Dr. Toni Samek Selected as Chair of uAlberta School of Library and Information Studies

January 5, 2015

Dear Colleagues,

Based on an open search for Chair of the School of Library and Information Studies (SLIS) at the University of Alberta, and the excellent work of our Selection Committee in December, I am delighted to announce that Dr. Toni Samek emerged as the top candidate for this leadership position, and has agreed to take up the leadership role July 1st, 2015.

Dr. Samek is currently a Professor at SLIS, where she began teaching in 1994. She holds a PhD in Library and Information Studies from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1998). Toni’s books include Intellectual Freedom and Social Responsibility in American Librarianship 1967 to 1974 and Librarianship and Human Rights: A twenty-first century guide. Her scholarship has appeared in translation in such countries as Japan, Spain, Sweden, Brazil, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Turkey. An award winning teacher, Toni received the debut Library Journal Teaching Award in 2007, has been acknowledged with a Faculty of Education Graduate Teaching Award, and in 2012, she received a 3M National Teaching Fellowship from the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education – the first scholar in the field of library and information studies to receive the ‘3M’.

Toni’s professional citizenship includes serving as founding member and first chair of the Association for Library and Information Science Education’s Special Interest Group on Information Ethics. She twice chaired the Canadian Library Association’s Advisory Committee on Intellectual Freedom and she recently completed two consecutive three-year terms on the Canadian Association of University Teacher’s Academic Freedom and Tenure Committee. In recognition of her significant contributions, Toni was honoured with the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Library and Information Studies (SLIS) Distinguished Alumna Award in 2013.

Fern Snart
Dean, Faculty of Education