Teaching Focus
How creation, diffusion and use of knowledge is shaped by social and cultural forces and the social history of knowledge, collections, and documents. Courses taught reflect my research interests in the culture of the book, electronic publishing, digital archives and digital libraries, reading, scholarly communication, historical and naturalistic research methods. I also taught courses relevant for rare books and special collections librarianship, history of libraries and information science. I am also interested in technology innovation in libraries, and how digital technologies, methods and documents intersect with gender, race, and class. I use technology in teaching to explore how the changing notion of literacy transforms knowledge production and diffusion.

Student Projects
Significant group projects include Frautschi Letters Virtual Archive and The Wisconsin Mosaic, a digital library of historical materials developed by the M.L.S. students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (and in collaboration with Max Kade Institute, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison). The story behind the creation of the Wisconsin Mosaic presents the history and the rationale for this project. A group of students involved in creating a component of the Wisconsin Mosaic received the departmental award for the innovative use of technology.

At Rutgers, the Journals Database is an online assignment focusing on domain knowledge building in scholarly communities of practice; it is updated on an ongoing basis by M.L.I.S. students enrolled in the Knowledge Structures and the Information Professions class. This project was executed in collaboration with the Scholarly Communication Center (Rutgers University, Alexander Library). A resource page documenting online communities emerging around popular reading and genre fiction is regularly updated with reviews and links contributed by students in the Reading Interests of Adults class. Several generations of students from the Reading Interests of Adults class presented their research at the New Jersey Library Association annual meeting in April 2003, featured in a panel titled Reading, Readers, Reading Genres.The record of a semester-long online participation of the students enrolled in my book history class, with the class taught by John Unsworth at the University of Virginia's English Department, can be found at the 20th Century American Bestsellers site. The experiences of that project are discussed in an article titled, Is There a Text in This Library? History of the Book and Digital Continuity.

At Rutgers, I advise M.L.I.S. student group SOURCE (Student Organization for Unique and Rare Collections Everywhere). This community consists of M.L.I.S. students interested in historical aspects of book, paper, and writing materials, and bridges between digital librarianship and special collections, rare books, visual resources librarianship and archives. It was founded in Fall 2000.

Syllabi

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Department of Library and Information Science

MLIS
Knowledge Structures and the Information Professions (Spring 2005) (currently the course is maintained in eCompanion shell)
Reading Interests of Adults (Spring 2008)
The History of Books, Documents and Records in Print and Electronic Environment (Fall 2006)
Reference Sources and Services (Spring 2001)

Ph.D.
Human Information Behavior (Spring 2008)
Seminar in Comparative Epistemologies and Theories of Knowledge (Fall 2004)

Undergraduate
Gender and Technology (Fall 2002)

University of Wisconsin-Madison. School of Library and Information Studies

Special Collections in the Digital Environment (Spring 2000)
Cataloging and Classification (Fall 1999, Spring 2000)
Information Sources (Fall 1999)

The Catholic University of America. School of Library and Information Science

Seminar in Print, Non-Print, and Electronic Cultures (Fall 1997; Fall 1998)
History of the Book (Spring 1998; Spring 1999) bestsellers project (UVA)
Organization of Information (Spring 1998; Fall 1998; Spring 1999)
Cataloging and Classification (Fall 1997; Spring 1998; Spring 1999)

University of Toronto. Faculty of Information Studies

Teaching assistant (History of Books and Printing, Organization of Information, Management of Information Organizations, Research Methods, Information in its Social Context)

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Last revised: January 29, 2008
Comments to: dalbello at scils.rutgers.edu