Library residency program expands

The University of Chicago Library’s residency program has expanded in its second year to include two new librarians with expertise in user experience assessment and geographic information systems. The residency program builds Library staff expertise in new and rapidly developing areas of librarianship by bringing top recent graduates to Chicago for two-year residencies. These two new positions were made possible in part by special supporters Howard Zar and Library Visiting Committee members, as well as donors to the Library Annual Fund.

Emma Boettcher has joined the Library as User Experience Library Resident. Boettcher will be coordinating user research to support the improvement of the Library’s public website, intranet, and discovery tools. She joins us from the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, where she earned her MS in Information Science. During her graduate studies, Boettcher completed an Assessment and User Experience Internship at Duke University and brings experience with usability testing methods and web analytics to the Library.

Taylor Hixson is the new GIS Library Resident.  Hixson will assess the GIS needs of UChicago faculty, students, and staff, develop geospatial technology training, assist users with information discovery and data curation, and provide related research support. She recently completed her MS in Information Sciences at the University of Tennessee–Knoxville, where she specialized in geographic information.  As a graduate student, Taylor worked as a Virtual Foreign Service Intern on a humanitarian aid mapping project and completed a practicum for the Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information assisting with data curation projects.