Gregory B. Newby passed away October 21, 2025. Newby was an assistant professor at the iSchool at Illinois from 1991 to 1997 and held a joint appointment in the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) as a senior research scientist.
In addition to the University of Illinois, Newby spent his academic career at the University of North Carolina, University of Alaska Fairbanks, and King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia.
Newby held a PhD in information transfer from Syracuse University and an MBA in sustainable systems from Bainbridge Graduate Institute. He studied communications and psychology at the University at Albany for his bachelor's and master's degrees.
Newby's legacy at the iSchool looms large. Newby taught graduate-level courses in information technology; networking tools and use; information organization and system design; and user-based design and analysis. In 1993, he co-founded Prairienet, a revolutionary online information and resource network for Champaign-Urbana and the surrounding East-Central Illinois region. This free community network provided an entry point and useful resources for regional users who were just discovering the internet.
"Working with Greg Newby managing the technical components of Prairienet proved transformative," said Teaching Associate Professor Martin Wolske. "It was a shift from a technical focus on the internet as location to distribute raw data to a community networking focus, always with an eye towards advancing ways people could use the Internet for information exchange."
He also helped pioneer the iSchool's first online degree program, which is still in place today. In 1996, he was appointed as assistant dean for one year to inform the design of Leep, then known as Library Education Experimental Program. His rich knowledge of information systems and technology brought a depth of foresight to the possibilities that technology could deliver in the future, setting up the online MSLIS program for decades of success and national recognition.
"Greg Newby was committed to applying technology to open doors for higher education," said Professor Emerita Linda C. Smith. "He identified technologies that could be used to support both synchronous and asynchronous communication among the first cohort of Leep students ranging in location from Alaska to Massachusetts."
Newby went on to be an integral volunteer of Project Gutenberg, an online library of more than 75,000 free ebooks. His work with Project Gutenberg led him to found and lead the nonprofit Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation in the early 2000s. In 2020, Newby and his wife Ilana Kingsley moved to Whitehorse, Yukon, where he worked in IT for the government of Yukon, Canada. They also ran a dog sledding rescue kennel.
"Greg Newby was often identified as a 'technologist,' but he was fundamentally a librarian who believed that knowledge should belong to everyone, and built the information commons accordingly," wrote Adjunct Lecturer Anita Coleman (PhD '96), in a tribute to her former professor in Infophilia. "He influenced a generation of professionals through his teaching at leading library schools and through his 25 years of volunteer service to Project Gutenberg."
Photo courtesy of Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (pglaf.org), CC BY 4.0.