Virginia's career
in information design and services has grown from a
special constellation of skills and sensitivities. Her
academic background in
the sciences and mathematics and her gifts for organization
and creativity
have equipped her to excel in this field in unique ways.
Beginning as head of
the Stanford Physics library, she was recruited by Dialog
Information Services to their client services department
and ultimately promoted to managing instructional programs
for the company worldwide. Her intense engagement with
students and trainers during that time gave her a deep
understanding of how customers perceive (and misperceive)
database structure, search protocols, and how to use
them efficiently and cost-effectively. Combining that
rich experience with her customer-committed orientation,
she used her creative and extensive technical skills
to design and write print, multimedia, and online user
guides that served as models in the field and continue
in use today.
Her user-centered focus and understanding of
information access issues led naturally to consulting work
as an information architect of web-based search products. She gained
expertise in evaluating usability problems, generating prototypes and specifications, and working
effectively with engineering teams on implementation.
Currently Virginia is part-time faculty at San José State University's School of Library and Information Science where she
teaches courses in online searching.
During the last several years Virginia returned to post-graduate studies as a paralegal and is now a law librarian in addition to her teaching
responsibilities.
