Katherine Wisser

Kathy Wisser is an associate professor at the School of Library and Information Science at Simmons University in Boston, Massachusetts. She received a BA in History from Bates College in 1989, completed a MA in History from the University of New Hampshire in 1997, an MSLS in 2000, and a PhD in Information Science in 2009, both from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her dissertation focused on classification theory and discourse.

Wisser worked for the North Carolina Exploring Cultural Heritage Online as a Metadata Coordinator from 2003 to 2007, and in Special Collections departments at the University of New Hampshire and North Carolina State University. While pursuing her Master's degree, she had various assistantships including the University of North Carolina's Davis Library systems department and for the Association of Library and Information Science Education. After completing her Master's degree, she was a NCSU Libraries Fellow, where she worked in cataloging and special collections prior to becoming the NC ECHO Metadata Coordinator.

Beginning in 2000, she served as a teaching fellow at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina, teaching a required course on cataloging. Other courses she has taught at UNC and SLIS include the information organization, history of libraries, indexing and thesaurus construction, advanced cataloging, metadata and the introductory and advanced courses on archives, including a course on Government Archives. In the 2008-2009 academic year, she also served as Director of Instructional Services for SILS at UNC, which included running the field experience program for the school. She has advised over twenty master's papers. At SLIS, she was appointed the SLIS Associate Director in 2021 and has advised numerous Master's thesis and independent studies. Over the course of her career, Wisser taught numerous NC ECHO workshops on metadata, Encoded Archival Description, and related topics throughout the state of North Carolina. For SAA, she has taught EAD, EAC-CPF and MARC workshops. 

Wisser has served as Chair of the SAA EAD Roundtable 2003-2004 and the SAA Description Section 2004-2005, Chair of the Archival Educators Roundtable from and from 2006-2019 served in a leadership capacity for encoded archival standards (EAC-CPF and EAD).  In August 2021, Wisser was inducted as a Distinguished Fellow for SAA.