Mission
My goal is to become an information professional who will have the skills necessary to help scientists find and organize information and data in ways that will increase the efficiency of their research and promote new discoveries.
Why Library Science?
What brought me to the field of library science? First and foremost it was a love of books. But not just a love of books themselves, but of the information, power, and humanity they hold. To read a book is to form a connection with another mind and in the process, perhaps, learn how part of the world works. But I came to library science after a 20 years in biochemical research. Many of the reasons I chose science in college now draw me to library science, the drive to know more about the world around me and how things work and the internal struggle to organize all this information in some useful way for me and for others. It was always this aspect of scientific research that 'caught' me. I love taking a pile of information, sorting it, annotating it, and thereby making the connections and processes clearer for myself and others. But why move into library science now? During the last 5 years it has become increasingly clear to me that there is so much information that we need more people to concentrate on organizing it, structuring it and preserving it. I decided it was time for me to answer that call.
Employment
4/2008-present
Scientific Informatics Analyst
Marine Biological Laboratory
Woods Hole, MA
1/2006-12/2007
Reference and Outreach Librarian
Rockefeller
University
New York, NY
2000-2005
Research Assistant Professor
Laboratory
of Chemical Biology
Department
of Pharmacological Science
Stony Brook
University
Stony Brook, NY
Education
Currently pursuing
MLIS and Certificate of Advanced Studies in Digital Libraries Library
and Information Science
School of
Information Studies
Syracuse
University
via the distance learning program
Expected graduation: 2008
1992
Ph.D.
Biochemistry
Wake
Forest University
Winston-Salem, NC
1986
B.S. Biology and Chemistry
Bloomsburg
University
Bloomsburg, PA
Projects
Marine Biological Laboratory Biology of Aging Portal
I am the content manager for the portal, gathering and curating the data that will be stored there.
Prototype MySQL-driven Digital Reference Library
This is the final project I created for Data Admin. Concepts and Database Mgmt. course I took at Syracuse Univ. Fall 2007 (paper describing database) There is also a rudimentary online entry form. The BISC Digital Reference Library is partly the result of another class project in the Digital Libraries course at Syracuse. You can read the final paper for this class describing my vision for the digital library.
Professional Memberships
Library related
Science related
Useful Library Sites
- PubMed - This bibliographic database developedy by National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) at the National Library of Medicine (NLM) is my most frequently used website during my work day as a reference librarian just as it was when I was a working scientist.
- My 'local' libraries, I couldn't live without them: New York Public Library and Comsewogue Public Library
- Open access to information is one of my key values so my collection of useful links includes Project Gutenberg with free e-books, Wiki Books with free, open content text books and LibriVox with free audio books
- Internet Public Library is a great collection of sites on a wide variety of topics and the Internet Archive has started to address the problem of trying to keep track of the ever-changing web
- And my favorite US government sites are: Library of Congress, National Archives and the Government Printing Office Access
Hobbies
- Reading - I read everything from science fiction to nonfiction to poetry. I have started to catalog my collection at Library Thing.
- Music - I listen to all kinds of music, classical, rock, punk, country, new age, almost anything. I love discovering groups or performances that a bit unusual or 'off the beaten track'. For instance, recent finds were Gogol Bordello and Brahms Symphony no. 2 adapted by Brahms to be played on one piano by two players (piano four hands).
- Cooking
- Reading and writing blogs - I read my favorite blogs on Google Reader and although I don't have much time to post, I have a professional blog: Spectacles Libris
