Obituaries > Hoosier Times


NEWS OF RECORD
IU's professor Kling dead at 58
Herald-Times Report, May 17, 2003

Rob Kling, professor of information systems and information science at the School of Library and Information Science and adjunct professor of computer science at Indiana University, died unexpectedly Thursday morning. He was 58.

Blaise Cronin, dean of the IU School of Library and Information Science, praised Kling's accomplishments on the school's Web site, calling them "legion and well documented."

"He was quite simply the brightest bloke with whom I have had the pleasure of working. Infectiously curious, playfully serious, razor sharp, generous of spirit, and wonderfully open-minded," Cronin said.

A prolific writer, Kling was described by colleague Alan Dennis, of IU's Kelley School of Business, as "an icon in our field having spent time at the Stanford Research Institute, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, UC Irvine and most recently here at Indiana University."

Kling directed an interdisciplinary research center at IU, the Center for Social Informatics. He served as the editor-in-chief of The Information Society, a scholarly and mainstream publication for the information technology profession.

He also served on the editorial and advisory boards of several scholarly and professional journals, including European Journal of CSCW, Information Technology and People, Social Science Computer Review and Accounting, Management and Information Technology.

Kling directed the SLIS Master of Information Science degree program, and oversaw program planning and student recruitment.

"Dynamic enthusiasm is insufficient to describe how Rob approached everything in life," said Debora Shaw, associate dean at the school. "His analysis and insight transformed the trivial to significant, providing, among other benefits, the foundation for the field of social informatics. Rob's friends, colleagues and students have been stunned by our loss of a guide whose ideas challenged and encouraged us to accomplish more than we thought we could."

Kling's research interests included study of social informatics, which investigates aspects of computerization — the roles of information technology in social and organizational change and the ways that the social organization of IT is influenced by social forces and social practices. Kling studied how intensive computerization transforms work practices and how computerization entails many social choices.

Kling's research has been published in over 85 journal articles and book chapters. He presented numerous conference papers, gave invited lectures at many major universities and the National Academy of Sciences, and presented keynote and plenary talks at conferences in the United States, Canada and Western Europe.

In 2001, he was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1987, he was awarded an honorary doctorate in social sciences by the Free University of Brussels.

Kling was born in August 1944 and grew up in northern New Jersey. He completed his undergraduate studies at Columbia University in 1965 and his graduate studies, specializing in artificial intelligence, at Stanford University in 1967 and 1971.

In 1996, he came to Bloomington as professor of information systems and information science.

The family has established a SLIS scholarship at the IU Foundation in his memory: the Rob Kling Social Informatics Scholarship Fund.

Kling is survived by his wife, Mitzi Lewison of Bloomington, and his sister Ellasara Kling of New York City. Friends and colleagues are welcome to call at the family home over the next week.

The family is planning a celebration of life for a future date. The SLIS is planning a memorial event for early fall.