Rate My Professor Mary Bolin

Dr. Mary Bolin serves as a Lecturer in the School of Information at San Jose State University, with expertise in academic libraries, administration and management, and critical perspectives on library and information science. She earned a BA in Linguistics from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in 1976, an MSLS from the University of Kentucky in 1981, an MA in Linguistics from the University of Idaho in 1999, and a PhD in Educational Leadership and Higher Education from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln in 2007. Her extensive career in librarianship exceeds 40 years, starting as a student library assistant at UNL's Love Library. Following five years at the University of Georgia, she joined the University of Idaho in 1986 as Head of Cataloging, progressing to Head of Technical Services in 1993, where she achieved tenure and full promotion. In 2004, she returned to UNL as Chair of Technical Services, later renamed Discovery and Resource Management, before becoming Catalog and Metadata Librarian in 2015 and a Fellow of the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities in 2019. She retired from UNL in June 2020.

At San Jose State University, Dr. Bolin teaches courses including Beginning Cataloging and Classification (INFO 248) and Metadata (INFO 281), and supervises PhD students on topics such as academic library governance, discovery of library resources, and user experience. Her research focuses on academic library organization, administration, governance, librarian faculty status, discourse analysis of library documents, and cataloging and metadata. She founded and edited the peer-reviewed electronic journal Library Philosophy and Practice. Notable publications include chapters in The 21st Century Academic Library: Global Patterns of Organization and Discourse such as "Academic Library Organization" (2018), "The Collegial Environment and the Functional Organization" (2021), and "Discourse Analysis Model and Data" (2023); "Academic Libraries and Writing Centers: Collaborations at US Public Research Universities" (2022); "Open Access Web Resources for Library Continuing Education and Training" (2014); and "The Language of Academic Librarianship: The Discourse of Promotion and Tenure" (2014). She has delivered presentations, chaired UNL libraries faculty in 2018, served on Faculty Senate, and advocates for d/Deaf accessibility in LIS through ASL study and inclusive practices.