FSU-SLIS welcomes Richard J. Urban to its faculty

Posted by Robert Branciforte on

January 5, 2012

TALLAHASSEE – The School of Library & Information Studies (SLIS) at The Florida State University is pleased to welcome Richard J. Urban as a visiting assistant professor beginning in the spring of 2012.

Urban is a researcher on knowledge representation (such as ontology development, metadata, and descriptive standards) for cultural heritage materials and collections; and on the use and users of cultural heritage information (including cultural heritage professionals).

At the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, from which Urban is expected to receive his Ph.D. in May 2012, he worked on the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Digital Collections and Content Project. He participated in research exploring collection/item metadata relationships, the usability of cultural heritage aggregation interfaces, and approaches to visualizing aggregated metadata collections.

As the Operations Coordinator for the Collaborative Digitization Program in Denver (formerly the Colorado Digitization Project), Urban was responsible for the day-to-day management of grant projects from 2002 to 2005. He also served as Web Site Coordinator of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (2000-2002) and as Assistant Curator of the Historical Society of Delaware (1997-2002).

Urban also holds a Master’s Degree in Library and Information Science (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006), a Master’s Degree in History with a Certificate in Museum Studies (University of Delaware, 1997) and a Bachelor’s in History with Honors (Pennsylvania State University, 1993).

“We expect Richard to add considerable strength to our research agenda in cultural informatics and digital humanities,” said SLIS Director Corinne Jorgensen. “He will teach in the SLIS undergraduate and graduate programs in the areas of museum informatics, archives and information design; and he will contribute his expertise to our increasing interdisciplinary certificate programs. We are very pleased that he has chosen SLIS as the place to advance his research agenda and teaching.”