WHO IS THE USER? INDIVIDUALS, GROUPS, COMMUNITIES - Human-Computer Interaction and Management Information Systems: Foundations - page 37

EDITORS' NOTE
At the time this topic was in the copyediting stage, author Gerardine DeSanctis lost a battle with
cancer, on August 16, 2005, at the young age of fifty-one. As many MIS scholars can testify, her
contributions to the MIS field are numerous, significant, and long lasting. She was instrumental
in several studies of group decision support systems at the University of Minnesota, and later, at
Duke, and continued to focus her formidable attention and research skills on areas such as using
tables and graphs for decision making, organizational learning, distributed teams, virtual communi-
ties, and electronic communication. She began her career with a PhD dissertation using an exper-
iment, and later returned again and again to experiments over her exceptionally rich yet
all-too-brief career. As a key arrow in the quiver of the HCI subdiscipline of MIS, her contribu-
tions in and support of experimental techniques were invaluable to HCI researchers. The loss to
the community is incalculable and profound.
Beyond her obvious scholarly pursuits and achievements, which directly influenced the two
editors' own research, the editors are particularly saddened at the loss of a great mentor, sup-
porter, and friend. Her unselfish and caring nature is illustrated by her always prompt and enthu-
siastic responses to every one of our requests for work and advice on matters sometimes unrelated
to these volumes. We were unaware of her health condition when we made these requests and she
responded in spite of her situation. We were tremendously uplifted by her excitement for, and sup-
port of, these two volumes: by her promised short commentary that turned into a full chapter; by
her thoughtful review of two other chapters that helped the authors very much; by her constant
and uplifting encouragement about this project; and by her caring comments to help us as col-
leagues and friends. As recently as May 2005, she returned a review of the introductory chapter
of this topic. After what was obviously a very careful reading of the manuscript, she provided her
typical encouraging comments along with suggestions and even typographical corrections. When
a sincere apology reached her for not knowing her health condition and for burdening her with
this work while she was in a hospital bed, she replied, “Ping, it was not a burden but a pleasant
distraction! I enjoyed reading the chapter. I hope to get out of the hospital tomorrow or the next
day, so I am on the upswing!” This was the Gerry we will always remember: so uplifting, so pos-
itive and encouraging, so full of hope! Many of us have benefited so much from Gerry's thor-
oughly upbeat, unselfish, and caring character. We will miss her greatly but at the same time we
thoroughly celebrate how she touched our lives.
This chapter is one of the last publications produced by Gerry DeSanctis. We believe that just
like many of her articles that have played important roles in diverse areas of MIS research, this
chapter will continue Gerry's legacy for decades to come.
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