UB Library Professor Awarded Diversity Grant from American Library Association

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Lorna Peterson, Ph.D., of Buffalo, associate professor of library and information studies in the University at Buffalo School of Informatics, has received a 2002 American Library Association (ALA) Diversity Grant to study how issues of social diversity are integrated into library-school curriculums.

Peterson is one of the first three recipients of the award, which was initiated this spring by the ALA Office for Diversity to help address critical gaps in knowledge about these issues in the field of library and information science.

Her research project will involve an audit of library program materials to see if and how diversity is communicated as an important program mission. She also will survey the curricula of library schools and document courses that address issues of multiculturalism or diversity.

Peterson's study results will be published in conjunction with the ALA and presented at the association's 2003 annual conference. In addition to the $2,000 research grant, she will receive a $500 grant from the ALA to cover travel expenses to the conference.

Peterson's professional career and research has centered on bibliographic library instruction and she has published important bibliographies in the social sciences.

These include bibliographies on absenteeism, police misconduct, ethics and public administration accountability, curfews, blue-ribbon commissions and education reforms, educational policymaking and interpretation, disaster relief and more than 40 other titles.

She was elected last year to the board of directors of the National Accrediting Agency for Clinical Laboratory Sciences and is an active member of the ALA and chairs the Justin Winsor Prize Committee of the ALA's Library History Round Table.

She also is on the board of directors of SIMILE, a refereed e-journal published by the University of Toronto Press focused on media literacy instruction in libraries and how role teachers, librarians, and information professionals can promote understanding of the social, cultural, economic and political forces that shape traditional and new-media production.