Events
| Exhibits
| Press Releases |
News
Archives | Newsletters
| Index
June 6, 2007
Steven Herb Appointed Follett Chair
University Park, PA—Dominican University Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS), in Chicago, Illinois, has appointed Penn State Librarian Steven L. Herb to the Follett Chair in Library and Information Science. This academic honor is Dominican University's first endowed chair and one of only four library and information science chairs in the nation.
Herb is the third person to hold the Follett Chair, initiated in 2002. He was selected for his outstanding teaching ability and superior scholarly achievement. During his one to three year appointment as a visiting scholar, which begins August 2007, he will teach courses at Dominican, pursue research and development in youth services, and develop strategic initiatives to benefit the GSLIS.
Herb will continue as head of the Education and Behavioral Sciences Library in the University Libraries and affiliate professor of Language and Literacy Education at Penn State. He will also remain director of the Pennsylvania Center for the Book, an affiliate of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress; a position he has held since 2000.
Herb has a special interest in storytelling, and its power. He is the co-author of the history of Penn State’s school mascot—The Nittany Lion: An Illustrated Tale with Jackie Esposito (Penn State Press, 1997) and two children’s literature textbooks for Neal-Schuman: Using Children's Books in Preschool Settings (1994) and Connecting Fathers, Children, and Reading (2002), both with Sara Willoughby-Herb. His first year seminar—"Stories and Storytelling: How Humans Become People," resulted in Herb being named Penn State’s Most Innovative Faculty member of the year in 2000 by the Schreyer Institute for Innovation in Learning and the Undergraduate Student Government Academic Assembly. He is a past president of the Association for Library Service to Children and a three-term chair of the American Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee.
Over the past six years, Herb has led the team that developed the online Literary and Cultural Heritage Map of Pennsylvania, which received a Daniel Boorstin Award from the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress in 2005. The citation read, “The Pennsylvania Center for the Book's innovative online Pennsylvania literary map is wide-ranging in scope and historical depth and a rich resource for information about the literature, history, and culture of the entire state.” His family literacy site at the Pennsylvania Center for the Book, developed in partnership with his wife Sara Willoughby-Herb, and co-sponsored by the Goodling Institute for Research in Family Literacy at Penn State, will be used in 44 states this summer in connection with summer reading programs across the nation.
Herb holds degrees in special education, early childhood education, library science, and curriculum and instruction. His research interests are in the acquisition of and relationships among multiple literacies: oral language development in infants and toddlers, print literacy in preschool and elementary school, and information literacy across all ages. His work focuses on the role of libraries and traditional library materials in these emergent literacies, as well as the influence of new technologies on the relationship between libraries and literacy learning.
The Follett Chair is endowed through a gift of the Follett Corporation, a leading provider of educational solutions, services, and products that empower schools, libraries, colleges, students, and lifelong learners.
Editor's Contact:
Catherine Grigor, 814-863-4240