Education

Ph.D., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

M.L.S., University of Maryland

B.A., College of Notre Dame of Maryland

Bio

Latham comes to LIS education after an extended career in libraries. With a background in cataloging and technical services, she became closely involved with retrospective conversion and automation projects. She was the head of Automated Services for the Southern Maryland Regional Library and worked on the development of the statewide Sailor Project. From there she went to Chicago Public Library as the head of Information Technology. After three years at the University of Illinois studying the social influences on the development of intellectual freedom in public libraries, she went to upstate New York as a library / public library system director. With the completion of her dissertation she came to the School of Information Studies, where she specializes in public libraries, intellectual freedom and library history. Latham’s revisionary research focus in on the activist role of librarians in the development of culture.

Courses Taught

501 Foundation of Library and Information Science
731 Library Services and Resources for Adults
836 Seminar in Intellectual Freedom

Sample Publications

Latham, J. (2010). Clery of the mind: Alvin S. Johnson, William S. Learned, the Carnegie Corporations, and the American Library Association. The Library Quarterly 80(3): 249-266.

Latham, J. (2009). [Review] G. Edwards and Patricia Layzell Ward, Management Basics for Information Professionals. The Library Quarterly 79(1): 149-150.

Latham, J. (2008). 'So promising of success:’ The role of local 88 in the development of the Chicago Public Library. Progressive Librarian 30: 18-37.

Latham, J. (2002). A librarian, a technologist and an information scientist are out in a boat... New Library World 103: 393-398.