School of Information Sciences

Two New Faculty Appointed To School Of Information Sciences at The University Of Pittsburgh

The School of Information Sciences welcomes two new faculty members: Assistant Professor Sherry Koshman and Assistant Professor Judith Jablonski. Both will be teaching courses in the Library and Information Science Department.

Dr. Sherry Koshman

Dr. Koshman was awarded her bachelor’s degree from the University of Saskatchewan and a Master of Library and Information Studies from McGill University. In 1997, she received her Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Information Sciences, where she served as a Visiting Lecturer during 2004-2005. Dr. Koshman also worked as an information retrieval and software testing consultant for quality assurance and large-scale product implementation projects in the telecommunications and health insurance industries for several years. Her research interests include information visualization systems usability testing, web retrieval and search analysis, visualization interface development, and human-computer interaction. Her teaching interests cover Web information retrieval, information visualization, information architecture, digital library services, information technology foundations, and user-focused system design. She will be teaching courses on Information Architecture (LIS 2635) and Introduction to Information Technologies (LIS 2600) to students seeking their MLIS degree.

Koshman’s “Testing User Interaction with a Prototype Visualization-based Information Retrieval System” was recently published in the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. Her “Web-based Visualization Interface Testing: Similarity Judgments” was published in the Journal of Web Engineering in 2004. Dr. Koshman presented on Information Visualization: the Information Architecture Connection at the Information Architecture Summit in Montreal in 2005. She will be making a presentation on “Repeat Visits to Vivisimo.com: Implications for Successive Web searching” at the ASIS&T (American Society for Information Science & Technology) 2005 Conference in November.

Dr. Judith Jablonski

Dr. Judith Jablonski joins the SIS faculty upon completion of her Ph.D. studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Library and Information Studies. She will be awarded her doctorate in Fall of 2005; her dissertation subject is “ Conceptualizing the Field of Library and Information Studies: The Perspective of LIS Faculty and LIS Practitioners in the United States.” Dr. Jablonski holds a bachelor’s degree in English Literature as well as two master’s degrees: one in English from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and one in Library and Information Science from The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.

Jablonski teaches in two areas: Information Organization, which includes courses in subject analysis and indexing, thesaurus construction, information design, the visual presentation of knowledge, and web design and navigation; and the Sociology of Knowledge, which includes courses in adult reading, genre fiction, the graphic novel, manuscript and print culture, and the technology of writing. In 2005-2006, she will be teaching “Organizing Information” (LIS 2001) and “Indexing and Abstracting” (LIS 2452) in both the on-campus and on-line classes for master’s students in the Library and Information Science Department. Dr. Jablonski has extensive professional experience in book, periodical, and database indexing, thesaurus construction and maintenance, in academic library reference, and in professional writing education. Her research interests include professional jurisdiction and disciplinarity, information organization in public and private contexts, communications media, research methods, and the visual structure and presentation of knowledge.

Dr. Jablonski has served as a Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, The Catholic University of America ( Washington, D.C.), the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, and the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. She presented a preliminary report on her doctoral research at the Association for Library and Information Science Education’s Annual Conference in 2003. In 2000, she spoke on “The World Wide Web and the Education of the ‘New Indexer’” at the German-Dutch University Conference: INFORMATION SPECIALISTS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY.

To contact Dr. Koshman, please call 412-624-9441 or e-mail her at skoshman@mail.sis.pitt.edu. To reach Dr. Jablonski, e-mail her at judithj@mail.sis.pitt.edu or call 412-624-9459. For more information about the School of Information Sciences, please visit www.sis.pitt.edu.