This Fall, GSLIS welcomes five new adjunct faculty to our
community — Emily Alling, John Dillon, Naka Ishii, Marvin Kabakoff, and Maxine Schmidt
Emily Alling
Emily Alling
Emily Alling was a member of the
first matriculating class in the
Simmons College GSLIS West
program in September 2001. She
graduated from the Simmons GSLIS
program in May 2003 and has since
held positions that are located near
the nexus of reference services and
technology in academic libraries. She is currently the director of
the Rice-Aron Library at Marlboro College in Marlboro, VT.
Emily's professional interests involve the use of emerging — as
well as fully emerged — technologies to deliver library and
information services and support the academic curriculum,
especially for undergraduate students. She also has substantial
interest and experience in information literacy, usability, and
web/interface design. Emily has a BA in classics/linguistics from
Hampshire College and an MA in linguistics from Harvard. You
can follow Emily on Twitter (@emilyalling) and contact her at
alling@simmons.edu.
John Dillon
John Dillon, M.S. (LIS) is currently
Assistant Library Director and Head of
Technical Services at Saint Anselm
College in Manchester, New
Hampshire. A '96 GSLIS graduate, his
professional experience has emphasized
academic libraries, automation in
services, and balancing traditional
library and educational values with ever-evolving information technologies.
John began his library career at Boston College, first in
cataloging at Burns Library of Rare Books and Special
Collections, and later at the main research library, O'Neill.
While there he focused especially on catalog management,
serials holdings improvements, solving cataloging-OPAC
problems, and support staff development.
Currently at Saint Anselm's Geisel Library, John works
extensively with technical services vendors and colleagues on
library system enhancements and library-wide implementations
of information technology. At the same time, according to John,
he "especially enjoy[s] collaborating with Reference staff and
helping to see 'behind the scenes' technical work directly
benefitting end-users." Recent projects have included OpenURL
linking among databases, implementing Web 2.0 features in
Geisel's web OPAC, print management solutions, and
customized batch loads of eBook MARC records.
Whatever the project, John notes that his work is often inspired
and challenged by Thoreau's "Simplify, simplify",
Ranganathan's "Save the time of the user", and Gorman's "Use
technology intelligently . . . ". He adds, "I have been well-served by
many other things I learned at Simmons, including the
reminder to 'bring solutions, not just problems.'" He currently
teaches LIS 418 - Technical Services.
Naka Ishii
Naka Ishii brings 22 years of librarianship
to Simmons. She is currently a Branch
Reference Librarian at UMass Amherst in
the Integrated Sciences and Engineering
Library, having worked there since 1994.
Prior to that, she worked as a librarian for
a computer company in the Boston area
for six years until they closed their
corporate libraries. Naka has a bachelor's
degree in Environmental Science from SUNY Purchase, an MS
in Plant and Soil Science from UMass Amherst, and got her
MLS from SUNY Albany. She is active in the Association of
College and Research Libraries, New England Chapter, helping
to organize their annual conferences.
Marvin Kabakoff
Marvin Kabakoff is a senior records
analyst for the National Archives and
Records Administration — Northeast
Region, where he works with agencies
on a variety of records issues, mostly
relating to determining the historical
significance of government
documents. He has been with NARA
for almost 32 years, working first in
St. Louis appraising military records, and then coming back to
Boston in 1987 to head the regional Appraisal & Disposition
Branch. He majored in history at Brandeis, and received his
masters and doctorate in French history from Washington
University in St. Louis. Prior to working for NARA, he taught
history part-time at the college level.
Maxine Schmidt
Maxine Schmidt is a Reference and
Instruction Librarian at the Integrated
Sciences and Engineering Library (ISEL)
at the University of Massachusetts,
Amherst, and is currently Acting Head of
ISEL. She holds a B.A. in Geology and
M.S. in Geology (Micropaleontology)
from the University of Massachusetts,
and received her MSLIS from Simmons
College in 2005. She has been at UMass
Amherst since 2006. Before coming to UMass, she served as
Data Management Coordinator for the Gulf of Maine Council on
the Marine Environment through the Massachusetts Office of
Coastal Zone Management. She then worked for eleven years in
environmental and public health at the state and local levels. She
has also consulted for oil companies as a paleontologist. A
member of ACRL, she is presently Co-Chair of the Academic
Libraries Discussion Group of the Science and Technology
Section, and the Section's delegate to the International
Federation of Library Associations (IFLA). At the 2009 IFLA
Annual Meeting, she was appointed Information Coordinator for
the Standing Committee on Science and Technology.
