BRIEF NARRATIVE SUMMARIZING DERVIN CV

(Revised October 2, 2007)

BRENDA L. DERVIN

Ohio State University

3016 Derby Hall

154 N. Oval Mall

Columbus, Ohio 43210

614-292-3192 office

614-292-3400 department

614-442-0721 home phone and FAX

614-286-2514 cell phone

dervin.1@osu.edu

Academic positions

Dr. Brenda Dervin is Full Professor of Communication and Joan N. Huber Fellow in Social & Behavioral Sciences at Ohio State University where she has served since 1986. Prior to this she served on faculties at the University of Washington School of Communication, and Syracuse University's School of Information Transfer. She has served as a visiting professor and lecturer at numerous universities. 

Education and degrees

She received her M.S. and PhD degrees from Michigan State University in communication research; her bachelor's degree in journalism and home economics with a minor in philosophy of religion from Cornell University. In 2000, she was awarded an honorary doctorate in social sciences from the University of Helsinki.

Involvement in International Communication Association (ICA)

Dervin is a past president and fellow of the International Communication Association (ICA). She served as that organization's first female president in 1986. In 1985 as president-elect she organized a landmark conference, "Beyond Polemics: Paradigm Dialogues" and senior edited two volumes growing out of that conference (Rethinking Communication, Vols. 1 & 2).  In 2002, Dervin received the International Communication Association's Steven H. Chaffee Career Productivity Award.  She is recognized for first introducing poster sessions at ICA conferences and for turning the organization's attention to genuine internationalization as well as dialogue across research paradigms.  She has served as a frequent member of the editorial boards and reviewer for a number of ICA's official journals. 

Involvement in American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIST)

Dervin is also active member of the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIST) and in 2006 received its top award for merit in information science research.  She serves on the editorial board of its official journal and is recognized as the scholar who gave impetus to the turn toward user-oriented studies of users.   Her 1986 literature review on "information seeking and use" is now a classic citation.  She is one of a handful of 4-5 scholars who have achieved wide recognition in both the fields of communication and that of library and information science.

Involvement in International Association for Media & Communication Research (IAMCR)
Dervin is also one of few US based researchers who has received wide recognition in both US-based and European-based academic organizations.  In the field of communication, she is not only a recognized leader-researcher in the US-based ICA but has also been an active member of the Europe-based International Association of Media and Communication Research, served on its governing council for 10 years, and spearheaded the organization's book series.

Involvement in the Information Seeking in Conference collaborative (ISIC)
In the field of library and information science, Dervin has received recognition as a leader-researcher not only in the US-based ASIST but also in the Europe-based collaborative focusing on Information Seeking in Context.  She served as that organization's first keynote plenary speaker in 1996 in Finland  and then again in 2006 in Australia.  She has served frequently as editorial board member and reviewer for the organization's book and journal compendiums. 

Editorial board and reviewing activities

Active as an editor and reviewer, Dervin currently serves on seven editorial boards in the communication, information science, and library science fields, and serves as well as a frequent reviewer for a roster of 15 journals. For the first 14 years of its publication, she served as editor of Progress in Communication Sciences, the first annual compendium (then published by Ablex) earmarked to regular publication of state of the art reviews in the communication fields; and as senior editor she supervised some 14 junior editors in their oversight of different communication-focused book series.

Authoring activities

A frequent author, Dervin is one of the most highly cited scholars in the fields of communication and library/information science. The ISI index showed her works as cited more than 1,700 times in journal articles between 1970 and 2007.  For scholars in the communication field as a whole, she is estimated to be in the top .001%. Most of the citations to Dervin's work focus on Dervin's interrogations of the methodologies used in studying users/ audiences/ patrons of a wide variety of communication/ information systems -- e.g., telecommunications services, libraries, media systems, educational institutions, health care delivery, and arts institutions. Dervin has developed what she terms a "methodology between the cracks" -- the Sense-Making Methodology -- which seeks to address weaknesses in conceptualization and study of users and at the same time provide a systematic approach that can be used both qualitatively and quantitatively in developing critical practice for the design of responsive systems. The latter, Dervin emphasizes, can become possible only when communication is conceptualized and implemented communicatively.  

Dissertation advising
Dervin has advised 27 doctoral dissertations and 13 master's thesis, most of which use Sense-Making Methodology in some way. Dervin also provides advise globally on the use of Sense-Making via her web site (http://communication.sbs.ohio-state.edu/sense-making/) and email.  A number of articles have been specifically devoted to analysis of Dervin's work, and recently, a doctoral student in Australia focused his dissertation on the construction of meaning and significance of an "author" among information behavior researchers using Dervin as the exemplar author.

Consulting with policy and service organizations regarding communicating procedures

Prior to graduate studies, Dervin held a variety of public information positions including communication specialist for the University of Wisconsin Center for Consumer Affairs, and public information officer for the American Home Economics Association.  Her research activities have explicitly focused on applications to policy and practice for 35 years.   She has consulted with a wide variety of organizations focusing essentially on improving direct and mediated communication procedures within organizations and between organizations and their external constituencies.  Consultancies have taken many forms: for example, the design of procedures formal and informal of "dialoging" with others in ways that lead to efficient and effective understanding;  the implementation of communication campaigns to obtain informed consent; the negotiating of consensus actions by diverse participants.  Her Sense-Making Methodology informed interviewing approaches are actively used by librarians, social workers, peace negotiators, journalists, psychologists, and organizational knowledge management experts primarily in in Canada, Australia, California, and the state of Washington.  

Focus of Dervin's writings
Dervin's writings center primarily on meta-theoretic examinations of the requisites for conceptualizing communication communicatively, deconstructions of conceptualizations of users, methodological explications, and systematic studies (both quantitative and qualitative) of user/audience sense-making and information seeking and use. In terms of common labels in current discourses, her work emphasizes philosophy of communication, communication methodology, dialogic communication, participatory communication, public communication campaigns, user information seeking and use, audience reception, and user sense-making. Persons drawing on Dervin's Sense-Making Methodology publish primarily in the communication fields and/or library/information science fields although uses have come as well from a wide variety of other fields including, as examples: nursing, medicine, counseling, religious and spirituality studies, telecommunication policy, museum studies, journalism, web design, ethics, public education campaigns, audience reception, environmental education, technology studies, consumer and family relations, social work, cultural studies, psychology, political science, philosophy, sociology, architecture. Complete bibliographies of Dervin's writings and a complete list of those citing Dervin as listed in ISI are available at the Sense-Making web site for which the URL is given above.

Teaching activities

Over the years, Dervin has taught a variety of courses including both literature surveys (e.g., of communication theories, philosophies of communication, feminist scholarship, and critical/cultural studies) and methodologies/methods (e.g., quantitative and qualitative approaches to "needs" assessment, user and audience studies, surveys, ethnographies, content and text analysis). Dervin's recent emphases in teaching have included undergraduate courses in communication, power, knowledge and the in-depth qualitative interview; and graduate level courses in qualitative research philosophy and in-depth introductions to Sense-Making as interviewing approach and as methodology.   Dervin's teacher ratings are average or above in large population classes; and very much above average in smaller classes.

Research grants
Since 1973, Dervin has served as principal investigator for grant and contract projects estimated at $7 million in current values, supported by agencies as varied as the National Cancer Institute, Ameritech, the California State Library, the US Office of Education, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.