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MBLWHOI Library Director Catherine Norton Elected to Information Technology Society
WOODS HOLE, MA—MBLWHOI Library Director Catherine Norton has been inducted into the Louis Round Wilson Academy’s Knowledge Trust, a newly formed academy of worldwide leaders in information technology. The focus of the Academy, which is limited to 100 members, is to search for and encourage global thought leaders who are trusted stewards in the information revolution. The Knowledge Trust was convened by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's School of Information and Library Sciences in 2005 and is named for the School's founder, Dr. Louis Round Wilson. Norton was inducted to the Academy on April 28th at the Academy meeting in Granada, Spain.
Members were selected for their broad range of experiences and insightful outlooks that are focused on collecting, sharing, and preserving the record of human accomplishment, activity and imagination. They are charged with addressing a future of constant change in which new knowledge professionals experts who can help locate, evaluate and guide users to credible, comprehensive information that is relevant and reliable—must anticipate and understand the information needs of tomorrow's society.
Norton is the Director of the MBLWHOI Library (a library operated jointly by the Marine Biological Laboratory—MBL—and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution—WHOI) and Director of Information Technology for the MBL. She received a B.S. from Regis College and a Masters of Library Science from Simmons College. Norton is the principal investigator on a number of projects at the MBL, including a grant from the National Library of Medicine for Medical Informatics and the Universal Biological Indexer and Organizer (uBio). She is a member of numerous professional library and information technology organizations, including American Library Association, American Society for Information Specialists, American Medical Information Association, and the International Association for Aquatic and Marine Science Libraries and Information Centers. Norton is currently serving as the President of the Boston Library Association.
“It is a great honor to be invited to participate in these discussions, which are dedicated to the principle of clear, open and readily accessible validation of the authenticity of all materials residing in the global knowledge trust,” said Norton. “A discussion on ethics for the stewards of the Knowledge Trust was a commitment to ‘eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.’ I think that statement alone reminds us of the nobility of the role of libraries and their stewards.”
The MBLWHOI Library exists to improve scientific scholarly productivity in a collaborative and collegial environment by providing a balanced range of information resources in convenient formats; providing organized, consistent, and persistent access to these resources; and providing a suite of services and tools that enable patrons to access the information effectively. The MBLWHOI Library is jointly operated by the Marine Biological Laboratory and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
The MBL is an international, independent, nonprofit institution dedicated to improving the human condition through creative research and education in the biological, biomedical and environmental sciences. Founded in 1888 as the Marine Biological Laboratory, the MBL is the oldest private marine laboratory in the Western Hemisphere.
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