Rick C. Mason

A library team member who accurately performs duties, keeping customer and co-worker service a top priority. Takes on and completes projects with an eye towards improving procedures, quality, and efficiency.

Professional
Experience

Library Acquisitions Assistant at Blackmore Library, Capital University, Columbus, Ohio (2007 - 2011).
Worked with librarians and staff to order library materials; manage shipments; maintain records for invoices and purchase orders; and reconcile financial transactions between Millennium ILS and university accounting systems.

  • Prepared and managed Fiscal Close operations on an annual basis.
  • Created and maintained a variety of databases to aid in reporting of exported ILS data.
  • Operated Millennium Acquisitions, Serials, Circulation and Cataloging modules.
  • Created LibWiki, a collaborative staff policies and procedures resource utilizing MediaWiki.
  • Created a database of staff/faculty contact information for a campus directory.

Library Assistant - Circulation at Kishwaukee College Library, Malta, Illinois (1993 - 2006).
Oversaw day-to-day operations of circulation including: circulating library materials, supervising computer lab, creating student IDs, and maintaining course reserves.

  • Assisted in most areas of Technical Services, including Acquisitions, Cataloging, and Serials.
  • Involved in the hiring, training, and supervision of support staff and student aides.
  • Developed and led training program for Circulation staff and student aides.
  • Generated SQL queries and reports to provide information from Voyager ILS including detailed statistics, shelf lists for program reviews, and inventories.
  • Created batch files and web pages for student and staff use.
  • Organized two separate inventories of a 40,000+ library collection, including coordinating scanning teams and generating reports and statistics.
  • Helped select and implement Voyager ILS, served as vendor contact, primary troubleshooter, and assistant system administrator.

Consultant, DeKalb, Illinois (2002 - 2006).
Consultant for small businesses, libraries and individuals on a variety of computer-related projects.

  • PC and network troubleshooting/repair/training.
  • Purchase and install computers and related hardware and software.
  • Website design.
  • Selection, installation, and configuration of ResourceMate ILS for rural community library.

Recognition

2009 Recipient, ALAO-SSIG Award Of Excellence, Ohio

  • Awarded annually to an Ohio library support staff member.

Related
Experience

St. Patrick's Episcopal Church, Dublin, Ohio (2007 - Present)

  • Library: Installed and maintained OpenBiblio ILS for 1,500 item collection (2009-2018)
  • Webmaster: Installed and maintained Wordpress-based parish website (2015-2018)
  • Server Administrator: Maintained Linux web and mail servers for parish (2016-2018)

Reaching Forward South : Conference for Library Support Staff (2002 - 2006)
Served as part of a group directorship overseeing an annual state-wide conference. Created conference website (archived), including two revisions incorporating online registration and payment.

  • Moderator Chair (2002-2005)
  • Webmaster (2003-2006)
  • Vice-Chair/Treasurer/Registration (2005-2006)

Kishwaukee College Health and Safety Committee (2004 - 2006)

  • Co-chair of the recycling sub-committee, responsible for analyzing and submitting a detailed report of the college's waste stream to the State of Illinois in 2005.
  • Participated in establishing campus-wide disaster planning procedures in 2006.

Delaware County Board of Elections (2011 - present)

  • Serve as Precinct Election Official, including Voting Location Manager.

Publication

Libology Blog (2006 - 2014)
Originally created as LibrarySupportStaff.org, Libology Blog was a discussion of libraries, technology, and related ideas (ISSN 1946-1852).

Education

University of Wisconsin - Platteville Platteville, WI (August 1985 - May 1986).

Kishwaukee College Malta, IL (May 1990 - May 1994).

Northern Illinois University DeKalb, IL (January 1987 - May 1987, August 1994 - May 1995).

Southern New Hampshire University Manchester, NH (January 2024 -).

Presentations
& Workshops

Creating Batch Files for Automating Tasks in the Voyager Library Automation System

  • Great Lakes User Group Meeting (GLUGM) (Chicago, IL, October 2003)

Open Source Software and Libraries

  • Reaching Forward South : Conference for Library Support Staff (Springfield, IL, September, 2004)
  • Reaching Forward South : Conference for Library Support Staff (Springfield, IL, September, 2005)
  • Rolling Prairie Library System Seminar (Decatur, IL, March 2006)

Creating and Running A Conference for Library Support Staff

  • American Library Association (ALA) conference (Chicago, IL, June 2005)
    (Co-presented with Reaching Forward South co-director)

Create a Website on the Cheap!

  • Rolling Prairie Library System seminar (Decatur, IL, March 2006)

Open Source Software and You

  • Kishwaukee College National Library Week workshop (Malta, IL, April 2006)

Moderator : Banned Books Week Panel Discussion on Censorship

  • Kishwaukee College Banned Books Week event (Malta, IL, September 2006)

Metasearch / APIs / Facebook for Libraries
My suggestion for this unconference was library software APIs, which was rolled into this group session.

Technolgies
Summary

Operating Systems

  • Microsoft Windows
  • Linux (Mint, CentOS, and Ubuntu)
  • Google Chrome

Office Suites

  • Microsoft Office, including Access
  • OpenOffice & LibreOffice, including Base

Library Management Systems

  • OpenBiblio
  • Millennium
  • Voyager
  • ResourceMate

Web Technologies

  • HTML5/CSS3
  • Server Administration
  • Mail Lists
  • Wiki - MediaWiki
  • Blog/CMS - WordPress
  • MySQL Database

Hardware

  • Installation and management of a wide range of PC and related hardware.