Laureen Cantwell-Jurkovic is an academic librarian who has worked at R1s, R2s, small liberal arts colleges, Ivy League institutions, and regional universities. She has a Masters of Science in Library and Information Science and a PhD in Information Science. She is passionate about talking to students about how they can explore "hot" topics and controversial ideas while maintaining civility and dignity for those involved in the conversation (including viewers, listeners, and readers, but also the scholarship and information producers with which they are in conversation). This content also bridges into the importance of information literacy, information ethics, metaliteracies, data literacy and presentation skills, freedom to read, fake news, and other critical topics from the library and information science field. She works particularly closely with business and medical/health sciences students and faculty, from the baccalaureate level up through doctoral/PhD studies.
Her research has appeared in Marketing Libraries Journal, Communications in Information Literacy, and the Journal of the Medical Library Association, She has also served as an editor and chapter author for several book projects (e.g., Finding Your Seat at the Table: Roles for Librarians on Institutional Regulatory Boards and Committees; and Intersections in Healing: Academic Libraries and the Health Humanities). She is on the editorial boards of Hypothesis and Communications in Information Literacy, and a peer reviewer for several journals including Libray Trends, Nurse Educator, the Journal of Intellectual Freedom & Privacy (JIFP), and Reference Services Review.