![\"Crystal](\"https:\/\/cci.utk.edu\/sis\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2019\/08\/crystalnews9.1web.jpg\")
Crystal Sherline didn\u2019t think she wanted to get a PhD; she was working as a library director of a small, rural library, and had already been through the rigorous PhD experience with a spouse.<\/p>\nCrystal Sherline didn\u2019t think she wanted to get a PhD; she was working as a library director of a small, rural library, and had already been through the rigorous PhD experience with a spouse.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a couple of patrons I was very close to, who were older and worldly. They told me, \u2018You need to go do a PhD.\u2019 I contemplated for a couple of years, but I\u2019m a lifetime learner,\u201d Sherline said.<\/p>\n
She earned her doctoral degree from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, College of Communications and Information, with an emphasis in information sciences. After she graduated in 2014, she didn\u2019t pursue any more librarianship, but rather worked for the Homeland Defense Information Analysis Center doing heavy statistics-based analysis.<\/p>\n
Currently, she works at the Department of Energy in the Office of Scientific and Technical Information. She heads up data acquisitions, which means she gets researchers, universities, federal agencies and national laboratories to submit metadata for their scientific research in order to get a persistent identifier \u2013 a digital object identifier (DOI).<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know how books have ISSN numbers? It\u2019s like giving research a Social Security number, in a sense. It\u2019s a way to always have something persistent, that never goes away, for electronic documents,\u201d she explained. \u201cIt\u2019s always resolvable, so if you click on a DOI, it\u2019s part of a citation now.\u201d<\/p>\n
She works a lot with developers to make searching and record-keeping easier for users, to ensure they can easily submit and access what they need. She hasn\u2019t been able to do as much research recently as she would like, but when she does, she conducts usability studies doing testing with researchers on utilities and functionalities that work best for them.<\/p>\n
Sherline\u2019s earlier education and career were all building blocks for her to do what she does today: a mix of science, writing and libraries. She earned an undergraduate degree in biology, and also has a master\u2019s in English and Technical writing. She lived in Berlin at one point and did freelance science writing and loved it. When she was back in the United States, she volunteered in libraries and decided to pursue a master\u2019s of science in library science at Florida State University.<\/p>\n
A move to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, helped facilitate her preferred career in the math and science field, as well as her PhD. She worked for three years in Oak Ridge before deciding to pursue her PhD at UT \u2013 she said she wouldn\u2019t have gone through with getting a doctoral degree if she hadn\u2019t been accepted into the UT program.<\/p>\n
\u201cGenerally, you don\u2019t need a PhD unless you\u2019re going to do research or be a professor; I don\u2019t mind the research, but I didn\u2019t see myself in an academic setting. Out the gate, I was honest and up front about that and [the faculty] said, no, there\u2019s lots of avenues,\u201d Sherline said.<\/p>\n
When she started the program, Sherline would discuss her interests with Chancellor\u2019s Professor Suzie Allard and they would figure out how Sherline could pursue those interests. She wanted to study behavior in usage, decisions and persuasion making, so she took a lot of psychology and statistic classes, which she then applied back to theory and information.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the program is amazing\u2026One of the things I really enjoyed was that there was so much flexibility in my program. I really enjoyed being able to decide, and no be told what I have to do. There were parameters, but I got to decide,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Now, Sherline is a lecturer for the UT School of Information Sciences and has taught: Information Access and Retrieval; Environmental Informatics; Introduction to Web Technologies; Information Seeking: Resources and Strategies and Information Management in Organizations. She said she’s glad she went ahead and earned her PhD.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt felt great to be finished, but it also felt like there\u2019s nothing I can\u2019t do,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Crystal Sherline didn\u2019t think she wanted to get a PhD; she was working as a library director of a small, rural library, and had already been through the rigorous PhD experience with a spouse. \u201cI had a couple of patrons I was very close to, who were older and worldly. They told me, \u2018You need […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,56,61,193],"tags":[192],"class_list":["post-7307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-announcements","category-featured-story","category-lecturer-spotlight","category-phd-spotlight","tag-phd-alumni"],"yoast_head":"\n