Former Florida State University School of Information professor Eliza T. Dresang passed away on April 21 at the age of 72.
Dresang joined Florida State’s School of Information as an associate professor in 1996 and was named the Eliza Atkins Gleason Professorship in 2004. She remained at Florida State until 2009. At Florida State, Dresang won the first School of Information Outstanding Faculty Award in 2001.
Most recently, Dresang was serving as the Beverly Cleary Professor in Children’s and Youth Services at the University of Washington Information School.
The longtime professor of library science may have been best known for authoring Radical Change: Books for Youth in a Digital Age (H. W. Wilson, 1999), in which she discussed more than 200 titles for children and young adults that she believed were crucial for educators to be aware in light of the new digital world. Her theory was initially used to identify and analyze literature for youth reflecting the interactivity, connectivity, and access of the digital world. It has now been adopted in the scholarly community to explain various aspects of information behavior.
“I first met Eliza when we interviewed together for faculty positions at FSU,” Kathleen Burnett, director of the School of Information and F. William SummersProfessor, said. “By the time the three-day visit had ended, we had plans to write an article together. We’d been working together ever since. Eliza’s Radical Change book changed the landscape for youth scholarship in our field, shifting the focus from resources to youth themselves. Radical Change was for Eliza a deeply held personal philosophy as much as a scholarly theory. She consistently and passionately put her beliefs into practice in her daily life as well as her work.”
Dresang, who was born in Atlanta, Ga., graduated from Emory University before teaching Spanish in Los Angeles, Calif. She went on to earn a master’s degree in library science at UCLA and her doctorate from the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
Before arriving at Florida State, Dresang held various librarian positions, including 16 years as a media specialist in the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) in Wisconsin. During that period, MMSD’s library programs were named a runner-up for the American Association of School Librarians’ National School Library Media Program of the Year Award.
Dresang’s dedication to the field became more recognized when she published the article “There Are No Other Children: Special Children in Library Media Centers” in the School Library Journal in 1977.
During her lengthy career, Dresang served on numerous committees, including the Newbery, Caldecott, and Batchelder Award committees and garnered several honors such as the 2007 Scholastic Library Publishing Award, presented to a librarian whose work promoting literacy and reading among young people exemplifies achievement in the profession. In honor of her award, the School Library Journal featured Dresang in the cover article, “Wonder Woman: Eliza Dresang, Winner of the Scholastic Library Publishing Award” in the August 2007 issue.