Informatics
Appature, Inc., co-founded by current CEO and iSchool Alumni Kabir Shahani (’04), recently celebrated its one-year anniversary. Appature builds powerful and easy-to-use enterprise applications for sales and marketing organizations. Kabir is interested in working with fellow iSchool alums, interested alums can contact jobs@appaturetech.com.
MLIS
Since graduating, Paige Andrew (’86) spent eight years as the Maps/Nonbook Materials Cataloger at the University of Georgia Library. He and his wife Mary welcomed two boys into the family while at UGA, Ian in 1990 and Colin in 1994. In early 1995 he started a new position as Maps Cataloging Librarian at the Pennsylvania State University Libraries, achieving tenure and promotion to Associate Librarian in 2001. He is also author of Cataloging Sheet Maps: The Basics, has co-edited another book, written numerous articles, and is currently co-editor of the Journal of Map & Geography Libraries: Advances in Geospatial Information, Collections & Archives.
On December 5, 2007, Abigail Brigham Collins (’97) married Michael Collins. Mike is happily retired from the US Postal Service and Abigail just celebrated her 10th anniversary as a news librarian at CNN in New York City.
Kawanna Bright (’03 ) is now the Instructional Services Librarian at North Carolina State University.
Leslie Bussert (’03) and Suzan Parker (’02) co-authored with former UW librarian, Mark Szarko, a chapter entitled "Interdisciplinary Inquiry Through Collaboration" in the forthcoming textbook An Introduction to Instructional Services in Academic Libraries, published by Haworth Press.
Suzan also co-authored with UW librarian Laura Barrett, "A Picture Worth a Thousand Words: Visual Literacy Through Critical Inquiry" in Teaching Information Literacy Skills to Social Sciences Students and Practitioners : a Casebook of Applications, published by the Association for College and Research Libraries.
Leslie is Ethics and Humanities Librarian, and Suzan is Social Sciences Librarian at the University of Washington Bothell.
Alison Butler (’01) writes: “Studied ASL 2004-06. July '06 paid off MLIS loans. September of '06 I bought a house as well as a business, On-Site MassageWorks (dba: The Massage Team), that specializes in corporate massage services. (I’ve been a Licensed Massage Practitioner since 1993.) I live with my partner of four years and we'll see what happens next!”
There was an article published about Alison’s business in the Eastside Business Journal, in the October 4, 2007 edition.
Marilyn Campbell (’69) writes: “My working days were part time at Mercer Island High School Foreign Language Resource Center and part time at Renton Public Library, at the Reference Desk. I also served as chairman of the Mercer Island Library Board, and headed the levy campaign when they built the new M.I. Library. Of course, I still love reading, enjoy my Book Club, and volunteer at the Information Desk at Seattle Public Library.”
The iSchool community lost alumnus Morgan Cowles (’05) during a Sequoia National Park avalanche in January of this year. At the time of his death, Cowles was on a backpacking trip. According to a press release from Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks Public Information Officer Alexandra Picavet, the National Park Service received a report that two hikers — Cowles and an unidentified second man —were overdue from their backcountry excursion. Due to the heavy snowfall, conditions in the park were unstable.
Cowles worked at the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Davidson Library Map & Imagery Laboratory as the digital projects conversion coordinator for two years. He is survived by an older sister and his parents. He was 39.
Lori Deibel, (’91) writes “I am currently the Library Director and School Archivist at The Branson School in Ross, Calif. I came here 6 years ago after over 10 years in corporate libraries, and I have never had a more satisfying or challenging job. If you had told me that I would be a school librarian while I was working on my degree, I would have laughed!
“I consider getting my MLIS degree from UW to be the one of the most important events in my life. I feel so blessed to have found a career that suits me well and is always challenging, and UW prepared me well.”
Erica Delavan ('06) became the Children's Services Librarian at the North East Branch of Seattle Public Library in February.
Reese Evenson (’06) (formerly Reese Coffin) was accepted to ALA's 2008 Emerging Leaders program [see article in this issue on iSchool Emerging Leaders—ed.]. She married last January and is now a Children's Librarian for the Jefferson County Public Library in Colorado.
Theresa Gemmer (’88) took office as President of ABOS, the Association of Bookmobile and Outreach Services, on January 1, 2008. ABOS is in its fourth year as a national organization dedicated to promoting library outreach services.
Nicole Gustine (’05) is continuing in to her third year as Corporate Librarian at the Glosten Associates, a naval architecture and marine engineering firm in Seattle, and is “really loving special librarianship.” She and her husband, Josh Weldin, and I are expecting their first child in May of 2008.
John Henderson ('04) moved to Bangkok in '05, shortly after wrapping up the MLIS, and used the uprooting as an excuse to shift gears from teaching school (20 years' worth, including eight as an elementary school library teacher) to managing public health information with the CDC's Thailand branch. He reports “No regrets.”
Pam (Hainsworth) Osborne (’72) was highlighted in the September 2007 issue of SLA's journal, Information Outlook. The article is called "Becoming Digital."
Pam also received SLA’s 2006 Professional Award and had an article published in the Spring 2007 issue of the Journal of Information Ethics called "Donated or Mandated: The NGO/Donor Relationship." She is currently Manager of Intranet Services at Mercy Corps, an international relief and development agency, in Portland, Oregon.
Greg Hatch (‘02) was appointed Head of Fine Arts at Marriott Library at the University of Utah in July of 2007 after one year as the Interim Head and three years as an Instruction Librarian. He is also an Adjunct Instructor for the Department of Theatre and taught an upper-division Dramaturgy course in the fall 2007 semester. He can be reached at greg.hatch@utah.edu
Emily Inlow ('06) married long-time partner Paul Hood in September 2007 and is now known as Emily Inlow-Hood. She works as the Community Special Projects Coordinator at WebJunction and was also selected a member of the ALA Emerging Leaders '08 cohort [see article in this issue on iSchool Emerging Leaders—ed.].
Leslie G. Boba (’90) is now Leslie B. Joshi. Her husband is S. T. Joshi, a literary critic and editor. Leslie writes: “Currently, I am Director of Powers Library, a member library of the Finger Lakes Library System in New York State. The Finger Lakes system covers a five-county area in one of the most scenic regions of the Empire State. I use the training I received at the UW School of Library and Information Science daily on the job. It feels good to be a librarian!”
Regina Kays, (’02) has been chosen as one of 35 participants for the 2008 California State Library’s Eureka! Leadership Institute, a week-long intensive leadership training event. Regina is the City Librarian of the Palm Desert Public Library.
Jane Keefer (’88) writes:
“My folk music index, www.ibiblio.org/folkindex has now been available on the Web for more than 10 years now. This index which was initially on old fashioned 4x6 index cards had its computer beginnings in 1990 slightly after I graduated with my ML in December 1988. And the database design I came up with was firmly rooted and inspired by Raya Fidel and Terry Brooks, both of whom taught me classes in the organization and display of information. Its existence on the web is due primarily to its initial support by my librarian colleague, Maureen Beck, at Johns Hopkins University in 1995 or so, when I was a science librarian there.
Now of course the index is perhaps slightly old-fashioned in the sense that it displays it's listing in a page oriented format rather than using an off-site server to display the results of user queries. On the other hand the ability to browse information in the folk music world is important since the spelling and titles are so quirky and full of "genuine folk" misspellings. The cross referencing system that I developed is very much based on the many classes that I had which discussed and described the ways in which to manage these various issues. And I sometimes tell patrons and students that the library world's development of cross references in databases and within the old card catalogs were just pre-computer forms of "hot-linked" system that we now take for granted on the WWW.
I will also note that all the recordings and books indexed are part of my personal collection, so if there are any questions, suggestions, etc. re the entries, I can review the source. And within this context I am especially open to exploring options for finding a home for the collection within some type of more formal or institutional setting.
As a folk musician prior to my librarian career, I performed and taught old-time string band music on fiddle, banjo, and several other instruments, including both private lessons and classes. One of my classes, the Oldtime Stringband workshop, which is open to all acoustic instruments and features fiddle tune arrangements for fiddle, banjo, mandolin, guitar, dulcimer, has now been going on for nearly 30 years.
With the help of Dick Weissman, who has published many books in the folk music world, some forty of these tune arrangements will be published in the next couple of years by Mel Bay. Along with the coordinated arrangements for fiddle, guitar, mandolin and old-time banjo, the books will also contain brief biblio-discographies compiled from my Folk Music Index.
My first career as a Scientist (PhD, U. Illinois, 1969) involved a lot computer programming, so perhaps I can attribute these recent works at least partially to my library education which facilitated the development of my index and provided a framework for bringing together these three interests of mine: computers, folk music, and information organization.
Sarah Lester (’06) just started a new position on January 7 as Engineering Librarian for Outreach, Instruction and Electronic Resources at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.
Aaron Louie (’03) recently took a position at ZAAZ, an interactive web design and analytics agency in Seattle. He is also the ASIS&T Pacific Northwest chapter chair.
Mary Mara (’04) moved into the position of Instruction Coordinator for City University of Seattle Library in September 2006. CityU of Seattle Library is hard at work with senior faculty designing curriculum that integrates information literacy instruction and skill development throughout the course of academic programs. Mary oversees the work of three liaison librarians who are designing online tutorials, learning activities and assessments to accomplish this exciting work that will benefit CityU students around the world. Outside of the office, Mary is serving as the Vice President/President Elect of the Seattle Knitter’s Guild, and continues to actively design and teach knitting to fellow enthusiasts. Mary’s children, who were occasional subjects for group course work, are now 15 (Jesse) and 18 (Caity) and are actively involved pursuing their musical interests and schooling. Caity’s band, The Histrionics, has produced 2 CDs and is actively working on their third. Mary’s husband, Tom, continues to enjoy his work as the Executive Director of KEXP radio.
Paula McMillen (’97) took a new position April 1 as Education Librarian at University of Nevada-Las Vegas, after nine years as Social Sciences librarian at Oregon State University.
Margaret Read MacDonald (’64) has a new picture book The Great, Smelly, Slobbery, Small-Tooth Dog (illus. Julie Paschkis, August House, 2007) that just won a Storytelling World Award. Also new from Margaret is an unusual book on storytelling via translation, Tell the World: Storytelling Across Language Barriers (Libraries Unlimited, 2008).
Eric S. Riley (’02): In October of 2007 Eric accepted the position of Senior Librarian at the Watha T. Daniel/Shaw Interim Library, a neighborhood branch of the Washington, D.C. Public Library system.
Alicia Salaz (’06) just accepted a position as a Librarian with the Higher Colleges of Technology in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. She writes: “I’ve been in my current position at Concordia since December of ’07, and am very sad to be leaving, but excited about the new opportunity. I’ll be moving in mid-February, but maintaining my ties to the Northwest by continuing a post on the planning committee for the 2008 Northwest Interlibrary Loan conference in September. I also got married on January 11 to Dan Meyer, and co-authored a review of CQ Press’ subscription congressional database in the current issue of The Charleston Advisor (ISSN 1525-4011, Online ISSN: 1525-4003).
The citation is:
Reichard, Krista M., & Salaz, Alicia M. (2008). CQ Congress Collection: Making Sense of a Representative Democracy. The Charleston Advisor, 9:3, 15-18.
My co-author is also an iSchool alumna.”
Paul J. Steere (ML '69, BA '68), sends greetings from Kuta, Bali:
“Can one vacation after retirement? Well, so far so good. After a 35-year career with various government agencies, I retired in October 2006. Highlights include 17 years in the US Foreign Service with the US Information Agency, Field Director for Library of Congress at the American Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, and Regional Library Director, Europe, based in Heidelberg, Germany, for the US Army. I also found time to spend five years in the US Territories of CNMI and Guam directing public and academic libraries between my stints with USIA and LC.
It is fun to be back in Seattle, but winters are made to travel elsewhere. With sons in Amsterdam and Singapore, we have ready-made bases for jumping off to both Europe and Asia.
I look forward to having closer relations with the iAlumni group and the iSchool when I return in late February or March.”
Rebecca Teeters (Williams) (’63) writes “I and a group of Quakers are planning to begin a university in Kenya that will sidestep government corrupted universities and allow students to graduate in an acceptable period of time. It will be called the Friends University at Kaimosi—a nonprofit organization. I will be cataloguing about 10,000 donated books and will go to Kenya as soon as it is safe to do so.”
Genevieve Williams (’05) I'm pleased to report the publication of "Unclear on the Context: Refocusing on Information Literacy’s Evaluative Component in the Age of Google" in the peer-reviewed journal Library Philosophy and Practice, Spring 2007. LPP is an electronic, open-access publication and the article is available here.
She also published "Invisible Library: Riding the Wave to Library Transparency" in the fall 2007 issue of the ACRL Washington Newsletter. That article can be found here.
MSIM
Doug Duncan, ’03, writes:
“Yes, it's true. I've been sucked back into The Law. I work in a hybrid job at Seattle University: 50% Associate University Counsel and 50% in IT/business planning. I use the MSIM skills and knowledge every day. Building a taxonomy for our law office documents as we speak.
Coming up on 35 years of marriage to my wife, Liz. My oldest son, Jim, is married and lives in Madison, Wis., from which he telecommutes to a publishing house in the Bay Area. He's the Senior Editor of Dell Power Solutions magazine which some of you high powered techies might have seen. My youngest son, Mike, lives in Portland, Ore. and has the most popular history podcast on iTunes: The History of Rome. 180,000 downloads last month.
Check out the blog: thehistoryofrome.blogspot.com. Yes, he does it for love and fun, not money. Every week.”
Josepha Rood (’05) recently moved to Singapore with her husband.