Mississippi State University

Faculty Member, University Libraries

Assistant Professor, Virtual Reference Project Manager, Ag and Life Sciences Librarian

About

Amanda Clay Powers graduated from Wellesley College with a degree in English Literature and holds a Masters' Degree from Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science.  She has been with the MSU Libraries for six years, and previously worked as a commercial fiction editor with Bantam Books and as the Marketing Manager for a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Hedge Fund.

At the MSU Libraries, Amanda is an assistant professor, virtual reference project manager, agriculture and life sciences librarian and the chair of their 2.0 initiative.  Under her leadership, beginning in 2007, MSU gathered librarians and staff all across the southeast to meet regarding the emergence of 2.0 technologies in libraries.  Now the MSU Libraries Emerging Technologies Summit is in its fourth year, and it is an established, nationally-recognized gathering of both heavy-weights and newcomers to the field. 

Her mission is to bring the libraries' resources and services directly to the MSU community, wherever they are.  In pursuit of that, she is manages the libraries' Facebook presence and virtual reference program including chat, email and social networking services.  She speaks both nationally and locally on issues related to managing identity in social networks and assessing the value of a social media presence for libraries.  Her research focuses on using data gathered from virtual reference transactions to make the library more relevant and accessible, including applying this assessment to web design.  She is currently working on a book chapter  "Creating Sustainable Change for Emerging Technologies in Libraries," and will be speaking at the American Libraries Association annual meeting in June on "Mining Virtual Reference Data for an Iterative Asssessment Cycle."  --2/15/11

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