Advisory Board

The Unlimited Priorities Corporation Advisory Board consists of top industry insiders. Each board member is a major player in the information industry and has held a variety of key positions in organizations with which they have been associated, both in the past and at present.

Thomas H. Hogan

Chair

Thomas H. Hogan is president, CEO, and co-founder of Information Today, Inc., a 28-year-old company specializing in publications, conferences, and trade shows for the information technology community. Information Today is a leader in print and electronic media, covering specialized applications of information technologies in such fields as customer relationship management, knowledge and content management, library services, speech technology, and streaming media.

Prior to founding Information Today, Inc., Mr. Hogan was vice president of marketing and product development for Data Courier, Inc. during the very early days of electronic publishing. Data Courier was a special unit of the Courier-Journal Company in Louisville, Kentucky—a pioneering firm in the field of online information. Mr. Hogan held marketing positions at BIOSIS and IEEE before joining Data Courier.

Mr. Hogan is a past president of the American Society for Information Science & Technology (ASIST) as well as the Association of Information and Dissemination Centers (ASIDIC). He co-authored one of the first books in the field of electronic information, Online Searching: A Primer, in 1981 and is recognized as one of the pioneers in the field of electronic publishing. Mr. Hogan is profiled in Marquis Who’s Who in America.

Bob Asleson

Bob Asleson is a native of Minnesota and a graduate of the University of Minnesota. In addition, he has a JD Degree from George Washington University. Following three years of active duty in the US Navy, he joined Xerox Corporation where he was affiliated with University Microfilms and R. R. Bowker. Following associations with Information Handling Services, International Thomson, The Library Corporation and numerous M & A consulting assignments, he now spends full time representing the interests of a private family firm, The Redalen Group, where his primary involvement is with Paratext and Children's Literature Comprehensive Database.

Debra Brown-Spruill

Debra Spruill is responsible for all strategic and operational aspects of the four existing OCLC Preservation Service Centers, as well as the planning and execution of new Centers. She is also responsible for all aspects of meeting client contract specifications.

Ms. Spruill has been with OCLC for more than seven years. Her prior position was Executive Director, PAIS, serving the academic and research library community. There her duties included overall operations, systems development, production, marketing, and sales and merger and acquisitions activities.

She holds an M.L.S. from Rutgers University where her area of study was bibliographic databases with an interest in MSS and Incunabula. She is also a certified webmaster and web developer.

Recent training in preservation include participation in the Digital Preservation Management workshop at Cornell University and involvement in a variety of OCLC-sponsored workshops on planning digital projects, metadata implementation, and preserving digitized material.

John Ganly

John Ganly is the Assistant Director for Collections at The New York Public Library Science, Industry and Business Library; An Assistant Professor at Rutgers University, School of Communication Information and Library Science; Chair of the Business and Finance Division of Special Libraries Association (SLA) 1998; and Chair of the Board of Directors of Public Affairs Information Service 1990-1999. He has received honors from Gale Award for Excellence in Business Librarianship and the Special Libraries Association, Presidents Award. John holds a Master of Sciences Political Science from The New School (1974), A Master of Library Science from Pratt Institution (1970), and Bachelor of Business Administration from Baruch College, City University of New York (1968). His publications include: Data Sources for Business and Market Analysis 1986 and rev.ed. 1996; Small Business Sourcebook.1990; Serials for Libraries. Editor. 1990; and Marketing Library and Information Services: International Perspectives. Chapter with Pamela Rollo.

Mark Gauthier

Mark Gauthier is Vice President, Indexing and Editorial Services at H.W. Wilson.  He manages the editorial and production operations of ten periodical indexes, the Wilson retrospective databases, full text services, and Current Biography. He also oversees Wilson’s name and subject authority files. In addition, he coordinates the editorial studies conducted by the American Library Association’s Committee on Wilson Indexes.

Mr. Gauthier holds a BA in French from the University of Vermont and the MSLS from Catholic University of America. He also earned an MBA in Operations Management from Baruch College, City University of New York.

Catherine Mardikes

Catherine Mardikes is Electronic Text Services coordinator and bibliographer for classics, the ancient Near East and general humanities at the University of Chicago Library. She received her Ph.D from the Department of Classics at the University of Chicago in 1994. Catherine has acted as consultant and developer on numerous digital enterprises with publishers such as Alexander Street Press and Champion, and with organizations such as the ARTFL Project and Perseus. She is also co-editor of the Italian Women Writers project.

Mark Sandler

Mark Sandler is the Director of the Center for Library Initiatives at the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC). Prior to assuming this role at the CIC, he served as Collection Development Officer at the University of Michigan University Library where he worked for more than twenty years. Mark is interested in how libraries, publishers and users are managing the transition from print to electronic resources, including how libraries are working cooperatively to extend their mission as information providers to include the creation of digital resources. Mark has been involved with the development of the Text Creation Partnership, a working group that partners with libraries and commercial publishers to create accurately keyboarded and encoded editions of early texts. He has also worked closely with the Google BookSearch project, and has written and presented widely about how mass digitization initiatives are affecting local collection development strategies.