor in the Gwendolyn Brooks Library at Chicago State University. She earned a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science from Brigham Young University and a Master’s degree in History from Chicago State University.  As an academic librarian, her specialty is cataloging materials in all formats. Her research interests include cataloging and metadata description.

Hunter Dunlap is a tenured professor and systems librarian at Western Illinois University, where he serves as the Coordinator of Resource Management Services. Dunlap has written widely about technology and academic libraries over his 28-year career, including authoring the widely held book “Open Source Database Driven Web Development” (Chandos). The senior member of the (all) nine librarian faculty eliminated at Western (effective May 2025), he created the savewiulibrarians.org website to help mobilize support for academic librarianship at WIU, and beyond.

SHOW NOTES:

Save WIU Librarians
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252: RAILS – Reaching Across Illinois Library System

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Steve chats with Janette Derucki and Grant Halter from RAILS: Reaching Across Illinois Library System about how they got interested in the library and data science fields, what RAILS does for libraries in Illinois, how they work to gather and present data via dashboards and other methods, statewide initiatives like the SLIDE and SLATE projects,. and lots of deep data nerdery!

Read the transcript!

Janette Derucki joined RAILS in January 2022 as part of the SLATE (School Library Advocacy Through Education) Project before transitioning to her current role as Data Research Specialist. She is a second-career librarian, earning a Master of Information degree with a concentration in Data Science from Rutgers University in 2021. The use of data for advocacy and to support advancement in the field of library and information science is one of her many interests, and she endeavors to work with library professionals to make a positive impact.

Grant Halter is the Data Analysis Manager at RAILS and has been there for 4.5 years helping steadily grow the Data Analysis Department. Grant joined RAILS after a short stint at the Oak Park Public Library as their Data Analyst, where he learned the ins and outs of the library world and how data can best impact the industry. His background is in applied mathematics, which he utilizes to uncover useful insights that help guide RAILS staff and members with data. His favorite chart is a scatter plot, and his favorite part of his work is developing formulas to equitably distribute grant funding.

SHOW NOTES:

RAILS