Library and Information Studies Director Named

Louise Robbins, a member of the School of Library and Information Studies (SLIS) faculty, has been named the school’s new director.

Robbins will assume her new position July 1. She succeeds Interim Director James Krikelas, who is retiring this year. Krikelas took up the post after Jane Robbins (no relation to Louise) left to become dean of the School of Library and Information Science at Florida State University.

Robbins recently gained tenure at SLIS as an associate professor. She also has served as faculty administrator of the SLIS Laboratory Library since joining the UW–Madison faculty in 1991.

“I’m looking forward to working with colleagues in the university community and with librarians in Wisconsin and beyond,” said Robbins. “I want to maintain and enhance SLIS’s performance and reputation as one of the nation’s top schools of library and information studies.”

A native of Washington, D.C., Robbins earned her doctorate at Texas Woman’s University while serving on the faculty of East Central University in Ada, Okla. She and her husband, Robby Robbins, lived in Ada for 24 years, where she became the first female city council member and first female mayor.

Robbins and her husband have two sons: Patrick, a Harvard graduate who is teaching English in Japan, and Greg, a Yale alumnus who graduated from the UW–Madison Law School in May.