Candidate for Vice President/President-Elect

Tula Giannini
Dean and Professor
Pratt Institute


Candidate's Statement

Dear ALISE Community – I welcome the opportunity to run for ALISE president at this most auspicious moment in the history of our association. As we turn 100 in 2015, we pause to appreciate our past accomplishments and look ahead with new vision and anticipation to an exciting future as the digital world of information now moves to center stage, positioned at the heart of human activity. Responding to the digital revolution, our schools are in the midst of dramatic change and development. With a broader conceptual model of the information professions and with information science at the center of the academic landscape converging with informatics, computing and digital culture, we see that LIS schools are re-visioning the information field in ways that resonate with current educational and research needs and make connections with the global information community.

Thus, the time is now for ALISE to seize this moment to mirror these forward-looking developments, not only building upon the new ALISE strategic plan but as well, developing a new vision in the spirit of innovation, creativity, change and relevance. In light of this, as president of ALISE, employing the theme - community building and engagement – I would focus on working together in a participatory, interactive and inclusive way, to harness new opportunities for the centenary of our association that speak to the future and meet the challenges of our networked digital world of openness and social media, that importantly, presents new ways to grow and connect our community, at once diverse and converging, and to strengthen our place as leaders in today’s information society.

Biography

Tula Giannini is Dean and Professor at Pratt Institute, School of Information and Library Science. She holds a PhD from Bryn Mawr College, an MLS from Rutgers University, and bachelor and master degrees from the Manhattan School of Music. Before coming to Pratt in 1998, she taught at Catholic University, Rutgers University and University of Hawaii, was Curator of Musical Instruments at the Library of Congress, Director of the Talbott Library, Westminster Choir College, and Head, Collection Management at Adelphi University.

During her 10 years as Dean of Pratt SILS, 2004 to present, she has worked to transform the School for the digital world. She has pioneered innovative programs under the overarching theme of cultural informatics that advance experiential hands-on learning in prominent New York institutions such as the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Developing a cutting-edge curriculum, she introduced advanced certificates in archives and in museum libraries, and a dual degree with the Department of Digital Arts. Giannini has designed several IMLS projects partnering with the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn Historical Society and Brooklyn Public Library (See the Brooklyn Visual Heritage Website). She also created international partnership programs with Kings College London in e-publishing and digital scholarship, a program with Ravensbourne, London for museums and digital media, and with SACI in Florence, Italy, a program for cultural heritage studies. Giannini teaches the practicum course enrolling some 25 students each semester in which students carryout internships and research in NYC’s libraries, archives, museums and the IT sector. Her research features interdisciplinary studies between information and archival science where the physical and digital world converge. This year, she had eight publications between conference papers and scholarly journal articles, including the paper, “Digitalism, the New Reality?,” with co-author Jonathan Bowen, for the Electronic Visualization and the Arts Conference, EVA London 2014. As a leading scholar of French musical wind instruments, she recently contributed 24 articles to Oxford University Press, Grove Music Online and her archival study, “The Raoux Family of Horn Makers in France,” is in publication for JAMIS 2014. Key to her accomplishments, is that she takes a creative approach to her role as dean, to make Pratt-SILS a place of immersive, inspired and engaged learning and research that embraces and supports the work of faculty, students and staff.