BiblioBouts Project Participants & Contacts

Contact the BiblioBouts Project team generally at info@bibliobouts.org.

BiblioBouts Project Team

Andrew Calvetti, User Support Specialist, School of Information, University of Michigan. In spring 2011, Andrew received a master's degree in Information from the University of Michigan. Certified to teach history at the secondary school level, Andrew has taught at schools in Detroit, Ypsilanti, and Ann Arbor. As the project's user support specialist, he brings his extensive experience and knowledge helping high school students learn technology and diagnose technology-related problems.

Brian Jennings, Programmer (Emeritus), School of Information, University of Michigan. Brian Jennings graduated from the University of Michigan in May 2010 with a major in Computer Science and Engineering. He has been programming since 2002 and has considerable knowledge of networking and creating computer graphics. A 4-year veteran of our games research and development, Brian brought programming, graphics design, and gaming experience to both BiblioBouts and Storygame Projects.

Chris Leeder, Graduate Student Research Assistant, School of Information, University of Michigan. Chris joined the BiblioBouts Project in July 2009 as a graduate student research assistant. He is charged with game design, literature search and update, evaluation, data analysis, and data reporting tasks. Prior to coming to Michigan, he earned a MSIS degree in Information Studies at the University at Albany, State University of New York. In the BiblioBouts Project, he puts to work his experience conducting user studies, in multimedia product development and project management, and as a playwright and screenwriter.

Karen Markey, Professor, School of Information, University of Michigan. To accomplish this project’s objectives, Karen builds on the experience of the Storygame Project, a Delmas Foundation-sponsored research project that supported the design, development, testing, and evaluation of an online information-literacy board game. She has 30 years of experience leading research teams that require online systems development and evaluation, publishing research results, and improving systems in the information industry. She is the author of four books, more than a dozen major research reports, and over a hundred journal articles and conference proceedings papers. She is the principal investigator of the BiblioBouts project, focusing on game design and evaluation and overall project management.

Greg Peters, Owner and President, Cyber Data Solutions. Greg has been working on web-based solutions for a variety of research projects since 1992, including the TULIP Project and the National Science Foundation-funded Science of Collaboratories Project. A member of the programming team for the NSF-funded University of Michigan Digital Library Project (1994-1998), he pioneered online systems that federate web-based search and retrieval of digitized journal articles -- building technologies that JSTOR and other online journal aggregators mainstreamed in the new millennium. He holds a masters degree in software engineering from the University of Michigan. He is the principal programmer-architect of the BiblioBouts Project, responsible for game development and enhancement tasks.

Soo Young Rieh, Associate Professor, School of Information, University of Michigan. Soo Young’s research seeks to better understand people's information-seeking and searching behavior in contexts such as the web, libraries, institutional repositories, and other information systems. Her research on institutional repositories and credibility has also been funded by IMLS and the MacArthur Foundation, respectively. Prior to joining the SI in 2002, she was a Human Factors Research Engineer at the Excite @Home, conducting usability tests and field studies, designing online surveys, analyzing search logs, and participating in user-interface design. In this project, she serves as a co-principal investigator, sharing her expertise and knowledge to design this project’s rating and tagging games so that game play exposes students to credibility and related information literacy skills and concepts and gives them practice exercising their skills in this regard.

Victor Rosenberg, Associate Professor, School of Information, University of Michigan. A veteran of the Storygame Project, Rosenberg will put to work his experience at taking ideas, developing them into products, and bringing products to market. He has 15 years of experience as Chief Executive Officer of Personal Bibliographic Software, Inc., a small to medium-sized computer software company that developed the ProCite software, a software product for producing bibliographies with a world-wide market. He serves as co-principal investigator on the project. He has over 25 years of teaching and research experience at the University of Michigan, he teaches courses in information policy, entrepreneurship, and the information industry.

Beth St. Jean, Graduate Student Research Assistant, School of Information, University of Michigan. Beth was a major asset to the Storygame Project, assisting with literature reviews, game design, the game's scoring algorithm, and data analysis. She is completing her dissertation now, investigating what information consumer health information seekers find useful and the processes by which they make these determinations, along with how these evolve over the course of a person's illness and the course of their information seeking processes. Beth helps us fine tune BiblioBouts' scoring algorithm. She has been a graduate student research assistant for the MIRACLE and Credibility 2.0 Projects. Prior to the U-M, she worked in the fields of financial and statistical analysis for more than 15 years. In fall 2011, she assumes her new position as assistant professor at the University of Maryland.

Fritz Swanson, Lecturer, English Department, University of Michigan. An avid gamer, Fritz is a veteran of the Storygame Project who will generate this project’s game design vision statements and ensure that game elements are designed with an eye toward their pedagogical value in new-student classrooms. Because of his experience with game play, web development, introductory composition pedagogy, and rhetoric, Fritz assumes the role of consultant and discussion facilitator bridging the different perspectives, helping the group reach common ground, and make decisions. Earning an MFA in fiction and non-fiction from the U-M, Fritz has been on the faculty of the University of Michigan English Writing Program since 2001 and teaches introductory and advanced courses in academic argument, composition and creative writing. His fiction and essays have appeared in The Mid-American Review, McSweeney’s, Best American Fantasy, Christian Science Monitor, The Believer, and Esopus.

Michele Wong, Programmer, School of Information, University of Michigan. A recent graduate of the College of LS&A at the University of Michigan, Michele earned a BA in Psychology with a minor in Crime & Justice. Having served as a web designer to multiple academic departments, university divisions, and organizations, she has substantial experience with graphic design, frontend/backend development, and a variety of programming languages. She brings this experience plus a love of gaming to the BiblioBouts Project.

Partner Staff at the Center for History and New Media

Sean Takats, Assistant Professor of History, George Mason University. Sean will help BiblioBouts programmers integrate BiblioBouts functionality with the Zotero citation management system.

Library and Academic Program Liaisons

Assisting the BiblioBouts Project Team to test and evaluate BiblioBouts are librarians at Chicago State University, Saginaw Valley State University, Troy University, and University of Baltimore.

Anita Dey, Head, Reference Service, Melvin J. Zahnow Library, Saginaw Valley State University. Anita worked with Averill Packard, SVSU Reference librarian and Professor Geoffrey V. Carter, SVSU English faculty to pilot the first BiblioBouts game in fall 2009 in English 212, an undergraduate course in digital communications. Anita has several years experience teaching library research skill to students of all levels and actively looks for interactive tools and methods, like BiblioBouts to interest students in information literacy skills.

Catherine Johnson, Reference/Instruction Librarian, Langsdale Library, University of Baltimore. Catherine is interested in studying how students most effectively learn information literacy skills and hopes BiblioBouts will improve student understanding of these valuable skills. She teaches a required, for-credit information literacy course into which BiblioBouts will be integrated. Catherine graduated with a MSLIS from Syracuse University and a BPhil from Miami University in Ohio.

Alyssa Martin, Instruction/Reference Librarian, Troy University Montgomery Campus, Montgomery, Alabama. Alyssa coordinates library instruction for all freshman orientation courses offered on campus. An adjunct instructor with Troy University Montgomery Campus, she regularly teaches the TROY 1101 University Orientation. She is an active committee member of the Association of College and Research Libraries and Alabama Library Association. Alyssa's degrees come from the University of Alabama: BA, Communication; MSW, Social Work; MLIS, Library and Information Science.

Averill Packard, (formerly) Reference Librarian, Melvin J. Zahnow Library, Saginaw Valley State University. In addition to her collection development duties for the Law, Political Science, History, Philosophy, and Geography Departments, Averill was responsible for library research instruction for English 111 classes and liaison areas, doing classroom instruction, PowerPoint presentations, creating web-based LibGuides and Adobe Captivate online tutorials. Previous career related experiences include school media specialist, online database trainer, intranet webmaster, public library reference librarian, youth service coordinator and communications specialist.

Gabrielle Toth, Government Documents Coordinator, University Library, Chicago State University. Gabrielle provides information literacy instruction to freshman through doctoral students. Gabrielle is excited about BiblioBouts' potential to show students that, yes, they can conduct meaningful research and like it! Gabrielle holds an MSLIS from the University of Illinois, MA in Latin American Studies from the University of Alabama, and BS in Journalism from Northwestern University.

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