Caryn Anderson

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Information and Civic Society Development Specialist - Knowledge Broker - Educator - Mystic Nomad

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My Professional Biography

Caryn Anderson is a civic society development specialist focused on knowledge and information services, scientific research quality and impact, and interdisciplinary collaboration. She is motivated by a vision of societies where all members are informed critical thinkers, cooperatively engaged in the social, economic, and environmental health of their communities. Caryn leverages her cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary management, teaching, and research skills to strengthen organizational capacity and effectiveness and inter-organization cooperation. Her extensive experience includes consultation and training for higher education, libraries, nonprofits, and the government ministries coordinating with these sectors, especially in developing countries in the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia.

Caryn is Associate Editor of the high-impact journal Library and Information Science Research and a Fulbright Specialist. She provides training and consultation to national ministries of scientific research and higher education in the developing world, strategic and operational management consulting to cultural and human service NGOs, and technical information organization services (knowledge management, web development, data analysis) to research institutions. She serves as adjunct faculty for the Simmons University School of Library and Information Science, teaching graduate-level technology classes online and library capacity development for international partners.

Previous experience includes four years in multiple assignments with the U.S. Department of State in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan supporting the development of civic society (especially libraries, universities, and journalists) and facilitating the sustainable transition of knowledge to US and Iraqi partners during the withdrawal of U.S. military forces. She spent two years as Integration Research Manager for the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security at Australian National University developing theory and methods for integrating cross disciplinary knowledge to solve complex social problems. That role included serving as Harvard Executive Sessions process expert to the Australasian Policing Forum and coordinating the newly developed Bridging the Research-Policy Divide course training senior environment, public health, and security researchers from Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, Philippines, Solomon Islands, Thailand, and Timor-Leste.

Technical information science projects Caryn has led include information architecture redesign, taxonomy revision, thesaurus creation, metadata schema integration, digital library application development, and instructional design for online/distance education. Caryn’s 2004 master’s thesis focused on the development of tools to integrate and normalize electronic resource usage statistics, resulting in her engagement with the Electronic Resources Management Initiative (ERMI) and the development of the Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) Protocol (ANSI/NISO Z39.93-2014).

Caryn has published on knowledge management in the Iraq war, the global research environment, cross-disciplinary research, information synthesis, and the socio-technical aspects of big data analytics and use. She holds a bachelor of science degree from the College of Communication at Boston University and a master of science degree from School of Library and Information Science at Simmons University (summa cum laude). Her preliminary doctoral work at School of Information Sciences (iSchool) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign focused on automating data and text mining to synthesize research evidence for improving foreign policy in conflict and post-conflict environments.