My name is Mark and I live in Sioux City, Iowa. I work as an independent library consultant doing cataloging and collection development, along with other forms of library work for Briar Cliff University. My wife is the Director of Educational Technology for Briar Cliff University.
Previously, I worked as a Visiting Serials Cataloger in Cataloging and Metadata Services, UIUC Main Library.
I have two amazing kids from a previous marriage—Jeremy and Sara. Jeremy has been in the Army for over 10 years and is now a first Sergeant. Sara is an Oberlin College grad and did nanotechnology research for a year and has been an indexer and abstracter for Chemical Abstracts for a couple of years now. I am very proud of both of them!
After "retiring" from the Army in 1998 I attended Illinois State University in Normal to finish my undergraduate education. I majored in Philosophy, and also completed minors in Cognitive Science and Applied Computer Science. I worked at Milner Library as a student for 3 years and upon graduation got a job there as a civil service employee (paraprofessional) in Access Services (Circulation, Reserves, and Interlibrary Loan) where I stayed for 3 more years. I lived in Normal for 6 years—that is the 2nd longest that I have lived anywhere in my life! The longest period of about 9 years ended when I was 13.
I started library school in the summer of 2004. I hope to work in an academic library. Universities may be as flawed as other institutions, but they are a wonderful environment for me.
I graduated with my MSLIS degree in May 2006 and began a 2nd LIS degree (CAS) the very next day. Ultimately, I left that pursuit behind. My focus was (and still is) on classificatory strucures, with a continuing interest in education and training of catalog and metadata specialists.
During my time at GSLIS I had graduate assistantships in:
Organizations a Member of:
Interests (some):
Roy Harris and Integrationism; language use and theory in LIS; classificatory structures; authority control; controlled vocabularies; standards; cataloging and metadata education and training; technology and its impact on society and the individual; education; XHTML and CSS; life-long learning; librarianship, especially its history and philosophy.