Ken Irwin is a Reference Librarian; liaison to several arts, humanities, and social science departments; and is the web developer for Thomas Library. He has a B.A. in English from Kalamazoo College and an M.L.I.S. from the University of Michigan. His professional interests include library collection management, graphic novels, digital humanities and developing open-source software to address libraries needs.
In addition to his work in the library, Ken is the faculty advisor for the Wittenberg University Speleological Society (WUSS/Caving Club) and the Outdoors Club; he has also been instrumental in organizing the Wittenberg Food Co-op since its inception in 2007. He can often be found hiking, contra dancing, cooking, or rock climbing.
Current Projects
- GIS Tools for Digital Humanities - February 2018
Selected Publications
- Irwin, K. (2016) Comparing patrons’ renewal behavior before and after implementing more permissive loan rules. Journal of Access Services. 13(4): 237-246.
- Irwin, K. (2014) Graphic nonfiction: a survey of nonfiction comics. Collection Building. 33(4): 106-120.
- Irwin, K. (2011) The Homegrown Mobile Catalog: A Quick, Inexpensive Approach to Expanding Access. Technical Services Quarterly. 29(1): 42-57.
- Irwin, K. (2008) Comparing Circulation Rates of Monographs and Anthologies of Literary Criticism: Implications for Cooperative Collection Development. Collection Management. 33 (1-2): 69-81.
Selected Open-Source Software Projects
- Sort Tetris - An educational game adaptable to many kinds of content. Originally developed as "Citation Tetris" to teach students to recognize citations for different types of materials.
- Weeding Helper - Web-based software to help libraries make weeding/de-accession decisions based on item usage and external evaluations of individual items.
- Suma Session Manager - Suma Session Manager is a tool for modifying data that has previously been submitted to Suma: A Space Assessment Toolkit. Suma is a space usage/statistics package; it natively does not allow users to delete or modify data once it has been submitted. This session manager allows the user to "delete" (actually hide from reporting) or to alter the timestamps on individual sessions.
- Suma Retroactive Data Importer - Suma Retroactive Data Importer is a tool for retroactively submitting data into Suma: A Space Assessment Toolkit. Suma is natively intended for real-time data submission. This import generator allows the user to input data hours, days, weeks, or even years after the fact.
- InnReachTracker - This suite of scripts takes data exported from Innovative Interfaces (III) catalog systems to show what books have been requested from other libraries using the INNReach request system.