Since 2000, Robert Noel has served as a Sciences Librarian, working with students and faculty in the Astronomy, Mathematics and Physics departments and the School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering as the collection manager and library liaison; he served as Head of the Swain Hall Library until its closure in 2016. In these roles, Bob works collaboratively with library colleagues to support graduate students and faculty with both their research and teaching activities.

His research interests include bibliometrics, faculty impact, altmetrics, collection development, the open access movement, the development and growth of the Creative Commons, and the costs of access to, and preservation of information.  Recent projects include constructing web-based, faculty publication timelines which feature snapshots highlighting faculty papers, times cited, and the impact of the journals in which papers appear; and on analyzing course syllabi with an interest in finding relationships between course objectives and national news stories from the past 20 years. Bob is active professionally within InULA, the Indiana University Librarians’ Association, and in recent years, served on the Library Advisory Board for Taylor & Francis Digital Products, and is a Co-Chair of the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering Alumni Board. 

Previous to joining the library faculty at IU Bloomington, Bob held positions as Materials Engineering Librarian at Argonne National Laboratory, Chicago, IL and Technical Information Analyst for Lockheed-Martin at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN. He earned his Master of Library Science and Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy degrees at Indiana University Bloomington. Bob also holds an Area Certificate in Inner Asian Studies, and has a reading knowledge of Russian.