Dr. Gary Marchionini, Cary C. Boshamer Professor at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, has been appointed dean of the School of
Information and Library Sciences.

The University's Board of Trustees today (Jan. 28) approved the
appointment, effective April 1.

"Gary Marchionini is a distinguished faculty member whose extraordinary
academic background is internationally renowned," said Chancellor Holden
Thorp. "He is the ideal person to lead our School of Information and
Library Science into this new decade when information and technology have
never been more important in our society."

Added Bruce Carney, interim executive vice chancellor and provost, "Gary
Marchionini knows the School of Information and Library Science and our
University exceedingly well. He has the support from within the school to
keep it a national leader."

A Carolina faculty member since 1998, Marchionini heads the school's
Interaction Design Laboratory and chairs its personnel committee. He serves
on the Campus Research Computing Committee and has helped lead numerous
campus initiatives since arriving at Carolina. Last spring, he was
nominated by his students and selected as the school's Outstanding Teacher
of the Year.

He is president of the American Society of Information Science and
Technology, an international organization of professionals who focus on
improving access to information. Marchionini is the chair of the National
Institutes of Health/National Library of Medicine's Biomedical Library and
Informatics Review Committee. He previously was editor-in-chief of the
Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM) "Transactions on Information
Systems" from 2002 to 2008, has served on more than a dozen editorial
boards and is editor of the Morgan-Claypool book series, "Information
Concepts, Retrieval and Services."

Marchionini has published more than 200 articles, book chapters and
technical reports on topics related to digital libraries, information
seeking, usability of personal health records, multimedia browsing
strategies and personal identity in cyberspace. He has been awarded
numerous grants from the National Science Foundation and other foundations,
as well as research awards from companies including Microsoft, IBM and
Google. He is the author of "Information Seeking in Electronic
Environments," part of a Cambridge University Press series.

Marchionini earned a doctorate in curriculum development, focusing on
mathematics education, and a master's degree in secondary mathematics
education from Wayne State University in 1974 and 1981, respectively. He
graduated with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and English from Western
Michigan University in 1971. Before arriving at UNC, he was a faculty
member at the University of Maryland for 15 years. He served on the faculty
and as a researcher at Wayne State from 1978 to 1983 and taught mathematics
at the East Detroit Public Schools for seven years.

The School of Information and Library Science seeks to advance the practice
and profession of information science and librarianship, prepare students
for careers in a variety of information professions and contribute to the
study of information. The school offers an undergraduate major in
information science and an undergraduate minor in information systems,
masters' degrees in information science and library science, and a Ph.D.
program. Twenty-six faculty members teach about 330 graduate students and
58 undergraduate students. U.S. News & World Report magazine ranked the
school's master's degree program tied for first in the 2010 edition of its
"America's Best Graduate Schools" guidebook.

Barbara B. Moran, previous dean of the school from 1990 to 1998, has served
as interim dean since May 2009 when José-Marie Griffiths, the previous
dean, completed her term.

"We're grateful to Barbara for providing dedicated leadership to the school
during the search," Carney said. "Her calm and steady guidance through this
transition has once again demonstrated her amazing skills as dean and her
deep devotion to the school and to Carolina."


Web links:  http://sils.unc.edu
University Relations contact:  Mike McFarland, (919) 962-8593,
[log in to unmask]
School of Information and Library Sciences contact:  Wanda Monroe, (919)
843-8337, [log in to unmask]