(This originated as a blog post in October, 2005; eventually I’ll update it. -Steve)

Since having an author bio is number one on Jakob Nielsen’s weblog usability list, it seemed like a good time to post my scintillating biography.

Just in case anyone is interested in knowing a little more about me, here it is in a nutshell. In true blogger fashion, I’ll take it in reverse chronological order.

Since January, 2003, I have been the Humanities Liaison Librarian for Tutt Library at Colorado College, Colorado Springs. I work with the faculty of the Humanities Division to do collection development in those subjects; I teach bibliographic instruction for humanities classes; and I work with humanities faculty when they have questions about using the library or library policy. General reference duty at the ref. desk is also part of my job.

Beyond that, I am interested in using the web to bring better, more useful, and more usable services to our students and faculty. Along with many of my colleagues, I am working on improving the library web site and our TIGER library catalog as well as adding and integrating other services, like our blogs, electronic reserves, IM reference, RefWorks citation manager, etc. I also quite like books!

Prior to coming to CC, I worked for a few years in my first professional job at the Science and Engineering Library at the University of California, San Diego. As a humanist, it wasn’t the ideal place for me, but working with great colleagues at a large university library was an invaluable experience.

I got my MLIS from the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Texas at Austin before they took the word “library” out of the name of the degree and the school (sigh).

While in library school, I intended to become a special collections librarian, and learned a lot about rare books and manuscripts from working at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, a fantastic special collections library with librarians that were real mentors to me.

Before that, I lived in Newark, Delaware, where I worked as a staff member in the University of Delaware library while my wife worked on a graduate degree. Going back even further, I worked in book stores (the lovely Tattered Cover in Denver, and the, shall we say, less lovely Barnes and Noble in Evanston, IL). I got a bachelor’s degree in theatre from Northwestern University, and, before that, lived in Parker, Colorado and Middletown, Connecticut.

I am married, with two young sons. I am two weeks away from my 35th birthday as I write this.