Professor Kate McDowell works at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, with a focus on the Library and Information Science program. Key resources and impact:
She leads the nationally-funded Data Storytelling Toolkit for Librarians project to equip libraries with narrative tools for data-informed advocacy, which has been used by over 5,000 librarians in over 50 countries so far (2021-present)
She won the ASIS&T Outstanding Information Science Teacher Award in 2022 and the ASIS&T Research Impact Award in 2026.
As of 2025, she has delivered over forty invited talks and over a dozen keynotes on her work to nonprofit organizations nationally and internationally (see examples below).
Detailed biography: Professor Kate McDowell focuses on storytelling as information research, social justice storytelling, transforming data visualization into data storytelling, and how the history of library storytelling can enhance current data storytelling effectiveness. Her projects engage contexts such as public and academic libraries, non-profit fundraising, environmental protection, and health misinformation in online discourse. This research takes many forms, from publications to talks, workshops, toolkits, and research roles in connection and collaboration with international coalitions and working groups, such as:
The International Coalition of Library Consortia (ICOLC)
Chief Officers of State Library Agencies (COSLA, USA)
Partnership for Academic Library Collaboration and Innovation (PALCI)
Midwest Collaborative for Library Services (MCLS, USA)
Research Institute for Public Libraries (RIPL, USA)
Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI)
South Australia Libraries (Libraries SA, Australia)
Cultures and Practices of Digital Technologies, Aarhus University (CuPra AU, Denmark)
Supporting Transparent & Open Research Engagmenet & Exchange (STOREE, Canada)
McDowell’s writing has appeared in Library Journal, Library Quarterly, College and Research Libraries, Public Library Quarterly, and the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, where her article Storytelling wisdom: Story, information, and DIKW theorizes story as a fundamental information form and storytelling as an overlooked but vital current information dynamic. She has worked with regional, national, and international nonprofits, including the Pan-American Health Organization (part of the WHO), the Public Library Association, and the Research Institute for Public Libraries. Her book Critical Data Storytelling for Libraries: Crafting Ethical Narratives for Advocacy and Impact came out in 2025.
McDowell is a Professor at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA. There she teaches the core required social course in library and information science, IS 510 Libraries, Information, and Society; as well as IS 410 Storytelling; and she occasionally co-teaches IS 457 data storytelling, which she co-developed starting in 2017 with leading experts in data at the iSchool as the first course of its kind. McDowell was an early leader in online education, co-authoring a highly cited article on story-based engagement with theory and earning Illinois’ Excellence in Online & Distance Teaching Award in 2018. In 2022, McDowell’s teaching was internationally celebrated with the ASIS&T Outstanding Information Science Teacher Award. In addition to her current role, she formerly served as Interim Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Assistant Dean for Student Affairs, and has led multiple transformative projects for the School. CV as of July 2026 High-resolution portrait (jpg) Speaking Engagement Guidelines