Biography
Born in Jacksonville, Florida, Martha M. Smith was educated at
Duke University (B.A., M. Div. and Ph. D.) and the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill (M.S.L.S. and Ph. D.). She has taught in the
fields of library and information science and in religion studies
combining both in her current area of research in information ethics.
Her teaching and research are also informed by practical experience
working as a library director, library clerk, and student assistant. As
early as 1979 she was involved in distance education with adult
students, taking herself and library books to the off campus students.
Those years also provided her first experience teaching business and
professional ethics to students in the high-tech environment of the
Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. From these courses and
insights from the work experiences of the students from IBM,
DataGeneral, major pharmaceutical companies, and state government, she
began to think of the connection between applied ethics and information
technologies.
During her years as a library director, she was a leader in library
automation and networking efforts in the independent colleges of North
Carolina and served as the chair of a local consortium of academic
libraries for two years. She was successful in a grant writing project
that moved consortium libraries forward in becoming participants in
state-wide library networking guided by the State Library.
Since 1999, she has been teaching and pursuing research projects in
using online courseware in library and information science including
inquires into the contributions that information ethics can make to
web-based teaching and learning.
Dr. Smith has taught in the field of LIS at the University of North
Carolina, Indiana University, Long Island University, and now at Drexel.
Her personal interests include reading science fiction, particularly
the works of Octavia Butler, Southern fiction, and computer magazines.
She keeps fit with yoga and walking and chasing her two cats, Amber and
Ginger, and three grand cats, Kieffer, Katherine, and Philomena.