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SLIS professor dies at 58: Kling remembered as a 'team player' and an 'inspirational' force in education

by Holly Johnson
Indiana Daily Student
Tuesday, May 20, 2003
Copyright 2003 © Indiana Daily Student. All rights reserved. Reposted with permission. This article can be viewed in its original format at: http://www.idsnews.com/story.php?id=16750

Rob Kling, IU professor of Information Systems and Information Science at the School of Library and Information Science, passed away unexpectedly in the early morning hours Thursday, according to a SLIS Web site created in his honor. He was 58.

Kling is survived by his wife, Mitzi Lewison, an IU education professor, and his sister, Ellasara Kling, of New York City. Lewison said the couple's home has been inundated with calls and visits from former students and colleagues in the days following his death.

"He was the most fabulous person on the planet as far as I'm concerned," Lewison said. "What struck me, though, are his grad students. They've just been in tears, as bad as I am; they view him as a mentor."

She also noted Kling's aptitude in reaching international students, adding that former students from the University of California at Irvine also have called to pay their respects.

"He seemed to really work with them in a way that was really important to them," she said. "There was something about his work with students that was really special. I always knew he was good working with students as a Ph.D. adviser, but I guess this really brought it home."

Thomas Duffy, Bruce Jacobs chair of education and technology in Instructional Systems Technology and a colleague of Kling's at the Center for Social Informatics, said the professor's death will leave a void similarly sensed at CSI, SLIS and the University as a whole.

Duffy said he will remember his colleague as "incredibly willing to be helpful and to be a team player."

"He just had a great intellect," Duffy said, adding that Kling persistently exhorted coworkers and students to consider IT in terms of overarching social systems, rather than centering upon the technology itself.

"He looked at communities of teachers and how we should support them," Duffy said. "His passion was very much the kind of social issues surrounding the use of technology."

Duffy had collaborated with Kling on a variety of issues within the institute, most recently working on a graduate proposal. He has known Kling since 1996, when Kling began his tenure at IU. He learned of Kling's death Friday morning while sitting in a meeting.

On his Web site, Kling categorized his research as primarily focusing upon the "social consequences of computerization and the social choices that are available to people." He said he believed that contextualizing information technologies in terms of their adjacent social structures and political environment precipitated a greater comprehension of such systems as digital libraries, instructional computing and desktop computing. He remained committed to viewing the role of information systems as that of organizational tools -- as "technology in use" rather than simple data collections.

Preeminent among his research interests at the end of his life were the role of digital libraries and electronic publishing. One such current project, funded by the National Science Foundation, examined the effective maintenance of new communications technologies by diverse scholarly communities, as well as the costs and complexities involved in developing forums for scientific communication. He said he was particularly intrigued by the methods by which new technologies initiated social and organizational change.

Dr. Blaise Cronin, dean of SLIS, commented upon Kling's intense work ethic and morals, likening his recruitment to "reeling in a prize marlin."

"Rob cared about the academy and was passionately committed to maintaining scholastic standards and collegiality," Cronin said on the SLIS Web site. "He juggled a workload that made the rest of us blanch. Yet as soon as a new problem, challenge or opportunity presented itself, he was off. Another ball was tossed up into the already seriously congested air. I'd routinely tease him that he had more bees in his bonnet than an apiarist, but the man was not for turning. Such was Rob, and we would not have had it otherwise."

While at IU, Kling taught such courses as Computerization in Society, Information Technologies and Social Change, and Digital Libraries and Electronic Publishing in Social-Technological Perspective. He came to IU in August 1996, following stints at the Stanford Research Institute's Artificial Intelligence Center, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of California at Irvine.

Lewison emphasized Kling's "real zest for life" and noted his love for travel and unusual cuisine. She said after the couple moved to Bloomington from California, a shift she deemed "pretty much of a shock," she and Kling would drive every few months to tiny towns in southern Indiana -- a practice she claims typified the late professor's spark.

"Every couple of months, Rob and I would try to find the most obscure place in southern Indiana," she said. "We'd take the road map and go to a little town with a population of 50 people and check it out and take photos. We'd do that six to eight times a year, just to try and see what was there."

The response to Kling's death among colleagues and students in the School of Library Science and throughout the University as a whole has flooded the Web site SLIS created in his honor. Friends and colleagues may visit the site and contribute comments at http://www.slis.indiana.edu/klingremembered. A celebration of Kling's life has been planned by his family, and a similar gathering will be planned by his colleagues in SLIS. Dates have not been determined yet.

Kling's family has created the Rob Kling Social Informatics Scholarship Fund in his memory, with SLIS providing matching funds. Checks should be payable to the IU Foundation and the name of the fund should be included on the memo line. They should be sent to: IU Foundation, P.O. Box 500, Bloomington, IN 47402

http://www.slis.indiana.edu/news/story.php?story_id=644