Stewart

J. Brenton Stewart received a 2007 Spectrum Doctoral Fellowship and is pursuing his degree at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.  He holds an M.S. Library & Information Studies from Clark Atlanta University and an AB in History, minor African American Studies from the University of North Carolina – Greensboro.

Brenton's first professional position after graduate school, was working in technical services, at a large land-grant agricultural university - Southern Polytechnic State University (SPSU) in Marietta, Georgia. SPSU's library serves a unique mix of communities, including community college and university students while simultaneously functioning as a pseudo-public library for the surrounding community. Its patrons are both linguistically and culturally diverse possessing varying degrees of information literacy and access. These experiences have inspired him to delve deeper into the issue of information access and dissemination and its effects on dissimilar and similar communities within the United States. As a doctoral student. Brenton would like to further explore this issue by examining to what extent the location of information centers have on library usage among communities of color. To facilitate his research in this area, he plans to pursue a doctoral minor in Geography selecting courses within Cartography and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Thereby, employing GIS as a research tool to identify, significant factors such as income, education and accessibly to public transportation will be correlated against the relative location of an information center and library usage.

After obtaining the doctorate, Brenton hopes to share his passion and unique perspectives while educating the next generation of information professionals, teaching in a School of Library & Information Science. He also wants to contribute research in the areas of GIS and information centers, race and gender in librarianship as well as social/community informatics.