WHITLEY, Peggy 1938-

PERSONAL: Born September 3, 1938, in Wycaff, NJ; daughter of John (a minister) and Ethel (a homemaker; maiden name, Lant) Kroeze; married Gilmer S. Whitley; children: Brette, Penn, Maggie. Education: Southern Methodist University, B.A. (education), 1961; Sam Houston University, M.L.S. Hobbies and other interests: Teaching "mystery novel" courses.

ADDRESSES: Home—58 Cobble Hill, The Woodlands, TX 77381. Offıce—Kingwood College, 20000 Kingwood Dr., Kingwood, TX 77339. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Educator and librarian. Kingwood College, Kingwood, TX, dean of educational services.

MEMBER: American Library Association, Texas Library Association.

AWARDS, HONORS: Teacher Excellence Award.

WRITINGS:

(With Catherine Olson and Susan Williams Goodwin) Ninety-nine Jumpstarts to Research: Topic Guides for Finding Information on Current Issues, Libraries Unlimited (Englewood, CO), 2001.

(With Susan Williams Goodwin) Ninety-nine Jumpstarts for Kids: Getting Started in Research, Libraries Unlimited (Englewood, CO), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS: Longtime teacher and librarian Peggy Whitley has been part of the late-twentieth-century information revolution. She reflected on the changes in librarianship caused by this revolution, telling CA, "With the advent of the Internet and the many electronic databases available online, today's libraries are moving outside their walls. Librarians must be prepared to do so, too. Students and library patrons are now inundated with too much information. It has become the role of the librarian to teach users 'information literacy' or how to select the best sources and evaluate the information they find."

To help meet this need, Whitley teamed up with Catherine Olson and Susan Williams Goodwin to write Ninety-nine Jumpstarts to Research: Topic Guides forFinding Information on Current Issues. This work, which School Library Journal reviewer Mary Lankford called "timely, practical" and "useful . . . for developing good research habits," provides a plethora of information. The work is divided alphabetically into two-page sections by such topics as abortion, politics, gun control, immigration, medicine, and crime, among many others. Each topic contains information on library search terms, relevant questions, agencies to contact, and sources of information from the print media and from Web sites.

As an adjunct to her information services work, Whitley, dean of educational services at Kingwood College, has also co-created and taught the "Whodunit Series." These college literature classes focus on mystery literature and have examined the development of the mystery as a genre, British historical and regional mysteries, and American historical and regional mysteries. "It is always exciting to renew our friendship with participants from earlier classes and meet new mystery readers," Whitley told a Houston Chronicle reporter.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

Houston Chronicle, October 11, 2001, "Kingwood College Offers New 'Whodunit' Series," p. 11.

School Library Journal, March, 2002, Mary Lankford, review of Ninety-nine Jumpstarts to Research: Topic Guides to Finding Information on Current Issues, p. 263.