Professor Kate McDowell works at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Professor McDowell’s interdisciplinary work examines how storytelling plays a vital role in humanizing data analysis and communication. She focuses on storytelling as information research and how the history of library storytelling informs data storytelling. 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.
As of 2025, she had delivered over forty invited talks and over a dozen keynotes on her work to nonprofit organizations nationally and internationally. She won the ASIS&T Outstanding Information Science Teacher Award in 2022.
Detailed biography: Professor Kate McDowell focuses on storytelling as information research, social justice storytelling, and how the history of library storytelling can enhance contemporary data storytelling. Her projects engage contexts such as public libraries, non-profit fundraising, and health misinformation in online discourse. This research takes many forms, from publications to storytelling workshops and toolkits to research roles with international coalitions and working groups.
McDowell’s writing has appeared in Library Quarterly, College and Research Libraries, 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 occasionally co-teaches IS 457 data storytelling. McDowell was an early leader in online education, 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 December 2025 High-resolution portrait (jpg) Speaking Engagement Guidelines