Joseph A. Salem Jr. has been appointed the new associate dean for Learning, Undergraduate Services and Commonwealth Campus Libraries for the University Libraries at Penn State. He will begin his appointment March 1.
Barbara I. Dewey, dean of University Libraries and Scholarly Communications, explained “Dr. Salem will be a key part of the Libraries’ administration collective leadership team, where he will lead Library Learning Services, the Knowledge Commons, the Commonwealth Campus Libraries, Penn State World Campus support, and other initiatives related especially to undergraduate students.”
“I am looking forward to working with library and university faculty to create, expand, and promote partnerships for learning and scholarship focusing on course-integrated information literacy, eLearning, and new models of information delivery, use, and creation at the undergraduate level in general and within the general education curriculum in particular,” said Salem.
Since 2011, Salem has been the head of Research and Learning Services at the University of Akron Libraries, where he led the revival of the instruction program and the integration of information literacy into the general education curriculum. Previously, he was head of Reference Services at Kent State University Libraries and held an adjunct professor appointment at Kent State’s School of Library in Information Science. He also served as head of the Map Library; was the coordinator of government documents; and was a data analyst and test developer for Project SAILS that began in 2001, at Kent State with the goal of developing a standardized test of information literacy skills that would allow libraries to document skill levels for groups of students and to pinpoint areas for improvement.
Salem holds a bachelor of arts degree in English from Cleveland State University, a masters in literature and writing and a masters of library and information science from Kent State. He recently defended his dissertation, “The Development and Validation of All Four TRAILS (Tools for Real-Time Assessment of Information Literacy Skills) Tests for K-12 Students,” and was awarded a doctorate in evaluation and measurement this past December from Kent State.
He has presented and published on a variety of topics, including virtual reference, assessment of information literacy, and learning commons. Salem was awarded the Ilene F. Rockman Instruction Publication of the Year Award in 2009 for “A practical guide to information literacy assessment for academic librarians” that he co-authored with Kent State colleagues Carolyn Radcliff, Mary Lee Jensen, Kenneth Burhanna and Julie Gedeon. The guide was published in 2007 by Libraries Unlimited.
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