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 will become an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, Faculty of Information Studies. 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: In early August 2008 I'll be presenting The Serious Leisure Perspective: Implications for Public Libraries at the Reference Renaissance Conference in Denver, Colorado. At the ASIST Annual Meeting in Columbus, Ohio (October, 2008), I am looking forward to hosting a 1/2-day pre-conference workshop on leisure and culinary information and moderating a panel, The Office: Integrating Perspectives Across 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 2008 I am settling into my new job on the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto.