Anita Sundaram Coleman is an Assistant Professor in the School of Information Resources & Library Science at the University of Arizona, Tucson, which she joined in 2001. Before coming to Arizona, she was with the Alexandria Digital Library ADEPT Project, where she worked with the development of a metadata standard for learning objects in Geography. She has worked in special collections, technical, and public service areas in academic libraries. She currently teaches courses in Knowledge Structures and Information Seeking Behaviors, and has taught others such as Systems Analysis, Cataloging and Classification at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of California at Los Angeles.

Coleman’s current research program examines both sides of the information coin, representations of information and information uses and users, specifically those related to learning at the undergraduate level, in an unified program of inquiry. The goal is to study uses, users, and information organization and representation for a better understanding and definition of 'interactional digital libraries.' Her funded research includes:

• classification and cataloging of 'scientific models' as works where she is working with extensions to the Dublin Core metadata borrowing the definition of complex objects from the a rchival community, utilizing analytical cataloging principles, and facet analysis to improve the information retrieval of models;
• citation analysis of Geographic Information Science (GIS) where she seeks to distinguish information science from information technology concepts;
• citation analysis of academic, teaching products in GIS and studying information behaviors to understand use of interactive electronic resources in the sciences;
• use and user studies of engineering laboratories in an attempt to inform the design and vocabulary in a geo-technical, rock, and water resources digital library.

Coleman’s recent writings have appeared in D-Lib Magazine, Cataloging and Classification Quarterly, Proceedings of the International Society for Knowledge Organization, and the British Journal of Digital Information (JoDI). Interactional digital libraries and the research issues underlying them are discussed in the JoDI special issue published May 2002.

Coleman is the Editor for the Digital Libraries theme of JoDI and is on the Steering Committee of the Digital Library for Earth Systems Education. In cooperation with the Arizona Health Sciences Library at UA, she is involved in the development of DLIST, the Digital Library of Information Science and Technology, an OAI-compliant Eprints based repository for disciplinary materials in LIS & IT.

Coleman has a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature. She received her Master’s degree in Library & Information Science from the Sarada Ranganathan Department of Library Science, University of Madras, India. She also has a Master’s degree in Curriculum & Instruction, with specialization in Educational Technology from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Her Ph.D. in Library and Information Science is from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her doctoral dissertation is titled, Towards the design of the Hypermedia Journal and it discusses both information work and the design of tools to support such work.