Louise Alcorn has been the Reference Technology Librarian and webmistress at the West Des Moines Public Library since 1996. She has created and presented classes for the State Library of Iowa, including the Libraries on the Prairie initiative in the summers of 2006 and 2007, as well as several classes on technology and library topics for the Iowa Library Service Areas and the Ontario Library Association’s Education Institute. She has presented at the Iowa Library Association Annual, the Nebraska Library Association, the American Library Association Annual, Internet Librarian and Computers in Libraries conferences on library technology topics.  She has presented at, and is a member of the steering committee for, the Library Technology Conference in St. Paul, MN. 

Louise earned her MILS at the University of Michigan’s School of Information. She also has a B.A. in American Studies from Grinnell College. She was a student research fellow at the Newberry Library in Chicago through the ACM/GLCA Humanities at the Newberry Program in the fall of 1990, assisting in the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries Project. While at the University of Michigan, she was president of the Information and Library Studies Student Association (1995) and participated in the original Internet Public Library Project [ www.ipl.org ].

Louise participated in the second Iowa Library Leadership Institute in August of 2006. She is active in the Iowa Library Association, formerly serving as Chair of the Public Relations Committee (2008), the Information Technology Forum (2008-2012) and current chair of the Bylaws Committee (2013).  In 2009, Louise was elected to the Executive Board of the Iowa Library Association for a 3-year term. 

Books: Wireless Networking: A How-To-Do-It Manual for Librarians with Maryellen Mott Allen for Neal-Schuman, 2006. Neal-Schuman Directory of Management Software for Public Access Computers with Michael Sauers for Neal-Schuman, 2003. Other writing: 2-3 pieces per year for Catalyst, newsletter of the Iowa Library Association. She has also been published in Web Junction’s Technology Resources [ www.webjunction.org ] and in Info Career Trends at LISjobs.com.  Louise has also blogged on technology topics at the MaintainIT Project [ maintainitproject.org ].

Louise’s blog, The Librarian’s Rant, is in rest mode, and thus you can find her on Facebook, FriendFeed and Twitter.  Her cats have been banned from blogging.