Associate Librarian John Sisson

Since joining the UCI Libraries in 1990, Associate Librarian John Sisson has seen the biological sciences grow and change on the UCI campus. "It has been a joy and a challenge to support the School of Biological Sciences in so many ways. I buy the biology books, teach about biology research resources, and attempt to answer all the biology questions. I enjoy learning daily about the directions biology is taking at UCI."

In his current position as the Biological Science Librarian, John is responsible for instruction, reference, and collection development and is particularly interested in information literacy and scientific scholarly communication. "I feel that I need to teach more than just the tools for research. With the number of online resources expanding astronomically, I need also to teach how to choose and evaluate resources for coverage, appropriateness for their topic, and the ability to adapt to a wide variety of interfaces," said John. “It is not ‘one-stop’ shopping for biology any more. To get a current picture of a topic, you need to use the range of resources provided through the UCI Libraries."

To promote information literacy, Sisson is involved with the basic training class of the interdisciplinary graduate program in Molecular Biology, Genetics, and Biochemistry and also in Biology 100, an undergraduate course in experimental biology. For the graduate program, Sisson teaches two separate sessions, one on the range and use of biology research resources available to new graduate students, and one on information management. In Biology 100, John says, “I get the chance to reach over 300 biological sciences students every quarter. This is the first chance to give the undergraduate biology students training in discipline specific resources and start them on their road to information literacy." He has participated in Bio 100 for 14 years so far.

Before coming to UCI, John worked at the University of Hawaii’s Sea Grant Library, and prior to that as a laboratory technician at Hawaiian Abalone Farms in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii. He has a master's degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Hawaii, Manoa; an M.S. in Zoology from the University of Maine, Orono; and a B.A. in General Biology from UC San Diego.