Postdoctoral Fellowship in Academic Libraries 2012

Tim Stinson
Johns Hopkins University

"The two years that I spent as a CLIR postdoctoral fellow provided me with numerous opportunities for personal and professional growth, and my experiences continue to shape my career in fundamental ways. For example, my work on the Roman de la Rose Digital Library afforded me the chance to learn about digital publishing, intellectual property and copyright, funding insitutions and grant writing, and communications between scholars and librarians. Such knowledge is increasingly important in any academic career, but is often not covered in the course of one's graduate education and difficult to obtian while tending to the demands of a busy professional life. The CLIR fellowship provides an ideal environment for expanding one's professional horizons through an exploration of these issues, and of learning about academic libraries and their connections both to the universities they serve and the broader world of scholarship and education."

Current and previous fellows

Fellows' projects and publications

Patricia Hswe
University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign

"As a Fellow, I was engaged in a wide variety of projects: an inventory of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian digital projects; the digitization of a 20th-century Czech and Slovak poster collection; the organization of library tours conducted in languages such as Chinese, Korean, French, Russian, and Thai; and the planning of workshops on text encoding and digitization. The post-doc experience introduced me to alternative career paths and to alternative ideas for tenure-worthy scholarship that "thinks outside the box" of the book. As a result I am committed to fostering strong collaborations between faculty and librarians/archivists toward re-shaping the idea of scholarship in the academy.

In my current position, as Project Manager for NDIIPP (National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program) Partner Projects at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, I help oversee digital preservation research.

Current and previous fellows

Fellows' projects and publications

Elizabeth Waraksa
University of California, Los Angeles

"The CLIR fellowship has enabled me to keep on doing the things that I love—research, reference, and instruction—while also providing me with the opportunity to learn new skills in the library, such as TEI XML for my work on the UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology. I have also gained insight into the nature and challenges of collaborative and committee work, which is extremely instructive after the largely solitary experience of writing a dissertation. I feel that the CLIR postdoc offers a special kind of on-the-job training that prepares one well for a future in academia; it provides a glimpse into the full range of possible careers for Humanities doctorates."

Current and previous fellows

Fellows' projects and publications

Wesley Raabe
University of Nebraska-Lincoln

"During the period of the CLIR fellowship, I expanded my knowledge of digital projects and came to better appreciate the collaborative relationship between scholars and librarians as co-creators and as disseminators of knowledge. I also used the fellowship period to push my own work forward. I trust that my work will appeal to a broader audience than it would have without the fellowship experience."

Current and previous fellows

Fellows' projects and publications

Amanda Watson
University of Virginia

"I was interested in librarianship and information science but not sure whether I wanted to leap into library school immediately after getting my Ph.D. The CLIR fellowship let me explore a wide range of aspects of academic librarianship, try out different roles, and decide what kind of librarian I wanted to become. The fellowship experience also connected me with a network of colleagues and friends in the library and digital humanities fields. Their excitement and imagination were contagious. I’m now a research and instruction librarian with an MSLIS, a position I doubt I’d have without the experiences and contacts from my year as a postdoctoral fellow."

Current and previous fellows

Fellows' projects and publications