UBC School of Information Professor Dr. Heather O’Brien
The past year has been full of milestones for Dr. Heather O’Brien: in October 2022, Dr. O’Brien was awarded the Research in Information Science Award from the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) for her long-term research agenda of user engagement. She also became Full Professor here at the iSchool, where she began teaching fifteen years ago. Anyone who has had the pleasure to meet Dr. O’Brien knows that the person behind all these accomplishments is one of warmth, wisdom, and a love of people that has been the guiding principle behind her teaching and research.
Dr. O’Brien’s career in library and information studies began when she worked at an academic library during her undergraduate degree, where she majored in English literature and psychology. At this academic library, her concept of a library grew from where she gathered course materials to a place full of possibilities: “I was always learning in my interactions at the circulation and reference desks because people bring you different problems and challenges and then you’re on the hunt to find them information and deliver something to them.” She pursued an MLIS at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where she also did her PhD in interdisciplinary studies and began researching user engagement.
Dr. O’Brien’s research on user engagement has produced many outcomes, from creating the User Engagement Scale to editing a book with Paul Cairns called Why Engagement Matters. However, user engagement has changed in the fifteen years since Dr. O’Brien began working in the area, and her work has changed with it. She is now engaged in projects focused on whether user engagement can enhance people’s experience, learning or well being. For example, she is currently working with members of CREST.BD on their PolarUs app, which helps people with bipolar disorder with health self-management to improve their quality of life. She also leads the Supporting Transparent and Open Research Engagement and Exchange (STOREE) Project. STOREE brings together different researchers and organizations to facilitate research sharing and knowledge exchange, with the accessibility, relevance, and usefulness for non-academic audiences at the forefront. To her, accessibility and knowledge exchange is an essential part of library and information sciences, and she has begun to incorporate these topics into the classroom by assigning projects that ask students to be intentional in how they conduct and communicate research.
When asked about what advice she would give to students, Dr. O’Brien says to remember to find opportunities for fun and relaxation during the program, and to remember that learning is more than grades: “I think the relationships that you have in the program, the things that you learn, and the experiences [you have] are so critical.” In her free time, Dr. O’Brien enjoys feeding people, knitting many socks, and reading a mix of escapist and cerebral reads.
