www.lib.utah.edu
  • Interim Head of Graduate & Undergraduate Services, Marriott Library
  • Librarian, Marriott Library

Research Summary

How do students and faculty make sense of information wants and needs? How do physical spaces make a difference in how a person feels about asking these questions? I study information literacy teaching methods, but also the construction of authority and negotiation of trust in the fields of communication, sociology and social work. My research context is libraries in the public and academic worlds where we intentionally meet and work with a constituency from many walks of life.

Education

  • Bachelor of Fine Arts, Department of Art & Art History, The University of Utah
  • Master of Library and Information Science, School of Library & Information Management, Emporia State University
  • Human Resources Management Certificate, Human Resources, University of Utah Continuing Education & Community Engagement

Biography

I have lived most of my life in the state of Utah, attended public schools and learned to ski a

ll in a time when the population was about a 1/3rd of what it is today.  I fondly remember riding my Schwinn Tour de Luxe up Big Cottonwood Canyon on summer days when the roads were almost abandoned.  My career in libraries began in 1992 and the amount of change in the profession, as you can imagine, has been equally dramatic as the state of change around us today.  While studying photography as an undergraduate, ss a part of the Marriott Library Special Collections, I participated in one of the first digitization and web publishing efforts in the country.  Years later I moved to IT and helped develop some of the early iterations of the online library interface -back in a time when database vendors provided materials on a pile of CDs that you had to check out.  I earned my Masters of Library Science in 2005.  I was hired as an "instruction librarian" in 2007 and have taught thousands and thousands of University of Utah students critical thinking skills.

I'm an active motorcycle rider (2000 Ducati Monster) and racing fan, but am lately taken up with showing my two children the highlights of the backroads of Utah lands.  Mindfulness is easy to come by out there.