University of Michigan School of Information

Elizabeth Yakel

A headshot of Elizabeth Yakel

Interim Dean of the School of Information, 2022-24

Elizabeth Yakel is a two-time alumna of the School of Information and served on its faculty from 2000 until her retirement in 2025. 

Yakel is known for work advancing archival practice, the use of primary sources in archives education, studies of data reuse practices and digital curation. She was active in the instructional program, including teaching and mentoring master’s and doctoral students.

She completed her undergraduate studies at Brown University in 1980, then earned her MA in library science from the University of Michigan in 1982. In 1997, she earned a PhD from the school, newly renamed the School of Information. Her dissertation, “Recordkeeping in Radiology: The Relationships Between Activities and Records in Radiological Processes,” received the 1997 Eugene Garfield Doctoral Dissertation Award from the Association of Library and Information Science Educators.

Yakel joined the University of Pittsburgh as an assistant professor in the School of Information Sciences from 1997 to 2000. She then returned to UMSI in July 2000 as an assistant professor. She was promoted to associate professor, with tenure, in 2005 and to professor in 2011.

Yakel became the associate dean for research and faculty affairs in 2014 and was appointed as senior associate dean for academic affairs in 2015. In 2021, she was appointed as the C. Olivia Frost Collegiate Professor of Information. As interim dean from August 2022 to January 2024, Yakel guided the school through a period of rapid growth. During her tenure, UMSI broke ground on the Leinweber Computer Science and Information Building, created 15 new staff positions, hired six core faculty members and became the first U-M school or college to extend the Go Blue Guarantee into a graduate tuition guarantee.

Yakel has successfully published numerous peer-reviewed articles, and she served as an editor of the leading journal in her field, Archival Science, until 2023. Her work includes more than 130 writings, cited more than 2,600 times. In 2016, Yakel and Doris Malkmus co-authored a module titled “Contextualizing Archival Literacy” for Teaching with Primary Sources, a volume of the Society of American Archivists’ “Trends in Archives Practice” series.

Yakel’s research interests include digital archives and curation, specifically data reuse; teaching with primary sources; and the development of standardized metrics to enhance repository processes and the user experience. She developed five graduate-level courses at U-M, including the “Economics of Sustainable Digital Information” and “Access Systems for Archival Materials.”

Her funded research has included projects examining data curation, sharing and reuse. The first, “Measuring and Improving the Efficacy of Curation Activities in Data Archives,” was funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services and investigated how curatorial actions impact the reuse of digital collections. The second, funded by the National Science Foundation, investigated “Developing Evidence-based Data Sharing and Archiving Policies.”

Yakel’s many accolades and accomplishments include a Regents’ Fellowship in the School of Information and Library Studies at the University of Michigan from 1992 to 1995, a Research Fellowship for the Study of Modern Archives from the Bentley Library in 1994, and election as a Society of American Archivists Fellow in 1999. She was selected for the Academic Leadership Program Fellow in 2008-09, and in 2012 was awarded the Michael D. Cohen Outstanding Service Award from UMSI.

For her research, she received the 2013 International Digital Curation Conference Best Research Paper Award for “Trust in Digital Repositories” with Ixchel Faniel, Adam Kriesberg and Ayoung Yoon, and the Society of American Archivists Fellows’ Ernst Posner Award for the best paper in American Archivist (with Magia Krause) in 2008. In 2020, she earned the Society of American Archivists Council Exemplary Service Award for the Archival Metrics Research Project, a collection of standardized user-based evaluation tools and other performance measures for archives.

UMSI celebrated her career in June 2025 with “Archival Representation(s): Honoring Elizabeth Yakel,” a two-day symposium followed by a retirement reception.