I’ve been working around books and reading and libraries for over thirty years, longer if I were to consider my undergraduate degree in English from the University of Toronto. For a decade after that degree, I was a bookseller, working for independents, chains, used and new stores. I loved handselling books, learning about authors, consulting with publishers’ reps, and the camaraderie of the bookselling community, but I wasn’t making much of a dent in my student loans. I began casting about for something else. And like many, many people who come to do an MLIS degree, I knew some people who had already done one, and with their insights and encouragement I applied to Western’s MLIS graduate program. And the degree kind of blew my mind. Even all these years later, I’m struck by the intensity of the program (and I did it part-time), the depth and breadth of what I was able to learn, the people I’ve met, and just how perfectly I was able to find a place in this surprisingly interdisciplinary field of practice and scholarship. 

My primary research activities cohere around study of the meanings of reading from readers’ perspectives, considering the role that the everyday practice of reading takes up in people’s lives, in their memories, in the ways they imagine their futures. Libraries of all kinds (e.g., public, school, college and university, grassroots, personal) are caught up in everyday reading practices in ways that are often unexamined, sometimes even by readers themselves. So strong has been the emphasis on the books that the ecologies of access can be quite invisible.

Recently, I have been involved in some other great projects too:

I've co-published a couple of recent papers with former doctoral supervisees, one on the pre-arrival information practices of Bangladeshi immigrants to Canada (lead author is Dr. Nafiz Shuva), and another on initiatives in Canadian academic libraries that support equity, diversity, and inclusion (lead author is Dr. Sodiq Onaolapo). 

It is a privilege to have been part of the amazing team working to digitize recorded episodes of Smoke Signals, the long-running Radio Western show by Dan Smoke and Mary Lou Smoke. The project has slowed down, however, work continues as we work to shift the project to Western Libraries Special Collections. With prior funding from FIMS, Social Sciences. In summer 2025 with the support of the FIMS Broadcast Studio, we've been working to digitize and describe a selection of video from the Smoke Signals television broadcasts. 

For another project, ""Palaces for the People: Mapping Public Libraries' Capacity for Social Connection and Inclusion", funded by a SSHRC Knowledge Synthesis grant, and with an international team of researchers and librarians led by Dr. Nicole Dalmer (McMaster) and with co-PI Dr. Pam McKenzie, and a great team of collaborators, we’ve mapping public libraries’ capacity to foster social connection and inclusion. 

I am on sabbatical from until January 1, 2027 and have a couple of book projects in the works. 

You can find a list of publications here, or my Google Scholar profile. You are welcome to connect with me via email or through my LinkedIn profile.