Associate Fellowship Program: 2014-2015 Associate Fellows

Erin Foster, Kristina Elliott, Lori Harris, Ariel Deardorff

Mee the associates

Erin Foster
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2014

Erin Foster received her MSLS degree in 2014 from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. While completing her degree, Ms. Foster worked as a graduate research assistant at UNC Chapel Hill's Health Sciences Library providing reference and instruction services, as well as faculty and student research support. Ms. Foster also worked on several projects with UNC Chapel Hill's digital repository and completed a field experience at Duke University in Rubenstein Library's Technical Services Department. Prior to graduate studies, Ms. Foster worked as a library assistant and data manager at an aerospace and defense company. Ms. Foster completed her undergraduate degree at the University of California, Santa Cruz where she double majored in Literature and Feminist Studies. As an undergraduate, Ms. Foster held student assistant positions in the Reference and Media Center areas of UC Santa Cruz's McHenry Library.

Kristina Elliott
University of Maryland, 2014

Kristina Elliott received her MLS from the University of Maryland in 2014. While completing her degree, Ms. Elliott worked as a Graduate Assistant in the College of Information Studies, supporting communications, marketing, and alumni outreach efforts. As a master’s student, she interned with the National Library of Medicine, developing a social media strategy and guidelines for the library’s Twitter and Facebook accounts. She was also a metadata and social media intern with NOAA Central Library in Silver Spring, MD. Before beginning her master’s program, Ms. Elliott worked for a cloud-based marketing software company as an editor, writer, and researcher. She earned her BA in English from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Lori Harris
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2013

Lori E. Harris received her MSLS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ms. Harris was a recipient of the American Library Association Spectrum Scholarship in 2012-2013 and the Society of American Archivists’ Harold T. Pinkett Minority Student Award in 2013-2014. As a graduate student, Ms. Harris worked in North Carolina State University’s Special Collections Research Center as both a Library Associate and Project Archivist arranging and describing large manuscript collections by examining patterns of documentation following archival principles. Ms. Harris’ interest in medical librarianship was sparked when she worked as an archivist intern at the Black Women’s Health Imperative in Washington, DC. Ms. Harris’ independent research consisted of conducting oral interviews of African American women, focusing on their health-related experiences with medical professionals and how they navigated the health care system. Ms. Harris’ current research included conducting a focus group study of African American women to analyze their information seeking behavior as it relates to social media with a primary focus on their use of Facebook to retrieve, share and utilize health care and other types of information. Ms. Harris holds a B.A. in American Studies and two Certificates: Archival Studies and Museum Studies from Smith College.

Ariel Deardorff
University of British Columbia in Vancover, Canada, 2014

Ariel Deardorff received her MLIS in 2014 from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. As an MLIS student, Ms. Deardorff worked at the University of British Columbia's Education Library, Office of Library Assessment, and Faculty of Medicine, and volunteered at the British Columbia Children’s Hospital Library. She is fascinated by the intersection between health and technology, and strongly believes that librarians can play an important role in making health information more accessible and user friendly. During her MLIS program Ms. Deardorff was active in her school’s chapter of the British Columbia Library Association, and the Special Library Association, and served as a student representative to the group Academic Librarians in Public Service. In 2013 Ms. Deardorff was chosen to represent her school as part of the American Library Association's Student to Staff program, through which she was able to volunteer at the 2013 ALA annual conference. Ms. Deardorff holds a Bachelor’s degree in International Studies from the University of Washington.