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Marcia Zeng to Receive the ASIS&T 2024 Award of Merit

The Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) is delighted to announce that Marcia Zeng is the recipient of the 2024 ASIS&T Award of Merit, the highest honor presented by the Association. The award’s purpose is to recognize an individual who has made particularly noteworthy and sustained contributions to the information science field. The award is based on 3 criteria: impact on theory, scholarship, and practice; exemplary leadership and sustained involvement; and education and mentoring.

Marcia Lei Zeng is a Professor of Information Science at Kent State University (USA). She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Computing and Information. Her primary research interests include knowledge organization systems, linked data, metadata, smart data and big data, semantic technologies, and digital humanities. Her scholarly publications consist of more than 100 research papers and six books, as well as over 200 national and international conference presentations, invited lectures, and keynote speeches. Her research projects have received funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), OCLC, Fulbright, and other esteemed academic and scientific foundations.

In 2014, Marcia Zeng was recognized by Kent State University for Outstanding Research and Scholarship, and in 2016 she received the President’s Faculty Excellence Award. Dr. Zeng has chaired and served on numerous committees, working groups, and executive boards including the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), the Special Libraries Association (SLA), the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T), the global iSchools organization, the US National Information Standards Organization (NISO), the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI), and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Currently, Dr. Zeng is serving as a member of the DCMI Governing Board and International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO) Board of Directors.

In nominating Marcia Zeng, Marjorie Hlava said, “It is the quiet unassuming people who often make the greatest contributions to our field. Dr. Marcia Lei Zeng is such a person. Some of her accomplishments are listed in the paragraphs below and the research contributions to the field speak for themselves. It is also important to note that in teaching she excels. Her students are many and impressive in themselves. Not only the ones locally on campus, but the people from distant horizons who ask for a receive unstinting support worldwide. Her impact in the world of standards, particularly in metadata and controlled vocabularies is broad and deep. Marcia Zeng holds a Ph.D. from the School of Computing and Information at the University of Pittsburgh (USA) and M.A. from the School of Information Management at Wuhan University (China). Her research interests include knowledge organization systems (taxonomies, thesauri, ontologies, etc), Linked Data, metadata and markup languages, smart data and big data, database quality control, semantic technologies, and digital humanities. Her scholarly publications consist of more than 100 papers and six books, as well as over 200 national and international conference presentations, invited lectures, and keynote speeches.”

Upon learning of her selection as winner of the ASIS&T Award of Merit, Marcia Zeng responded, "I am so profoundly honored to be recognized by my esteemed colleagues in the field of information science.  Receiving the Doctoral Forum Award in 1992 from this society encouraged me greatly at the start of my career and reinforced my commitment to the advancement of education and research in the field of Information Science and Technology."

Marcia Zeng will receive the award during the 2024 meeting of the Association for Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T) which will be held 25-29 October, 2024 in Calgary, AB Canada.