Fiona Bell

In 2015 I retired after 21 years of being a full-time lecturer in Information Studies at the University of KwaZulu-Natal on the Pietermaritzburg campus. My highest qualification was a Master of Information Studies from the University of Natal (1998). 

In my position as a lecturer, I was involved with lecturing (Cataloguing, Classification, Information Retrieval), supervision, examining (internal and external) and research (8 publications and 6 unpublished conference papers) and headed up the Post-Graduate Diploma in Information Studies programme. Over the years, I participated in numerous external projects involving community engagement. I lectured in the Resource Description and Access (RDA) lecture series at the National Library in Pretoria in 2009. My own research focused on the history of South African librarianship. I was active in the IGBIS interest group of the Library and Information Association of South Africa (LIASA). 

Since 2016 I have been an Honorary Lecturer in Information Studies at UKZN. I continued the supervision of my remaining MIS students until 2021, continued to review proposals for Masters students and continued with internal examining of theses for UKZN and external examining for UCT. For the last five years I have been involved with the writing of co-ordination reports for Masters theses at UKZN.