Kristin R. Eschenfelder

Masters Student Advising Information:

Am I your advisor? I do online signups for advising slots via Wiscal. Please follow these directions to create a phone or in person advising session during one of the following days.

• Wed March 12th 9am - 5pm
• Thursday March 13th 9am to 5pm
• Friday March 14th 9am - 5pm
• No advising during spring break!
• Monday March 24 9am to 11:00am, then 3:00 pm to 5:00pm
• Tuesday March 25 9am to 5pm
• Thursday March 27 2pm to 5pm

Research Interests:

I am social informatics digital intellectual property (IP) researcher; specifically, I study access and use regimes - or the complex, multi-level networks of laws, customs, technologies and expectations that shape what information we can access and how we can make use of it.

Questions of interest include the following:

• How do intellectual property access and use norms develop and change over time?
• What are the interactions between access and use regimes and types of digital information published or otherwise made available?
• What are the effects of various access and use regimes on teaching, learning and scholarship?

I aim to collect empirical data to inform international, national and institutional level IP decisions and IP activism by exposing and critiquing the hidden processes by which access and use norms are developed and changed and the consequences of current access and use regimes.

Teaching Statement:

I teach courses that prepare information professionals to work in an increasingly digital world. I'm particularly interested in the licensed resource side of "digital libraries" and how the nature of libraries as institutions are changing as technology creates new possibilities and information policy issues related to digital resources. See the courses tab listed above for more information about my courses.

I am particularly motivated to increase the number of women working with information technologies; and, one of my pedagogical goals is to make technology courses appealing to women through the use of real-life projects that solve problems or improve peoples' lives.

I am the faculty advisor to the student Library Information Technology Association group (LITA).

Students interested in information technology courses should refer to the "Digital library and resources track" course recommendations described on the main SLIS website.

PhD students:

Former dissertation advisees:

• Lynne Cooper Chase, Emporia State University School of Library and Information Management,
• Pat Lawton, University of Pittsburgh School of Information Science,
• Chi-Shiou Lin, National Taiwan University,
• Terrance Newell, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Information Studies.

Other non-dissertation projects I am working on with SLIS PhD students:

• A history of access and use terms for licensed scholarly digital resources 1968-1980. How did the current access and use terms we experience develop over time? with Ms. Awa Zhu
• How did access and use norms develop/how are they developing for ARTstor and the Society of Automotive Engineers Digital Library? with Ms. Barbara Walden
• How do academic librarians learn about the complex national and institutional legal/policy issues related to electronic reserves? How do they integrate this information with local practices and their experiences dealing with controversial e-reserves request to create new expertise? with Ms. Jom Polparsi

Recent Awards and Honors:

• Institute of Museum and Library Services Laura Bush 21st Century Research Grant RE-04-06-0029-06 ($246,718) for a three year research project to investigate the impact of technological protection measures (TPMs) on the development and use of digital content by libraries in the United States.
• Recipient of the 2005-2006 University of Wisconsin Division of Information Technology Podcasting Teaching Innovations Grant.
• Invited participant at Dec 2005 EU Commission sponsored INDICARE workshop on education, libraries and digital rights management in Brussels.
• Library Journal 2005 “Mover and Shaker” for her research into the social impacts of information technologies.
• 2005 ALA/ACRL Lazerow Fellow, and she won the 2005 Carol Preston Baber research grant for her research into digital rights management and academic libraries.

Professional Service:

• Social Informatics Special Interest Group for the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST). I have held leadership positions in SIG-SI for many years and help run the annual pre-conference social informatics research symposium
• Publications Board - American Society for Information Science and Technology
• dLIST Associate Editor - Digital Library of Information Science and Technology, and open access pre-print repository