| Plenary Speakers |
The plenary speakers at LRSIV are Dorothy E. Smith (Opening Plenary) and John Buschman (Closing Plenary).
Dr. Dorothy E. Smith, Professor Emerita, Ontario Institute for
Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto & Adjunct Professor,
Department of Sociology, University of Victoria
Dr. Dorothy E. Smith is professor emerita in the Department of Sociology & Equity Studies in Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto and adjunct professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Victoria. She holds B.Sc. in sociology from the London School of Economics and a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley.
A renowned sociologist and pioneer in the field of feminist sociology, Smith’s work is focused on developing a sociology for people and on applying a feminist perspective to sociology and institutional ethnography.
Smith’s ideas are theoretically sophisticated, but her emphasis on learning to “think beyond the local,” is both accessible and relevant to professionals who act as intermediaries between people and institutions. Her writings on the sociology of knowledge and her pioneering work in the development of the institutional ethnography research approach are widely employed by scholars and practitioners in the human service professions.
In particular, Smith’s work provides the LIS community with strategies to bring into view mechanisms by which information work can be “hooked into the ruling relations,” thereby undermining the democratic goals of the work -- despite workers’ best intentions. More significantly, her work affords researchers a way to include practitioners’ voices in conversations about practice. A body of institutional ethnography research literature demonstrates a variety of ways in which scholars and professionals have worked to jointly explicate the social organization of frontline work from the standpoint of those who carry out the work.
Smith has received numerous awards for her body of work, including the Canadian Sociology and Anthropology Association’s Outstanding Contribution Award (1990) and the American Sociological Association’s Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award (1999) and the Jessie Bernard Award for Feminist Sociology (1993).
Her books include The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology (University of Toronto Press, 1987), for which she received the John Porter Award in 1990; The Conceptual Practises of Power: A Feminist Sociology of Knowledge (University of Toronto Press, 1990); Texts, Facts and Femininity: Exploring the Relations of Ruling (Routledge, 1990); Writing the Social: Critique, Theory and Investigations (University of Toronto Press, 1998); and, most recently, Institutional Ethnography: A Sociology for People (Altamira Press, 2005).
John Buschman, Associate University Librarian for Collections Development, Preservation, and Scholarly Communication, Georgetown University Library, Washington, D.C.
John Buschman holds a B.S. in history and sociology and an M.L.S. from
Ball State University, and an M.A. in American Studies from St. Joseph’s
University. He has published three books: Dismantling the Public
Sphere: Situating and Sustaining Libraries in the Age of the New Public
Philosophy
(2003), Critical Approaches to Information Technology in
Librarianship: Foundations and Applications (1993, editor and author
of 3 chapters), and Library as Place: History, Community and Culture
(2006, co-editor with Gloria J. Leckie and co-author of the introductory
chapter with Leckie) – all from Libraries Unlimited/Greenwood Publishing
Group. Dismantling the Public Sphere was the recipient of the American
Library Association’s Futas Award and the New Jersey Library
Association’s Research Award – both in 2004.
Buschman is a co-editor of the journal Progressive Librarian, is on the Progressive Librarians Guild Coordinating Committee, and served for three years on the National Council of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). Recent publications include articles on Habermas and LIS theory in Library Quarterly, a critical primer on postmodernism for LIS in the Journal of Academic Librarianship, and an article on the ALA Code of Ethics in Library Philosophy and Practice.