The UHM LIS Program is sad to announce the passing of our former colleague Associate Professor Dr. Luz Marina Quiroga who taught at UH from 2000 until 2019 in areas related to Information Retrieval, Databases, Library Systems, and website design.
Celebrating Dr. Quiroga’s promotion and tenure in 2011.
She was born in 1947 in Manizales, Colombia, and earned a B.Sc. in Chemical Engineering at the Universidad Industrial de Santander, Universidad de los Andes in 1971. She later obtained an M.Sc. in Computer Science from the Autonomous National University of Mexico (1984), and a Ph.D. in LIS from Indiana University (1999). The following year she came to the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in 2000 as the first crossover faculty position between the recently merged Library and Information Science Program and Information and Computer Sciences Department. She taught courses in database design, digital libraries, personalization, and information architecture. She also was a frequent instructor at the international training program for developing nations librarians at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels. She wrote on a number of scholarly articles, some of which are highly cited, such as a 2004 HICSS paper with Martha Crosby, “Reducing cognitive load” that has been cited over 50 times. Her Spanish language articles are also well cited, as a reflection of her international agenda. Her research and teaching always focused on advancing ICTs (preferably open source) to help society address social problems like the information needs of the unhoused. UH Mānoa Communications Professor Wayne Buente recalled that “Luz was one of the first CIS faculty members to work in the area of community informatics ,and it is my hope that her never-ending passion toward social change will always be remembered in CIS.”
Professor Emerita Violet Harada summed up many of our thoughts with “Luz’s passion for serving needy communities influenced our LIS courses in community engagement. I enjoyed our many conversations about teaching and how we might help our students take a deeper look at what librarians can contribute to our larger world. She has left all of us who knew her, just a little bit better for her friendship.”