Joyce Monsees, a master of library and information science student in the College of Applied Sciences and Arts School of Library and Information Science, is involved in the search for missing Malaysian flight MH 370 which was last seen on March 9. San José State University student Monsees is a volunteer with the Standby Task Force, a group of 1,000 people worldwide who monitor social media, news, medical facilities and local infrastructure sites during a natural disaster or humanitarian crisis, according to her profile on the SLIS website.

According to news reports, the Boeing 777 departed from Kuala Lumpur on its way to Beijing before it dropped communications. Satellites continued to pick up the airplane for seven hours after it departed, but then lost all transmission. On Tuesday officials said they had expanded the search to 2.24 million square nautical miles, in a wide circle that extends from Beijing to Australia to the middle of the Indian Ocean. An investigation into what happened to the flight that was carrying 227 passengers has been ongoing and involves dozens of countries, including the possibilities of a hijacking,  sabotage or other reason the plane might have gone off course.

Monsees has been helping the Standby Task Force with efforts to track satellites within the search area. The search area can be seen at the link below:

https://www.mapbox.com/blog/flight-MH370-search-efforts-from-space/

Monsees last virtual deployment was in September 2013 when she helped aid workers after a 7.7 magnitude earthquake in Pakinstan by providing maps that showed locations of hospitals, shelters, and areas with road closures and power outages.

Monsees is a graduate student in the fully-online Master of Library and Information Science Program. She took Dr. Christine Hagar’s LIBR 281 Crisis/Disaster Health Informatics class in fall 2013 and has been putting her knowledge to use in her volunteer efforts.

For more on the School of Library and Information Science, visit. http://slisweb.sjsu.edu/.