Lawton joins SIS faculty

 
     
 

P. LawtonThe School of Information Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh is pleased to announce that Patricia A. Lawton will be joining the School’s faculty as an Assistant Professor in November of 2006.  Professor Lawton, who earned her PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Library and Information Studies, will begin teaching “Organizing Information” (LIS 2001) in January of 2007.  Her PhD research resulted in a dissertation titled “The Organizational Forms of Digital Libraries:  An Analysis and Framework for Classifying Personnel and Work Structures of ARL Member Digital Initiatives.” 

Lawton’s teaching interests include cataloging and classification, organization of information, digital librarianship, research methods and library management.  Her research interests encompass digital libraries, information technology and information work, LIS education, syntax and subject retrieval, and online pedagogy.  After receiving her MLS degree from Indiana University, Lawton held the position of Visiting Coordinator of Instructional Design at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign; she has also served as an adjunct faculty member at University of Wisconsin-Madison and Indiana University at South Bend.   She was recognized many times for her teaching excellence while at UIUC, as she was named to the University of Illinois’s “List of Teachers Ranked Excellent by Their Students.” 

Lawton’s “Teaching and Learning Online:  LEEP’S Tribal Gleanings” was published as a chapter in Learning, Culture and Community:  Multiple Perspectives and Practices in Online Education:  Research and Practice (2004).  She recently finished an invited paper for a special issue (December 2006) of Cataloguing and Classification Quarterly on “Catalogers in the Metadata World and the Future of Cataloging.”  In January 2006, Lawton was featured at the Association for Library and Information Science (ALISE) Annual Conference at San Antonio in January 2006.  Her presentation was on “Proposed Collection Development Plan for the Metadata Education Research and Information Clearinghouse.”  She also gave a presentation on “Best Practices in Online Pedagogy for Library and Information Science” at the ALISE Annual Meeting in 2005. 

The School of Information Sciences is pleased to welcome Professor Lawton to the University of Pittsburgh.  “Patricia’s skills and knowledge of information organizing and indexing will be most welcome to our faculty and students,” explains Ronald L. Larsen, Dean of the School.  “Her interest in Digital Libraries is particularly appreciated as SIS introduces its new specialization in Digital Libraries.  Our program and our students will benefit greatly from Dr. Lawton’s expertise in these critical areas.” 

 
 

 

 

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