2009 Oregon Virtual Reference Summit - Speaker biographies

Robin Ashford is Reference & Distance Services Librarian at the Portland Center Library of George Fox University, where she works primarily with graduate and doctoral students. She uses various technologies including screencasts and Second Life (a 3D virtual world community) to provide information services to her university's students living locally and around the world. Robin also serves as a volunteer on the reference desk of Information Island International (a global virtual world library) in Second Life. When time allows she blogs and tweets at http://twitter.com/rashford

Lee Catalano is a School Corps Librarian at Multnomah County Library, and provides trainings on using library resources to elementary, middle and high school students from W. Sylvan to Corbett,St. John's to Damascus. She puts many miles on the County's vehicles every week. Prior to School Corps, Lee was a Youth Librarian at the Central Children's Library and the Midland Regional Library. She's an original L-netter (Answerlander?). Here's what's currently checked out on her card: Benjamin Black's The Silver Swan, Grey Gardens, The Jane Austen Book Club (DVD), many books on the Central California Coast, and children's books too numerous to mention. I'm currently listening to In the Belly of the Bloodhound: Being an Account of a Particularly Peculiar Adventure in the Life of Jacky Faber by L.A. Meyer, narrated by Katherine Kellgren.

Ahniwa Ferrari works in Library Development at the Washington State Library. He coordinates Ask-WA, the statewide virtual reference cooperative, runs bi-monthly statewide database trials, encourages the adoption of web 2.0 technologies among his colleagues, and compiles "Hard Times" resources for Washington libraries. Most recently he has begun investigating the use of volunteer librarians in providing virtual reference and is looking into incorporating Spanish-language service into the cooperative. He used to teach people how to swing dance, has a motorcycle endorsement but no motorcycle, and plays a mean game of cribbage. He blogs at the Washington State Library's Serving Washington Libraries blog.

Allie Flanary is a faculty librarian at Portland Community College, where she wears the Web and Outreach Specialist hats--although she very nearly ended up with the job title "resident nerd". Since Fall term she has taught 980 students in 52 different classes and workshops. Allie's favorite moment this year came when a student enthusiastically shouted, "What's up lady? High five, I just found a peer reviewed article!" from the back of her classroom. Professional passions include exploding existing library instruction models, marketing (with and without social media), and exploring virtual reference outside of the mainstream channels. Off-duty passions include robots, crochet, photography, and roller skating. Allie tweets and blogs as shinylib(.com) and would love to catch up with you there.

Anna Johnson is a faculty librarian at Mt Hood Community College in Gresham, where she is the Reference & Instruction Coordinator and leads the content design for the library’s web presences. So far this school year Anna has taught more than 100 assignment-specific library instruction sessions and answered way more than 100 reference questions. She’s seriously considering changing the names of her two goldfish from Koi Haim and Koi Feldman to Meebo and Jing.

Karen Munro is Head of the UO Portland Library & Learning Commons. She’s interested in video games, user-centered design, good teaching, and the Big Question: how can libraries thrive in the New Media Environment? She thinks the RIAA is doing it wrong, while Hulu.com and Wikipedia have the right idea. She’s currently reading Gulliver’s Travels, listening to The Verve, and waiting for Bioshock 2 to be released.

Carrie Ottow has been a Reference Librarian at the Corvallis-Benton co. Public Library since 2002. Prior to that she worked as a Goverenment Documents librarian at Oregon State University and Oklahoma State University. She currently has checked out from the library: Deaf Sentence by David Lodge; Destinos, an introduction to Spanish; Vogue knitting quick knits; Baryshnikov at Wolk Trap (DVD).

Sara Ryan is Multnomah County Library's Teen Services Specialist. Her favorite part of the job is attending teen council meetings and finding out about the excellent and sometimes hilarious projects the councils take on, such as "Books", a video response to the YouTube phenomenon "Shoes" (warning, the original has some swears). As you might guess, she's especially interested in the ways teens use what we, but not they, think of as "new technologies." She's also an author of books and comics for teens and others, and blogs at sararyan.com.

Nicholas Schiller is the Instruction Coordinator for the Washington State University Vancouver Library. In addition to reference and instruction, he also serves as the library liaison to the School of Computer Science and Engineering. His research interests include examining new media such as computer and video games for their links to library instruction. Nicholas maintains the information games web log at http://informationgames.info. He received his M.L.S.from Emporia State University in 2004.

Aaron Schmidt is the Digital Initiatives Librarian for the District of Columbia Public Library but lives in Portland, OR. He helps plan forward thinking, fun projects for the library, helping them connect to the community and teach them about the Read/Write Web. He also assists with website visioning, conducts usability testing, leads the library's Library 2.0 Interest Group and helps coordinate and generate ideas for the library's digital research and development project called DC Library Labs. Outside of his work for the DCPL, he sits on the the University of Washington iSchool's MLIS Advisory Board, speaks at library conferences, and consults for organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Global Libraries Project. You can find him online at his library technology and usability weblog www.walkingpaper.org.

Susan Stone is a teacher-librarian in Portland Public Schools, currently on special assignment for the district helping to craft a vision for Portland*s School Library Services programming, and facilitating the Improving Literacy through School Libraries grant. In her prior assignment as a middle school teacher- librarian, she especially loved collaborating with building staff to incorporate information literacy into all lessons and units, and practiced the art of snagging non-readers when they least suspected it, piquing their interest, and sneaking a good read into their hands. She seriously misses working directly with students and reading many great YA books to keep up with them, but she*s not staying up quite so late to finish the last chapter for a book talk the next day. Current books on the nightstand: The Swordless Samurai: Leadership Wisdom of Japan's Sixteenth-Century Legend---Toyotomi Hideyoshi, by Kitami Masao, Red Glass by Laura Resau, and Classroom Instruction that Works, by Robert Marzano.

Stephanie A. Thomas is the Teacher Librarian and Media Specialist for Parkrose High School in Portland. Along with teaching information literacy skills, honing the art of readers advisory and answering reference questions, she speaks and writes about Web 2.0 projects she is doing with her students. She writes and collaborates with Multnomah County Librarians on several large programs annually to bring programming to her school. She will be teaching an online course, LIB 588: Advanced Technologies in the Media Center for Portland State this summer. She is currently reading Walden by Thoreau, Library 2.0 and Beyond: Innovative Technologies and Tomorrow's User edited by Nancy Courtney, and Columbine by Dave Cullen. Her student-generated vodcast book reviews can be found at: http://blogs.parkrose.k12.or.us/thomaste