This issue of First Monday is dedicated in memory of Sharon Hogan, University Librarian at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Sharon was a member of First Monday's Editorial Board and a strong advocate of First Monday and Internet publishing.
Late in 1998, Munksgaard International Publishers of Copenhagen indicated that it would no longer publish First Monday, as of 1 January 1999. Munksgaard had agreed to sell First Monday to three of its editors, Edward J. Valauskas, Esther Dyson, and Rishab Ghosh. The question in November, 1998 for the new owners of First Monday was a simple one: where should the First Monday server exist?
Valauskas approached Sharon Hogan about a move of the server to the University of Illinois at Chicago, and specifically the Library. Sharon and her staff had established a reputation in developing and sustaining Web servers for a number of organizations as diverse as the U.S. Department of State and the Chicago Public Library. The staff of the Library and the University were well versed in Internet and Web technologies, and the University already hosted the Editorial Office of the journal. Sharon enthusiastically agreed to the migration of First Monday from Copenhagen to Chicago.
First Monday's growth has been remarkable since its move to the University of Illinois at Chicago. Thanks to innovations by the staff at the Library of the University and excellent Internet connectivity, First Monday has blossomed. Sharon's vision made this possible.
Please join us in expressing our sympathies to Sharon's mother, Elta, and in recognizing Sharon's important contributions in her too brief life.
Edward J. Valauskas
Esther Dyson
Rishab Aiyer Ghosh
Sharon Hogan, 1945-2002
Sharon Hogan, university librarian at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and a national leader in the transformation of libraries into information retrieval systems, died Saturday, April 27, in Arizona following a brief illness. She was 57.
A champion of copyright, free speech, privacy and other legislative issues affecting libraries and information systems, Ms. Hogan testified before the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs on the E-Government Act of 2001 regarding technology and access issues. She received the Intellectual Freedom Award from the Illinois Library Association for criticizing Internet filters and for opposing state legislation that would have let individual counties set obscenity standards, hampering interlibrary loans across county lines. "Libraries play a very important role in safeguarding every citizen's right to read or hear diverse viewpoints and to make up his or her own mind about issues," she said at the time of her award last year.
Ms. Hogan received top national honors in 2000 when she was named Academic/Research Librarian of the Year by the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL). She co-authored one of the landmark books in bibliographic instruction, Learning the Library (Bowker, 1982), and was founding editor of one of the first journals in this field, Research Strategies.
Ms. Hogan came to UIC, where she also held the title of vice provost for information management, in 1990. She was a dynamic leader in the library as well as on campus-wide issues relating to computing, telecommunications, information systems, and intellectual property.
"Sharon Hogan was a pivotal figure in the rebirth of the modern library in the digital age," said UIC Chancellor Sylvia Manning. "She worked tirelessly to resolve some of the complex technical and ethical issues that confront not just information scientists but all scholars. Her contributions to this campus were profound, but extend far beyond."
Prior to her appointment at UIC she was the director of libraries at Louisiana State University. Her previous positions were at the University of Michigan and Temple University. Her other major honors included the Chinese American Librarians Association Presidential Recognition Award (1995), the Miriam Dudley Bibliographic Instruction Librarian of the Year Award from the ACRL (1988) and the Distinguished Alumni Award of the School of Information and Library Studies at the University of Michigan (1987). The Special Collections Room in UIC's Richard J. Daley Library has been named for her.
Ms. Hogan taught one of the first bibliographic instruction credit courses for graduate students at the University of Michigan, where she held faculty appointments in both the School of Information and Library Studies and the Program in American Culture. She was most proud of her work to support and encourage her staff to earn masters degrees in library science, and she ensured them a librarian position when they graduated. Over the years she enabled more than 25 support staff to earn their graduate library degrees, helped two Ph.D. candidates to earn their doctorates, and encouraged many others to complete their GED and undergraduate degrees.
Ms. Hogan was one of the founding members of the Association of College and Research Libraries Bibliographic Instruction Section and helped shape many of the association's programs. She served as ACRL president and as chair of the bibliographic instruction section. She also served on the board of directors twice, the task force on strategic planning, and the budget and finance committee. She served the American Library Association as councilor-at-large and on the executive board, and she chaired the Task Force on Core Competencies for Librarians. She was a member of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges Commission on Information Technologies and the Depository Library Council. She served on the boards of major regional groups such as the higher education consortium, the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, the Chicago Library System and the ILLINET Network Advisory Council.
Born March 17, 1945 in Santa Barbara, Calif., Sharon Hogan grew up in Cherokee, Iowa, where her mother was a Latin teacher and her father was a dentist. Ms. Hogan was a church organist and an accomplished pianist. She graduated with high honors in American history from the College of William & Mary in 1967 and received her graduate library science degree from the University of Michigan the following year. She was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Beta Phi Mu, the international library and information studies honor society.
A resident of Oak Brook, Ill., Ms. Hogan was an avid world traveler, inspired by National Geographic, which she began reading at age 3. She visited Machu Picchu and Tibet, hiked Mt. Everest, summited Kilimanjaro and stalked lions in Zimbabwe. She ran in three Chicago marathons and trained for a fourth.
Ms. Hogan was married to Theodore J. Martineau, a corporate attorney, who died in 2000. She is survived by her mother, Elta Hogan. Contributions may be made to the Sharon A. Hogan Library Endowment Fund at UIC or the Sharon A. Hogan Endowed Scholarship Fund at the University of Michigan School of Information.
Copyright ©2002, First Monday
