Toni Carbo is a professor at the School of Information Sciences (SIS) and the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA) at the University of Pittsburgh.  She was the Dean of SIS from August 1, 1986 through June 30, 2002. Carbo was selected as the first Madison Council Fellow in Library and Information Science at the John W. Kluge Center, Library of Congress (September 1, 2002 – April 30, 2003).  From November 1980 – July 1986, she served as Executive Director of the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS), the government agency responsible for advising the President and US Congress on policy and planning in the information field.

Her work in the information field began in 1962 and includes extensive experience with information service producers and users (both libraries and database producers) and with research and development in the areas of information policy and the use of information.  Her teaching and research interests focus on Information Ethics and Information Policy, especially concerning e-government in the U.S., the European Union, and Sub-Saharan Africa.  She has an A.B. from Brown University and M.S. and Ph.D. from Drexel University.

Carbo is the director of the Institute for Information Ethics and Policy at SIS.  She is also the director of the IMLS-funded ALA Spectrum Doctoral Fellows program, in collaboration with ALA and nine other LIS programs. Carbo was a member of the US National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council (NII AC) 1994-1996, and was named one of seven US private sector representatives to the G-7 Round Table of Business Leaders to the G-7 Information Society Conference, February 1995, in Brussels, Belgium. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and was a member of the AAAS/American Bar Association National Conference of Lawyers and Scientists.  She is also a fellow of the Institute of Information Scientists (IIS), the National Federation of Abstracting and Information Services (NFAIS), and the Special Libraries Association (SLA).   Dr. Carbo has been active in several professional associations and served as president of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST) and of the Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE). In 2005 she was honored for her “inspiring work in the sciences” by the Women and Girls Foundation of Western Pennsylvania, and in 2004 she was named a Distinguished Daughter of Pennsylvania.  In 2002, she received the ALISE Award for Professional Contribution to Library and Information Science Education and the ASIST Watson Davis Award for significant contributions to the association and the profession in 1983.  She was selected by Drexel University as one of the 100 most distinguished of its 60,000 alumni and was awarded its Centennial Medal.

Carbo is co-editor, with James Williams of Information Science: Still an Emerging Discipline and of Perspectives on Information Science: A Festschrift in Honor of Alan Kent (1995) and Perspectives on Information Science: A Festschrift in Honor of Anthony Debons (2007), and is the Editor of The International Information and Library Review (IILR).  She is the author of numerous articles, book chapters, and technical reports.  Her publications are scattered over a diverse set of journals, including the Computer Society of India Communications, SciTech Lawyer, the Electronic Journal of E-government, the Journal of the Medical Library Association, Library Trends, Information Policy Briefings (UK), The Information Society, the Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, Journal of Library Administration,  the Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, and the International Review [formerly Journal] of Information Ethics.  She has directed several international research projects related to the use of scientific and technical information and was involved in the development of information policies in the U.S. and Europe. Carbo has chaired and participated in numerous international conferences, including the Second International Conference on E-Government in 2006; the “Info-Ethics: First International Congress on Ethical, Legal, and Societal Aspects of Digital Information in 1997; the Symposium on Information Ethics in Karlsruhe, Germany in 2004; and the first African Conference on Information Ethics in Pretoria, South Africa in 2007.  Her research and teaching interests focus on Information Ethics and Information Policy, especially as related to e-government in the U.S., Europe and Africa. She is a principal in the UNESCO-funded Training Workshop on Information Ethics and E-Government in Sub-Saharan Africa to be held in S. Africa in 2008.

Last updated November 13, 2007.

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