Rong Tang received her doctorate from the School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. She is a Professor at the School of Library and Information Science, Simmons University. Her research interests center on usability and UX research, mobile news information behavior, research data management services, open government data, and paradigm shift in the field of information. Published in top-ranked journals, Rong Tang teaches primarily in areas of evaluation of information services, digital information services and providers, research methods and design, leadership and collaboration, leadership during crisis, theories of information science, and usability and user experience research. Her research areas span from research data management, open government data, usability and UX research, mobile news information seeking behavior, to paradigm shifts in the field of information science.
Since 2018, Rong Tang has been a Co-Leader for the Research Data Management Librarian Academy (RDMLA), which currently has more than 5000 learners from countries around the world. Rong Tang is the founding Director of Simmons Usability Lab. She serves as the Director of the PhD Program at SLIS. Rong has received multiple grants including a WGBH subcontracted grant from NEH (National Endowment of the Humanities) in 2017 and an IMLS grant in 2019 on developing interprofessional informationist (IPI) post-master’s certificate program. Within Simmons SLIS, Rong is the founding and current Co-Director of the UX and Emerging Technologies Lab. She is a faculty co-advisor for Simmons ASIS&T Student Chapter.
Professionally, Rong Tang served as the Director for External Relations, Association for Library and Information Science Education (ALISE) from 2017 to 2020. She will serve as the President for ALISE 2022-2023.
Rong believes in building connections with students, and she is committed to work with students to find an intellectual point where they “click” — the point for which they get lifelong inspiration and passion for information work.
What I Teach
- LIS 403: Evaluation of Information Services
- LIS 454: Digital Information Services and Providers
- LIS 455: Usability and User Experience Research
- LIS 531x: Collaboration and Leadership
- LIS 621: Conducting Research
- LDR 101: Leadership During Crisis
Research/Creative Activities
Rong's research interests center on theories and paradigms of information science, information behavior, and UX research, including mobile news information behavior, cognitive styles, eye movement patterns and user experience, usability evaluation, collaborative user behavior, as well as research data management in libraries, and open government data. Current Research Projects include usability heuristic evaluation of the COVID-19 dashboards, COVID-19 datasets on open government portals, social support and zones of information sources during pandemic, research data services in academic libraries, data competencies for academic librarians, DEISJ competencies for LIS professionals, and more.