Jenny Mathias, MSLIS

I am an information specialist dedicated to the dispersal of knowledge throughout the information ecology and economy. As a freelance information architect and born-digital / born-analog archivist. Past clients include: Weill Cornell Brain & Spine Center, MetLife, UnionPlus, and Thankster.com. I was lucky enough to intern for the best places in the world while in grad school: Met Museum's Watson Library, Smithsonian Institution Archives, and Columbia University's Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

I think both inside and outside the box, meaning that I understand the value of standards and conventions, and seek to build upon these in innovative, thought-provoking, and surprising ways. Most days you can find me sipping Gimme coffee while squinting at spreadsheets at my desk at MTV Networks. I would love to talk about how to manage large servers with audio, video, and graphic design resources on them.

In my pre-information science life, I worked as a studio assistant to NYC based commercial and fine arts photographers. I retouched photos of humans and of architectural interiors.

While at Pratt, I spent the summer of 2011 cataloging field notes at the Smithsonian Institution using MODS, NCD, and EAC. Check out my Field Book Project Blog entry about mammologist Vernon Orlando Bailey called "Mammalogy at the Intersection of Mercy and Truth" to get a taste of what the materials I was lucky enough to work with. I also curated a Flickr set of historic images of paleontologists digging for mammoths, dinosaurs and all sorts of other cool creatures, and preparing these specimens for display at the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History. This Flickr set caught the eye of science writer Danielle Venton, and led to this awesome Wired Science article by Ms Venton.

Currently, you can find me cataloging contemporary exhibition catalogs at the Thomas J. Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in a coffee shop reading about museums as an educational space, wrestling yarn out of the paws of my kitty, Tina, or wireframing websites on my iPad in Prospect Park.