Professional Experience

Library Positions

  • YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Inc., New York. Associate Librarian (formerly Assistant), 1971‑1982. Consulting Librarian, 1982- 2001 Planning for automation.
  • Technion Medical School Library, Haifa. May‑August 1981.
  • Kiryat Sefer, Jewish National and University Library, Jerusalem, October 1979‑August 1980.

Grants

Continuing Grants

Royalties for Can You Recommend a Good Book on Indexing?,  published in May 1998.  Total royalties to date: $690.62, deposited to the Continuing Education Account of the Division of Library and Information Science.

H. W. Wilson Co./WilsonWeb – Complimentary subscription to Library Literature Full Text. Subscription expired March 31, 2002. Renewal requested and received March 22, 2002. Valid through August 2003. Value $3,145.

Grant to St. John's University for Synaptica thesaurus software – Value $14,000. The grant was received in exchange for my evaluation of the software and feedback from the students in my thesaurus design course (LIS 224), taught in Fall 2001. The grant was extended for my new course on information architecture (LIS 225), taught in Spring 2002.  In the fall of 2003, the grant was further extended for the students in my thesaurus design course. 

Grants Received

Data Harmony software – Representatives of the company offered me complimentary software for automatic indexing and thesaurus design for use by my students, in exchange for feedback. The software's value is $60,000. I began the process by meeting with the vendor at the conference of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, held in Philadelphia in November 2002. I then tracked the review of the software license by the University Counsel and Chief Information Officer. The license was signed at the end of January 2003.  I am currently working to see that the software is installed in various electronic classrooms and laboratories of the Division of Library and Information Science. A demonstration of Machine Aided Indexer was given in my course on Indexing and Abstracting (LIS 228) in May 2003, and Thesaurus Master is scheduled to be demonstrated in my course on Language Structure and Thesaurus Development, Fall 2003.

Travel subsidy for presentation of a refereed paper at the Second Conference on the History and Heritage of Scientific and Technical Information Systems. Application submitted Aug. 20, 2002, to the Chemical Heritage Foundation. Email notification of the grant; $200 check provided at the conference, Nov. 17, 2002.

Travel subsidy from the Association of Jewish Libraries for representing the organization at an international conference, the 7th Congress of the European Association for Jewish Studies. Proposal submitted July 2, 2002, to the chair of the International Meetings Committee. $150 received August 14, 2002.

Research on the Earliest Indexes in the Netherlands. Proposal submitted July 3, 2002. $500 grant received July 15, 2002, from the Eugene Garfield Foundation. Research done late July 2002.

Corporate Sponsorship of Thesaurus Seminar – Several months before the April 2002 seminar, I worked on updating the list of vendors of relevant software. A mailing was then done, offering each vendor the opportunity to advertise a product in the seminar packet for a fee of $50. Three responded, for a total income of $150, deposited to the Continuing Education account of the Division of Library and Information Science. Those who served as corporate sponsors were acknowledged in the Directory and were sent a letter of thanks after the seminar.

Research on Early Latin and Hebrew Citation Indexes in England. Proposal submitted to the Eugene Garfield Foundation, May 2001. $5000 Received.

Corporate Sponsorship of Indexing Seminar—Several months before the May 2001 seminar, I worked on updating the list of vendors of relevant software. A mailing was then done, offering each vendor the opportunity to advertise a product in the seminar packet for a fee of $50. Four responded, for a total income of $200, deposited to the Continuing Education account of the Division of Library and Information Science. Those who served as corporate sponsors were acknowledged in the Directory.

Discount to St. John's University for  MultiTes thesaurus software – Multisystems.  $525 discount received as a result of my negotiations (by phone). Acknowledged in a memo from the Chair of the University's Software Advisory Board, February 2001.

Research on early Hebrew manuscript indexes in Israel, August 2000 – Garfield Foundation, $3000 grant, received July 5, 2000.

Subsidy for participation in the Jerusalem conference of the International Federation of Library Associations, August 2000 – Association of Jewish Libraries, $150 received June 28, 2000. 

Contract for Cross-References in Catalogs, Indexes and Thesauri received from Information Today. The book is nearly complete; the royalties are designated for St. John's University and the American Society of Indexers.

Jesselson Foundation. $1000 grant received for research on early Hebrew manuscript indexes in Jerusalem, August 2000. Check received March 2000. 

Travel grant to Ottawa for research on the earliest indexing manuals, July 1998. H.W. Wilson Foundation, $1650.

Travel grant to Rome for research on the earliest Hebrew subject indexes, July 1998. The Eugene Garfield Foundation. $2550.

Publication of Judaica Librarianship, vol. 10 no. 1. The Kiev Foundation, Inc. $500 awarded April 14, 1997.

Consulting

National Center for the Hebrew Language. Member, Panel of Experts.

Jewish Women's Archive. Member, Technology Advisory Council.  Brookline, MA, June 2001. (By invitation)

Pace University. Consulting on the development of a thesaurus for international law.  In the Fall of 2001, I edited a paper describing the approach to the development of this thesaurus.  The paper is to be published in a legal festschrift. 

Getty Information Institute, Los Angeles, CA, May 1998-  Summary of recommendations made at a customized seminar on thesaurus design, submitted June 1998. Questions on thesaurus management received subsequently.

Harper's Magazine, New York, Summer 1996 - present. Consulting on the design of a 100-year index published in machine-readable form; recommendation of controlled vocabulary; design of a database structure and screen display of indexer's workform.

Audible Words, Wayne, NJ, Aug. 1996 - Consulting on a categorization scheme and indexing vocabulary for a collection of digitized audio documents to be mounted on the Internet.

United Nations Documentation Center, New York, Sept. 1996 - Evaluation of printed U.N. bibliographies, database records, and multilingual thesauri, with recommendations for their enhancement, in the context of two all-day seminars on indexing and thesaurus design.

Psychological Abstracts, Washington, D.C., Oct. 1996 - Evaluation of the structure of the American Psychological Association's printed index and thesaurus, as well as the online database and thesaurus display. Recommendations for enhancement presented to the PsycInfo Indexing Advisory Committee were enthusiastically received.