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The (ALISE) has awarded its to Dietmar Wolfram. Wolfram is Associate Dean and Head of School for 51����’s School of Information Studies, now part of the College of Community Engagement and Professions.  

The Association for Library and Information Science Education is the global leader in education for the information professions, promoting innovative, high-quality education for the information professions internationally through engagement, advocacy and research. 

ALISE is a nonprofit organization that serves as the intellectual home of faculty, staff, and students in library and information science and allied disciplines.  

The organization will hold its 2023 conference in Milwaukee Oct. 2-6. 

Wolfram teaches courses in information science and research methods. Dr. Wolfram’s research interests include applied informetrics & scholarly communication; information retrieval; and information science education. His work has been funded by OCLC, University of Wisconsin System, U.S. Department of Education, Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, Thomson Reuters and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

The Library Journal recently named SOIS alum Jamar Rahming (MLIS ’08) one of its 2023 Movers & Shakers in the Community Builder category. Each year, the honors “The People Shaping the Future of Libraries” in its edition.

Rahming, the executive director of the Wilmington Public Library in Delaware, was honored for his innovative programming and community outreach at the library.

Since he became executive director in 2018, Rahming has brought in numerous celebrities to promote reading and libraries. Among those who have made in-person appearances are: Angela Davis, LeVar Burton, Dolly Parton (who selected WPL for her early childhood reading initiative), Dennis Rodman, Pam Grier, Anthony Ray Hinton, Jennifer Lewis, Malcolm Jamal Warner, and a cast reunion of A Different World.

The Wilmington library also organized the city’s inaugural Juneteenth celebration in 2021—one of the city’s first major public events in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic—headlined by renowned rapper KRS-One.

“Pop culture and the arts and humanities create social cohesion,” Rahming told the Library Journal. “It builds bridges; it brings people together because it’s something that we all agree on.”

He told the Library Journal he was proud of the fact that a number of the library’s capacity-crowd events have drawn residents from every zip code, socioeconomic class, race, and demographic that the library serves.

Terry O’Byrne, president of the Wilmington Library Board, who nominated Rahming, said that when Rahming joined WPL, he aimed to “empower this community by first empowering his staff.” Rahming’s reinvigoration of WPL and fundraising skills also drew $720,000 for capital improvements,” O’Byrne added.

Rahming’s approach has helped lead to partnerships with local barbershops to develop a literacy program for at-risk youth; an alliance with the Delaware Black Chamber of Commerce for an annual “Pitch or Ditch” minority small business competition, with $15,000 in cash prizes for local entrepreneurs; and many other initiatives.

“The library is a citadel of democracy and intellectual freedom,” says Rahming, “and we’re a space that welcomes all ideas and all people.”

Milwaukee-based  is leading the way in providing accessible STEM education.

The company has created a partnership with University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (51����) that will allow Rex Academy students to transfer up to six credits of coursework toward a Bachelor of Science in Information Science & Technology degree at 51����.

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A Fall 2022 graduate of the 51���� School of Information Studies MLIS program with a concentration in Archives, Brendan Dooley would tell current and future students to get out in the field. “Get some experience in the area you think you want to work in. Do some real work and do it for a while, learn about the ups and downs of the work to see if what you are doing fulfills you, not just makes you happy, there’s a difference.” 

Gaining real-world experience while pursuing his studies and finding a profession that makes him feel fulfilled is exactly what Brendan did. A trade journalist for 20 years, Brendan entered the MLIS program in the Spring of 2021, just after the Covid-19 pandemic. He had been considering graduate school for a few years, and circumstances related to the pandemic created an opportunity for him to return to school full-time. 

During his time at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee (51����), Brendan took full advantage of the opportunity to gain real-world experience by participating in three different internship opportunities. During his first Summer in the program, he participated in a three-credit fieldwork class in the 51���� Libraries – Archives Department. This fieldwork experience then led to a part-time internship with the Archives.  

One of the projects that Brendan worked on during his time in the Archives was a collection on Jim Northrup, an Anishinaabe newspaper columnist, storyteller, poet, and performer from Minnesota. “Working on the Northrup collection really solidified for me that I wanted to be here. I wanted to help tell people’s stories, to help build collections that shared the lost voices or marginalized voices, and to help people gain access to the information we had in our collections.”  

Brendan’s exploration of the profession and hands-on experience continued with an internship as a digitization archivist with the Ward Irish Music Archives and a reference internship at 51����’s American Geographic Society Library (AGSL). As the AGSL’s first-ever reference intern, both Brendan and his supervisor – AGSL’s Public Service Librarian and SOIS Alum Georgia Brown, learned a lot from each other, “Brendan was the first intern I hired in my role at the AGSL, and he taught me quite a bit about being someone’s advisor. Having him ask me questions about how I handled a reference question or why I chose to put out certain materials for a class reinforced my own knowledge.”

The knowledge that Brendan gained from his internship experiences goes well beyond the process, procedures, and technical aspects of the job. From resume advice to reviewing cover letters and job leads, the professional mentorship of his supervisors has added immeasurable value to his experience. 

Brendan’s internships along with his MLIS coursework has given him a new perspective on his role as a librarian and archivist, “Even though many of the classes in the program have a different focus such as foundations, or processing, they all touch on the underlying nature of the profession – which I’ve come to think of more as an activist role rather than a neutral role. The coursework touched on not only what libraries and archives hold in their collections, but also what they don’t hold. What voices are being heard and what voices are not being heard.”  

“Thanks to my SOIS studies, I understand more clearly how important it is to seek out and promote the marginalized voices and stories through the archives by what we collect and how we promote it.”