Toni Carbo

  • Professor Emerita

Toni Carbo is a professor emerita at the School of Computing and Information (SCI), University of Pittsburgh, having been a professor there since the fall of 1986 until her retirement in May 2009, and was the Dean of the School from August 1, 1986 through June 30, 2002. Her work in the information Nield began in 1962 and includes extensive experience with information service producers and users (working both in libraries for nine years and with database producers for seven years), management and leadership, and with research and development in the areas of national and international information policy and information ethics. Dr. Carbo was executive director of the National Federation of Abstracting and Indexing Services (now National Federation of Advanced Information Services) from 1974-1979, a consultant for the Institution of Electrical Engineers (London) from September 1979- September 1980; and was executive director of the U.S. National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS) from November 1980 – June 1986. She has an A.B. from Brown University and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Drexel University. She served as the ASIS&T representative to the AAAS Coalition on Science and Human Rights and is a fellow of AAAS. She was also a member of the ASIS&T 80th Anniversary Celebration Taskforce, chaired the 50th Anniversary Conference Committee, and co-chaired the 75th Anniversary Celebration Committee. She served on the Brown University Library Advisory Council for several years. She chaired ALISE's Task Force to develop a Code of Ethics for LIS Educators. She was the Convener of the ALISE SIG on information ethics 2009-2010, which developed ALISE's Nirst guidelines approved in 2010. She was co-chair of the Special Libraries Association (SLA) Advisory Council on Information Ethics, which developed SLA’s Nirst ethical guidelines in 2010. She was awarded the Nirst Raymond F. von Dran Award for her “pioneering initiative and enduring support of the iSchool Caucus” by the iSchools for leadership in the information Nield. She is a past president of both ALISE and ASIST. She 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 Meeting in Brussels, Belgium in 1995. She is currently a member of the ASIST Award of Merit Jury, and serves as an advisor to the SIG III Special Interest Group. Dr. Carbo was the Editor of The International Information and Library Review (IILR) for 22 years and is the author of hundreds of articles, book chapters, and technical reports, and the editor or co-editor of three books.

She has chaired and/or participated in the planning and implementation of numerous international conferences and workshops, including the Second International Conference on E-Government in 2006; the UNESCO “Info-Ethics: First International Congress on Ethical, Legal, and Societal Aspects of Digital Information in 1997; “Towards an Information Literate Society” (Prague, Czech Republic, 2003), the Symposium on Information Ethics in Karlsruhe, Germany in 2004; the Nirst African Conference on Information Ethics in Pretoria, South Africa in 2007, and the UNESCO Workshop on Information Ethics and E-Government in Sub-Saharan Africa, 2009. (Last updated 5 January 2022)

Institution of Highest Degree

  • PhD in Information Science, Drexel University
  • MS in Library and Information Science, Drexel University
  • AB in English-American Literature, Brown University