Education
- 2003. MS, Library & Information Science. Simmons College, Graduate School of Library and Information Science.
- 2000. MA, Linguistics. Harvard University.
- 1995. BA, Classics/Linguistics. Hampshire College.
I was a member of the first matriculating class at Simmons' GSLIS at Mt. Holyoke program. I completed most of my coursework at Mt. Holyoke but did travel to Boston for a few classes. My areas of focus were reference and online services. I was the president of the Library & Information Science Students Association from December 2001 to December 2002.
I entered a PhD program in linguistics at Cornell University in 1997. The following year, my advisor moved to Harvard University, and I followed. I started out studying historical and Indo-European linguistics, but gradually became more interested in phonology. Had I gone on to write a dissertation, I probably would have applied Optimality Theory to the historical development of reduplication in Indo-European. As it happened, I decided partway through the program that the PhD track wasn't for me, but the library was.
I took Arabic in my first year of college and was immediately intrigued by linguistic similarities and differences between Arabic and Latin, which I studied in high school. This led me to the study of linguistics. Simultaneously, I became more interested in the classics through a class on Camus (of all things), and began the study of Ancient Greek and Sanskrit. I ended up writing a Division III exam (senior thesis, roughly) on the uses and misuses of typology in linguistic reconstruction, focusing on the Proto-Indo-European stop consonant inventory.