Welcome: In September 2007, I received a doctorate of philosophy in Information Studies from the Department of Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). On July 1, 2008 I became an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Information. I am interested in the history, theory, and method of library and information studies, and the nature of information in everyday life. My dissertation is an ethnography that explores information in the hobby of gourmet cooking. For the academic year of 2004-2005, I was on a Fulbright Fellowship as a visiting researcher at the Department of Information Studies at the University of Tampere, Finland, where I collaborated with the Research Group on Information Seeking (ReGIS - photo).

News and new website content: This past semester I really enjoyed offering the new course, The Information Experience in Context (click here for student comments). At the upcoming ASIST Annual Meeting in Vancouver, BC (November 6-12), I will be moderating the panel Metatheoretical Snowmen (PDF), featuring my U of T colleagues Jens-Erik Mai and Siobhan Stevenson, as well as Howard D. White, Pam McKenzie, Paul Solomon, and Marcia Bates. I'll also participate in the panel Towards a Positive Information Science?. Some introductory sections of my dissertation, Information Activities, Resources, and Spaces in the Hobby of Gourmet Cooking are available here on my website. I am still managing, with sociologist Robert A. Stebbins, The Serious Leisure Perspective website, a framework of leisure applied in my dissertation.

Whereabouts: Summer 2009, I will be writing articles for publication and planning the new fall course Ethnographic Fieldwork.