Bonn delivers talk at Fiesole Collection Development Retreat

Senior Lecturer Maria Bonn traveled across the pond recently to participate in the 2014 Fiesole Collection Development Retreat, held April 10-12 in Cambridge, England. This annual meeting draws information professionals and industry representatives from around the world to discuss developments and issues in collection development.

“Fiesole is a wonderful opportunity to engage in high-level conversations with publishers and librarians together, to explore our shared concerns and strategize about ways to work together in the future,” said Bonn.

On April 11 Bonn delivered a talk titled “Training and Hiring the Next Generation: New Directions in Information Education.” 

Abstract: As has been evident since the widespread library of and support for digital technologies and networked communication, academic libraries are busily engaged in developing new activities and services to support the academic mission and the creation and distribution of scholarship. The past several years have seen these libraries emerging as publishers, as data service providers and as providers of (often open) educational materials. Concomitant with the rise of these activities has been the need for staff to support them,  meaning that libraries are looking for staff with skills sets that are different in kind than those in traditional library training programs or that apply traditional skills in new ways. To meet the needs of the profession and to successfully prepare their graduates for employment, schools of information and library science are responding by providing new kinds of training and education. This talk will examine these emergent services and describe the accompanying emergent educational trends.

Bonn teaches courses on the role of libraries in scholarly communication and publishing. Her research interests include publishing, scholarly communication, networked communication, and the economics of information. Prior to her teaching appointment at GSLIS, Bonn served as the associate university librarian for publishing at the University of Michigan Library, with responsibility for publishing and scholarly communications initiatives, including the University of Michigan Press and the Scholarly Publishing Office. She received a bachelor's degree from the University of Rochester, master's and doctoral degrees in American Literature from SUNY Buffalo, and a master's in information and library science from the University of Michigan.

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