Kent State University’s Information and Religion Conference Scheduled for May 18 & 19

The Center for the Study of Information and Religion at Kent State University will host its Second Annual International Conference on Information and Religion on Friday, May 18, and Saturday, May 19, at the Kent Student Center.

More than two dozen paper and poster presentations relating to the theme “Preservation and Access: Facilitating Research in Information and Religion” are scheduled over the day-and-a-half program. Conference participants also will have the opportunity to network and discuss research collaborations at an hors d’oeuvres reception on Friday evening.

Carisse Mickey Berryhill, Ph.D., will deliver the conference keynote address at lunchtime on Saturday. She is Associate Dean for Digital Initiatives, Special Collections, and University Archives at Abilene Christian University’s Margaret and Herman Brown Library.

Before coming to ACU, Berryhill was Associate Librarian at Harding School of Theology in Memphis, Tenn. (1992-2004), and Professor of English at Lubbock Christian University (1975-1992). She holds advanced degrees in English, library science and church history. She does research in rhetoric in the Stone-Campbell religious reform movement of the 19th century and its 18th-century Scottish roots. At ACU she directs the university archives and leads the acquisition of print, archival and digital collections related to the Stone-Campbell movement. During 2011-2012, she holds a research leave, during which she will transcribe Alexander Campbell’s notes on lectures given at Glasgow University by George Jardine in 1808-1809.

Registration for the conference is $85 for one day, $135 for both days. Students may attend at a discounted rate of $25 for one day, $50 for both days.

For additional information about the conference and a link to registration, visit http://www.kent.edu/slis/research/csir/conference-2012.cfm.

The Center for the Study of Information and Religion (CSIR) is a research initiative of the School of Library and Information Science (SLIS) at Kent State University. CSIR was founded in 2009 with the goal of facilitating research on the various institutions and agents of religion and their effect on social knowledge through the use, dissemination and diffusion of information. The center hosts an annual symposium each fall semester and an annual conference each spring. Some of the best papers from the annual Conference on Information and Religion are published in ASIR: Advances in the Study of Information and Religion, an online, open access publication available through the Kent State Universities Libraries website and catalogued on OhioLINK. For more information about CSIR, visit http://www.kent.edu/slis/research/csir/index.cfm.