
- wclee@uwm.edu
- 414-977-7751
- Northwest Quadrant D 2865
Wan-Chen Lee
- Assistant Professor, School of Information Studies
Education
PhD in Information Studies, University of Washington
Master of Science in Information Science, University of Washington
Master of Library and Information Science, University of Washington
Bachelor of Arts in Library and Information Science, National Taiwan University
Bio
Wan-Chen Lee is an assistant professor and a member of the Knowledge Organization Research Group at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Information Studies. She received her MLIS, MSIS, and PhD at the University of Washington Information School. Her research interests include knowledge organization, culture and resource description, metadata, and classification theory. Fluent in English, Mandarin, and Japanese, Dr. Lee is particularly interested in the challenges and considerations of inclusive data work, which includes designing knowledge organization standards for different cultural contexts. Through document analysis, ethnography, survey, and interview, she addresses the ethical issues, interoperability concerns, and global-local tensions in metadata work, such as cataloging and classification. Recently, she received grants to investigate the challenges and opportunities of AI, and ethical AI and librarianship. Dr. Lee also studies the cultural stewardship of multimedia resources. To support effective description, representation, and retrieval of multimedia resources, she conducts research on the metadata for video games, anime, and fiction. Her work has been published in the Journal of Documentation, Knowledge Organization, and The Library Quarterly. Her research has been funded by organizations like the American Library Association (ALA) and the Northwestern Mutual Data Science Institute (NMDSI).
Courses Taught
INFOST 511: Organization of Information
INFOST 771: Data curation
INFOST 910: Doctoral Seminar in the Organization of Information
Grants
Principal Investigator, Ethical AI and Librarianship: A Resource Guide. American Library Association (ALA) Carnegie-Whitney Grant (08/01/2024-07/31/2025)
Principal Investigator, Ethical AI: Challenges and Opportunities. Northwestern Mutual Data Science Institute (NMDSI) Student Research Scholars Program (07/2024-12/2024)
Principal Investigator, Emoji and Emotion Categories of Fictions. UWM Research Assistance Fund (08/04/2022-06/30/2023)
Sample Publications
Cho, H., Lee, W.-C., Thach, H., & Hirt, J. (2025). Evaluating video game moods and their separability based on user-generated reviews. Journal of Documentation, 81(2), 545-565. https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-10-2024-0247
Lee, W.-C., Huang, L.-M.C., & Hirt, J. (2025). Embracing emojis: Prototyping mood enhanced information systems for fiction readers. Journal of Documentation, 81(2), 313-329. https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-05-2024-0100
Lee, W.-C., Huang, L.-M.C., & Hirt, J. (2024). From amused to: 😆 Enriching mood metadata by mapping textual descriptors to emojis for fiction reading. Journal of Documentation, 80(2), 552-571. https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-08-2023-0146
Cho, H., Lee, W.-C., Huang, L.-M., & Urban, A. (2024). Reading when stressed: Understanding motivations for reading fiction and enhancing future recommendation services. The Library Quarterly, 94(3), 253-271. https://doi.org/10.1086/730461
Cho, H., Lee, W.-C., Huang, L.-M., & Kohlburn, J. (2023). User-centered categorization of mood in fiction, Journal of Documentation, 79(3), 567-588. https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-03-2022-0071
Lee, W.-C. (2021). Operationalizing cultural warrant in knowledge organization [Doctoral dissertation, University of Washington] ProQuest Dissertations Publishing and Research Works Archive http://hdl.handle.net/1773/47600
Cho, H., Disher, T., Lee, W.-C., Keating, S. A., & Lee, J. H. (2020). Facet analysis of anime genres: The challenges of defining genre information for popular cultural objects. Knowledge Organization, 47(1), 13-30. https://doi.org/10.5771/0943-7444-2020-1-13
Lee, W.-C. (2019). Cataloging practices through an ethnographic lens: Workarounds, disagreements, and manifestations of culture. In Proceedings from North American Symposium of Knowledge Organization, vol. 7. (pp. 129-137). (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania). https://journals.lib.washington.edu/index.php/nasko/article/view/15633/13015
Keating, S., Lee, W.-C., Windleharth, T., & Lee, J. H. (2017). The style of Tetris is…possibly Tetris?: Creative professionals’ description of video game visual styles. In Proceedings of the 50th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences 2017. (pp. 2046-2055). (Puako, Hawaii). https://doi.org/10.24251/hicss.2017.248
Lee, W.-C. (2016). An exploratory study of the subject ontogeny of eugenics in the New Classification Scheme for Chinese Libraries and the Nippon Decimal Classification. Knowledge Organization, 43(8), 594–608. https://doi.org/10.5771/0943-7444-2016-8-594
Lee, W.-C. (2015). Culture and classification: An introduction to thinking about ethical issues of adopting global classification standards to local environments. Knowledge Organization, 42(5), 302–307. https://doi.org/10.5771/0943-7444-2015-5-302