As a young child, Katie Dunneback was routinely encouraged not to be a shover by her librarian mother. The chorus of her siblings echoed the somewhat-frequent entreaties. The lure to be a maker of things, however, was one she could not resist.

In college, long before she ever considered following in her mother’s and great-aunt’s librarian footsteps, she created her own lending library and readers’ advisory service for popular materials out of her dorm room. Unfortunately this led to a number of dormmates assigning her a number of colorful epithets, especially during finals weeks, one of which has stuck to this day.

In the field librarianship, Katie is a maker of connections. Her mind often works in mysterious ways and is used to hearing others say “What were you thinking?” Her first foray into the larger field was with her Young Librarian blog where she presented the somewhat humorous essay “Weblogs as Libraries”. Over five years later she has amassed a number of LIS writing credits, though the blog has gone on indefinite hiatus.

A number of those credits are in the topic of readers’ advisory. Katie’s lifelong addiction to reading (she does display a number of troubling addiction-related habits and has resisted all attempts at intervention to date) has stood her in good stead as she is routinely consulted on readers’ advisory issues, especially romance-related, by her peers. She served on the inaugural committee of the Reading List Council, and is still amazed by the opportunity to have worked with some of the most respected librarians in the field. As a way to ease herself out of the intense work of an award committee, she created the Book-A-Month Challenge which ran through all of 2008.

Currently the Consultant with Southeastern Library Services in Bettendorf, Iowa, Katie helps make connections for those she serves by providing continuing education opportunities and technologic issue assistance among other consulting services. Her latest coup is the creating of a simple database using Open Office software to provide libraries of all sizes a way to track Summer Library Program participation and report statistics requested by the State Library of Iowa.

In her free time (ha!), Katie is a published author of fiction under a pseudonym (you have to ask her about it in person) and a knitter. She is also addicted to Twitter (told you she had an addictive personality!).

Katie Dunneback by Cindi Trainor – I & II