Faculty

Stephen Abram, MLS is managing principal of Lighthouse Partners and an affiliate of Dysart and Jones Associates. He has been with Gale Cengage Learning, SirsiDynix, the SirsiDynix Institute,ProQuest, Micromedia, IHS,and Thomson. He is an SLA Fellow and the past president of the Ontario Library Association, SLA and the Canadian Library Association. In June 2003 he was awarded SLA’s John Cotton Dana Award. He received the AIIP Roger Summit Award in 2009 and Outstanding Teacher Award from the U of Toronto iSchool in 2010. He is the author of Out Front with Stephen Abram and Stephen’s Lighthouse blog.

Miriam Blake has been the Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) for the last 5 years.  Prior to this position, she was the technical team lead of the LANL Library Without Walls Team and helped deliver new technical directions and products to the LANL community, including the large-scale commercial search tools developed by LANL.  As the Director, she has helped further engage the Research Library in leadership across the US Department of Energy by energizing new initiatives related to co-operative collection licensing and digital asset management across the agency.  This latest work is related to the DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI)'s newest requirement for collection of non-standard content, such as multi-media and datasets.  She is active in open access activities such as SCOAP3 and the aXiv sustainability planning, and has technical interests in repository architectures and usability.  She is completing a Master's Degree in Information Architecture and Knowledge Management at Kent State University.

Helene Blowers is a Library Journal Mover & Shaker, an ALA LITA Hi-Tech award winner, and the co-author of Weaving a Library Web: A Guide to Developing Children's Websites.  But among her professional accomplishments, she is most widely known as the architect of the online discovery learning program, Learning 2.0: 23 Things. Helene currently practices her passion for learning, new technology and community building as a Community Manager for OCLC.

Michael Edson is the Smithsonian Institution's Director of Web and New Media Strategy. Michael has worked on numerous award-winning projects and has been involved in practically every aspect of technology and New Media for museums. In addition to developing the Smithsonian's first Web and New Media Strategy, the Smithsonian Commons concept, and the Smithsonian's Web and New Media Strategy Wiki, Michael helped create the Smithsonian's first blog, Eye Level, and the first Alternative Reality Game to take place in a museum, Ghosts of a Chance. Michael is an O'Reilly Foo Camp veteran and was named a Tech Titan 2011: person to watch by Washingtonian magazine. Michael has a BA from Wesleyan University. 

Darrell W. Gunter is one of the leading advocates of semantic technology and social networking in the Science, Technical and Medical Industry. He is a frequent speaker and moderator at many information industry events advocating the benefits of semantic technology and social networking.
He is the President of Allerton Press Inc., a division of PLEIADES Publishing LLC.  PLEIADES is the publisher of the Russian Library of Science that comprises 182 English language Russian scientific journals.
Previously he has served as the Chief Commercial Officer of AIP (American Institute of Physics) and as the EVP /CMO of Collexis a semantic technology and knowledge discovery company specializing in application management software.  At Collexis he was one of the stewards that led Collexis to be acquired by Elsevier and he served on the Elsevier / Collexis integration team.
Prior to Collexis he served as the Sr. V.P. of Sales and Marketing for Elsevier and as the Nat'l Sales Director for Dow Jones Financial News Services after beginning his career at Xerox. 
A graduate of Seton Hall University's Stillman School of Business, where he obtained his BS in Business Administration with a concentration in Marketing.  He also earned his MBA from the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management.
He is an Adjunct Professor at Seton Hall University and served on many boards including the Content Board of the Software Information Industry Association up until May 2011, Olin College of Engineering Library Advisory Board, Seton Hall University Advisory Council and the Women's Venture Fund.  His radio program "Leadership" airs Saturday mornings at 9:00 am on WSOU HD 89.5 FM / WSOU.net.
Darrell resides in South Orange, NJ with his wife Deb and daughter Bailee.

Ernie is currently Vice-Provost at the University of Alberta.  Within this context he has administrative oversight responsibility for the Library System, the Department of Museums and Collections, the Department of Archives and Records Management, the University of Alberta Press, the University Bookstore and University Printing Services.  In addition, he is an Executive Professor and Director of the School of Library and Information Studies at the University.
He has been an active player within the library and information technology communities, having served over one hundred professional associations in senior executive capacities.
He has published frequently including seminal reference tools such as the Bibliography of Canadian Bibliographies/Bibliographie des bibliographies canadiennes (Toronto:  University of Toronto Press, 1994), and Peel’s Prairie Provinces (Toronto:  University of Toronto Press, 2003).  In addition, through his ‘8R Research Group’, he has published such studies as The Future of Human Resources in Canadian Libraries and Training Gaps Analysis:  Librarians and Library Technicians.  He has published numerous articles and is a requested speaker having given over 160 papers or presentations.
He has been the recipient of numerous awards including (but not limited to) the Ruth Cameron Medal for Librarianship, the Marie Tremaine Medal for Bibliography, the Canadian Association of College and University Libraries’ Award for Outstanding Librarian, the Outstanding Service to Librarianship Award from the Canadian Library Association, the Canadian Association of Research Libraries’ Award for Distinguished Service to Research Librarianship, the Outstanding Alumni awards from the University of British Columbia and the University of Alberta, and the Canadian Business and the Royal Bank Innovator of the Year Award.  In 2001 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

As a principal with Dysart & Jones, Rebecca focuses on facilitating clients' planning processes, problem-solving, and organizational design.  These are all skills she honed with Imperial Oil Limited, where she was involved with many innovative information management and human resource initiatives, and then with University of Toronto's iSchool where she was Director, Professional Learning.  Rebecca is known for having long advocated the application of business and non-profit processes to information services and libraries. 

Frank Menchaca is executive vice president of publishing.  Frank began his career with Thomson Gale in 1994 and was most recently publisher and vice president, history, social science, science and Spanish. He has held various positions of increasing responsibility since joining Thomson Gale, including vice president and publisher of four Thomson Gale imprints: Charles Scribner's Sons, Macmillan Reference USA, Schirmer Reference and Twayne Publishers, all while continuing the company's Spanish publishing initiative.
Prior to joining Thomson Gale, Frank was acquisitions editor in the subject areas of literature, history, science, current events and music for The Millbrook Press. He also was associate editor with the Weekly Reader Corporation and literary editor with George Braziller Publishers, and held positions with Chelsea House Publishers and John Wiley and Sons, Inc.
In addition to being a publishing executive, Frank is an accomplished and published author and translator. He has written and published poetry, criticisms, reviews and video scripts. He won the Thomas Wolfe Awards for Poetry in 1982 and 1983.
Frank earned his M.A. in English literature, with honors, from Yale University, and a B.A. in English and Spanish literature, Magna Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from New York University.

Sameer is a partner at the Sovos Group – a leading consulting firm that helps leading organizations accelerate employee, customer and partner performance via the strategic use of social and collaborative approaches and technology.
Sameer has spent over a decade managing engagements for large organizations helping them define and execute sustainable programs that drive employee productivity, business partner network optimization, sales and marketing operational effectiveness, and customer acquisition and engagement.
Sameer's client roster includes KPMG, McKessonHBOC, WR Wrigley Jr. Co., CA, Nike, Oracle, The Sabre Group, Grupo Televisa (Mx), Intel, and Varian. Sameer has been quoted on improving partner, customer and employee performance in publications such as The New York Times, Forbes, CNBC, CIO.com, ZDNet, GigaOM, among st others and has keynoted leading industry and customer events.  He blogs about social and collaborative business at www.pretzellogic.org and can be found @sameerpatel on Twitter.

Lee Rainie is the Director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a non-profit, non-partisan "fact tank" that studies the social impact of the internet. The Project has issued more than 350 reports based on its surveys that examine people's online activities and the internet's role in their lives.
Lee is a co-author of Networking: The New Social Operating System, a book about the social impact of the internet and mobile technology. He is also co-author of four books about the future of the internet, which are based on Project surveys. 
Prior to launching the Pew Internet Project, Lee was managing editor of the newsweekly magazine U.S. News & World Report. He is a graduate of Harvard University and has a master's degree in political science from Long Island University.

Daniel W. Rasmus, the author of Listening to the Future, is a strategist and industry analyst who helps clients put their future in context. Rasmus uses scenarios to analyze trends in society, technology, economics, the environment, and politics in order to discover implications used to develop and refine products, services and experiences. His latest book, Management by Design proposes an innovative new methodology for the design workplace experiences. Rasmus's thoughts about the future of work have appeared recently in Chief Learning Officer Magazine, Government eLearning!, KMWorld,  Pencomputing andTabletPC. Rasmus has written several articles that created viral internet activity including 10 Lessons from Angry Birds That Can Make You a Better CIO, Ten Lessons You Can Learn About Innovation by Studying Lady Gagaand Management Maxims From Kim Kardashian. He is also the "iOS in EDU" columnist for iPhone Life Magazine.
Prior to starting his own consulting practice, Rasmus was the Director of Business Insights at Microsoft Corporation, where he helped the company envision how people will work in the future.  Rasmus managed the Microsoft^® Office Information Worker Board of the Future and was the creative leader of the Center for Information Work. Before joining Microsoft, Rasmus was a research Vice President at the Giga Information Group and Forrester Research Inc.
Rasmus is an internationally recognized speaker. He has addressed audiences at CeBIT, The Front End of Innovation, The National Association of Workforce Boards, ProjectWorld, KMWorld, SAE International, The CIO Association of Canada, and Future Trends. Rasmus blogs regularly about the future at  Fast Company and on his own blog, Your Future in Context. His education related work can be found at Learning Reimagined.
Rasmus attended the University of California at Santa Cruz and received a certificate in intelligent systems engineering from the University of California at Irvine. He is the former Visiting Liberal Arts Fellow at Bellevue College in Bellevue, WA where he continues to teach strategy and social media.

Michael Ridley was named the Chief Information Officer (CIO) in 2004 and has been the Chief Librarian at the University of Guelph (Ontario, Canada) since 1995.
The Chief Information Officer (CIO), as the enterprise information architect, is responsible for the overall strategy and policy administration of the University’s information technology, information services and information resources. Reporting to the Provost and Vice President (Academic), this position is accountable for providing the vision, leadership and advocacy for the development and use of information systems (IS), information resources (IR) and information technology (IT) to further the academic mission and to support the administrative requirements of the University. The CIO will facilitate innovation and integrated solutions in support of teaching, learning, research, service and administration in an environment of strategic directions, collaboration and shared responsibility.
The CIO has overall responsibility and accountability for the administration of the both Library (as Chief Librarian) and Computing and Communications Services (CCS).
Ridley holds degrees from the University of Guelph (BA), the University of New Brunswick (MA) and the University of Toronto (MLS). Previously he held positions at the University of Waterloo, McMaster University, and the University of Guelph.
Ridley has served as President of the Canadian Association for Information Science, President of the Ontario Library Association, member of the Board of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries and Chair of the Ontario Council of University Libraries. He is currently on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN) and the Canadian University Council of Chief Information Officers (CUCCIO)..
In 2007 he was named "Academic Librarian of the Year" by the Ontario College and University Library Association (OCULA), a division of the Ontario Library Association (OLA).
In 2008 he was awarded the newly renamed Larry Moore OLA Distinquished Service Award from the Ontario Library Association.
In 2010 he was awarded the Miles Blackwell Award for Outstanding Academic Librarian by the Canadian Association of College and University Libraries (a division of the Canadian Library Association).

Cindy Romaine  is entrepreneurial, a strategic thinker, an innovator, and information researcher extraordinaire.  She’s the principal of Romainiacs, which is focused on information-intense projects­ research, information flow, needs assessment, and authoritative sourcing.
Cindy’s experience includes 16 years at Nike, Inc., where she was responsible for the strategic global collections for a world-class design community. She envisioned, implemented, and disseminated information relevant to Nike’s venues and product initiatives. She also conceptualized and implemented web resources and inspirational exhibits directly applicable to Nike’s design initiatives.
To foster forward thinking, Cindy embeds a sustainability component into her research results and deliverables.  Cindy actively contributes to her professional community and is currently the President of SLA and is focused on encouraging information professionals to become Future Ready.

Donna Scheeder is currently the Deputy Chief Information Officer at the Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress. Previously she served as Director, Law Library Services, at the Law Library of the Library of Congress from 2004 to 2010. Prior to her service in the Law Library, Ms. Scheeder held a number of positions with increasing responsibilities at the Congressional Research Service.
 She is a former President and Treasurer of SLA. She is also a SLA fellow and a recipient of the John Cotton Dana award given in recognition of outstanding contributions to the field of special librarianship. Ms. Scheeder is a member of the Governing Board of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions and has been a member of the Standing Committee on Libraries and Research Services for Parliaments for 8 years.She is a member of the Advisory Board for both the Computers in Libraries and Internet Librarian conferences.

John Seely Brown is a visiting scholar at USC and the independent co-chairman of the Deloitte Center for the Edge
In a previous life, I was the Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation and the director of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). I was deeply involved in the management of radical innovation and in the formation of corporate strategy and strategic positioning of Xerox as The Document Company. 
Today, I'm Chief of Confusion, helping people ask the right questions, trying to make a difference through my work- speaking, writing, teaching. 
I've also received a few honorary degrees along the way, and in 2004 I was inducted into the Industry Hall of Fame; I was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2009. 
For more, see www.johnseelybrown.com

Roy Tennant is a Senior Program Officer for OCLC Research. He is the owner of the Web4Lib and XML4Lib electronic discussions, and the creator and editor of Current Cites, a current awareness newsletter published every month since 1990. His books include "Technology in Libraries: Essays in Honor of Anne Grodzins Lipow" (2008), "Managing the Digital Library" (2004), "XML in Libraries" (2002), "Practical HTML: A Self-Paced Tutorial" (1996), and "Crossing the Internet Threshold: An Instructional Handbook" (1993). Roy wrote a monthly column on digital libraries for Library Journal for a decade and has written numerous articles in other professional journals. In 2003, he received the American Library Association's LITA/Library Hi Tech Award for Excellence in Communication for Continuing Education.

Kate Trgovac can be found online, helping companies large and small communicate with their customers. After over 20 years as an online marketer, she’s seen many digital marketing tactics come and go (remember gopher?!), but the principles remain the same:engage your community’s passion!
After spending time at several digital agencies, software shops and startups - in Toronto and Vancouver, Kate co-founded LintBucket Media -- a boutique marketing agency headquartered in Vancouver that specializes in online marketing, social media marketing & training, and digital content creation. Over the years, Kate’s clients have included large corporations like Suncor Energy and Maple Leaf Foods as well as startups like Kinzin, Osmosus (a social network for green living) and SavvyMom (a social site for moms).
In addition to stirring up trouble (and winning awards) for amazing clients, Kate is currently a part-time lecturer at the University of British Columbia on Social Media Fundamentals.  She has also been a part-time lecturer in the University of Toronto's Faculty of Information Studies.  In addition to teaching, Kate is a regular speaker at marketing industry events across the country.
Kate writes about the intersection of marketing and technology on her blog MyNameIsKate.ca. MyNameIsKate.ca is listed in Advertising Age’s Top 150 Marketing Blogs in the world and has been designated “Must Read” blogs by Marketing Magazine. Kate was named a Top 10 Technology Blogger in Canada in 2008  by ITWorld Canada. She has also been designated one of Canada's Most Influential Women in Social Media. 
Aside from social media, Kate’s current passion is the burgeoning area of virtual worlds and how they impact not only marketing programs, but also the creation and fluidity of personal identity. You can find her avatar on Second Life and other virtual worlds usually under the name (and blog) Katicus Sparrow. 
And for something a little different, Kate also writes extensively about Funky, Chic and Cool Laptop bags and regularly advises bag designers on both function and fashion as well as how to market their creations. In collaboration with Rainebrooke Designs, she has designed her own laptop bag, the Funchico.

Jeffrey Trzeciak is the University Librarian at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He is responsible for the management of the Thode Science and Engineering Library, Innis Business Library and Mills Library for the Social Sciences and Humanities, Classroom Audio Visual Services and the Lyons New Media Centre. As one of the top research libraries in North America, the McMaster University Library is a member of the Association of Research Libraries and the Canadian Association of Research Libraries.
Jeff has more than twenty years experience working in academic and public libraries. He held positions including Associate Dean at Wayne State University Library System in Detroit, Michigan and Head of Systems at Wright
State University Libraries in Dayton, Ohio. In 2004 Jeff was recognized for his innovation by Library Journal in their “Movers and Shakers” edition. He is also a graduate of the Frye Leadership Institute (2005) sponsored by EDUCAUSE, CLIR, and Emory University. Has spoken internationally on a variety of topics including digital library initiatives, web 2.0, organizational change, and library innovation. When not at “work” Jeff can frequently be found online in Facebook, SecondLife and World of Warcraft.