$1 Million Gift Honors Professor Allen Smith

The family of GSLIS Professor Allen Smith has made a $1 million gift from his estate to pay tribute to Dr. Smith's 30- year Simmons career. This generous gift has endowed two funds: one to establish a visiting scholars program, and a second to enhance a scholarship created at GSLIS in the late professor's honor after he passed away on August 2, 2008. (Read more...)

GSLIS Ranked in Top 10 by U.S. News

GSLIS was ranked among the nation's top 10 schools of library and information studies in the U.S. News & World Report's 2010 edition of "America's Best Graduate Schools." The rankings were released online at the end of May and are featured in the May 2009 issue of U.S. News.

Simmons GSLIS is the only library and information science school in New England to be ranked in this category this year. Additionally, it was in the top 10 category for the specialty rankings of Archives and Preservation, and Services for Children and Youth.

To read the full article, visit: http://www.simmons.edu/overview/about/news/press/817.php.

In Memory of Judith Krug

Judith Fingeret Krug, the long-time director of the American Library Association's (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) and executive director of the Freedom to Read Foundation, who fought censorship on behalf of the nation's libraries, died April 11 after a lengthy illness.

Michèle Cloonan says, "Judy Krug was a petite woman with an outsized personality. She had a wonderful sense of humor, but she was quite serious in her pursuit of intellectual freedom. Her classes were lively, serious, intense, disputatious. Students who took the first course that she taught at GSLIS were so inspired by her that they made an embroidery of the First Amendment and presented it to her at the last class." For more information about Krug's career, visit: http://www.ala.org/ ala/newspresscenter/news/pressreleases2009/april2009/oifkrug.cfm.

IMLS Grant Awarded to Simmons GSLIS Faculty

Professors Jeannette Bastian, Ross Harvey, and Martha Mahard, and dean and professor, Michèle V. Cloonan have been awarded an Institute of Museum and Library Services grant of over $450K for their project, "Curriculum, Cooperation, Convergence, Capacity — Four C's for the Development of Cultural Heritage Institutions: Libraries, Museums and Archives in the New England Area."

GSLIS will partner with New England cultural institutions to incorporate museum informatics and data stewardship into its existing program of study. For more information, please see the IMLS press release at: http://www.imls.gov/news/2009/061709b_list.shtm#MA