Simmons College

Research Interests:

Bob comes to library and information science by an indirect route.  In the 1980s, he worked in commercial banking, pricing acquisitions for what is now Bank of America.  He later joined BofA's captive investment bank, negotiating acquisitions for individual and corporate investors.  He left banking in the early 1990s to pursue a new career in educational finance, working at different times as a consultant, a school treasurer, and a senior analyst at a medical school.

While in higher education, Bob was drawn to library and information science by a developing interest in information technology.  Returning to school in 2005, he received an M.L.I.S. in 2007, and he has gained core experience since then as a cataloging assistant, a circulation assistant, and an intern in Brown University's Center for Digital Initiatives.

Bob's interests include efficiency and effectiveness in information retrieval; the economics of information technology; and the reshaping of library science by computer science.  He is especially interested in the continuing distance-education debate, and he hopes to identify and measure outcome differences in his research at Simmons.  A 2009 recipient of a Jacqueline and Marshall Kates Scholarship, Bob holds an A.B. and A.M. from Brown University; an M.B.A. from Cornell University; an Ed.M. from Harvard University; and an M.L.I.S. from the University of Rhode Island.