Elfreda Chatman, Theorist and Teacher: Reflections on Her Lessons on Theory Development in Information Science

Abstract

Dr. Elfreda Chatman was a professor of library and information science at the University of North Carolina and Florida State University in the 1990s and early 2000s until her passing in 2002. Her research incorporated the disciplines of education, sociology, and LIS, covering topics at the nexus of these fields, from which she worked to develop a unified theoretical framework for scientific inquiry. Chatman’s work and teachings are as useful today as they were 20 years ago. Her approach to teaching theory development is explored by examining her course syllabi, her extensive course reading list, and students’ lecture notes. Chatman improved library and information science by encouraging scholars to combine theory with practice in their study of the interaction between people and information.