Dr. Karen F. Gracy

Karen F. Gracy is a professor at the School of Information of Kent State University. She possesses an MLIS and PhD in Library and Information Science from the University of California, Los Angeles and an MA in critical studies of Film and Television from UCLA. Recent publications have appeared in JASIST, Archival Science, The American Archivist, Journal of Library Metadata, and Information and Culture.

Dr. Gracy’s scholarly interests are found within the domain of cultural heritage stewardship, which encompasses a broad range of activities such as preservation and conservation processes and practices, digital curation activities that consider the roles of heritage professionals and users in the lifecycle of objects and records, as well as knowledge representation activities such as definitions of knowledge domains, development of standards for description, and application of new technologies to improve access to cultural heritage objects.

Dr. Gracy teaches in the areas of preservation and archiving, with a focus on moving image archives and digital preservation issues. As an instructor, one of her greatest challenges is to take students’ natural attraction to the physical material in collections and transform it into an enthusiasm for and a mastery of the complex set of functions and tasks that comprise the world of cultural heritage stewardship. To learn to think like an archivist or preservationist, a student must gain both theoretical and practical knowledge and use those two types of knowledge in tandem to make decisions in real-world environments.