The School of Information Studies (iSchool) Dean and Trustee Professor Elizabeth D. Liddy was featured in the bookshelf section of The Good Life Central New York Magazine’s 2010 Women’s issue (March/April).
The Q&A article asked Liddy what books she had recently read that she would recommend to a friend. Liddy chose The Help by first-time novelist Kathryn Stockett, which portrays life in the south in the 1960s; The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, a love story about a couple who struggles with a condition that forces the man into involuntary time travel; Edward M. Kennedy’s autobiography True Compass, and Teams of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin.
Liddy was also asked how she decides what books to read. Besides looking-out for new releases by her favorite authors, Liddy relies on recommendations from friends, family, and colleagues. In the article, Liddy also revealed that she has never re-read a book. She enjoys originality and surprises when reading.
In addition to being the dean of the iSchool at Syracuse University, Liddy is a Trustee Professor, teaching graduate courses in information retrieval, natural language processing, and data mining, and she is an adjunct professor at Upstate Medical University, where she conducts research on medical informatics.
In 1999, she was appointed director of the schools Center for Natural Language Processing, which advances the development of human-like language understanding software capabilities for government, commercial and consumer applications. Throughout her career Liddy has led 65 research projects, with the support of numerous government agencies and commercial enterprises and all based on the use of NLP for improved information access and analytics. She has also authored more than 110 research papers and given hundreds of conference presentations on her work.
She holds a bachelor’s degree in English language and literature from Daemen College (1966) and an M.L.S. in information studies (1977) and a Ph.D. in information transfer (1988), both from SU.