Mark Leggott - University Librarian, UPEI

The Now

I am currently University Librarian at the University of Prince Edward Island, which is Canada's best small university. And it's on an island - how can you beat that? I am also the President and CEO of DiscoveryGarden, which is a private company providing a full slate of commercial services for the Islandora/Drupal/Fedora framework and the Founding Director of the Knowledge for All Project, whose goal is to create a public domain database of all scholarly literature.

Some projects/communities I am working with:

• My New SaaS Company - DiscoveryGarden Inc.
• Blogging - LoomWare
• My Open Source/Data Projects - Islandora, Knowledge4All
• Digital Library/Research Systems - Islandora, Island Archives, Manitobia,
• Communities - UPEI VRE, CAUL, Facebook

Ancient History

I was at the University of Winnipeg for just over 7 years, leaving in the winter of 2006. While at UW I assumed additional duties in October 2005 as the Associate Dean of Education (Extended Learning), which included responsibility for Division of Continuing Education, Centre for Distributed/Distance Learning and Centre for Innovation In Teaching and Learning. I became University Librarian at the University of Winnipeg in July 1999 - and enjoyed every minute of it - the staff at the UW Library are awesome. And no, the mosquitoes and weather are no different here than anywhere else in Canada. Well, maybe... ;-)

In February 1999 I returned to the Angus L. Macdonald Library as Systems/Electronic Resources Librarian, fresh from my 2-year secondment to setup the Media Forge. While in the Library I continued to work with the campus website, DLI, various electronic resources, Novanet, etc. It will be a quick return however, as I assume the position of University Librarian at the University of Winnipeg in July. This will be a big change for me, but I am looking forward to it.

From March 1997 to February 1999 I was Director of a research and development group (The Media Forge), which was a department in the Technology Support Group at St.F.X. In addition to providing software development and research activities for the University's faculty and the new WebFX initiative, the Forge developed CD-ROM applications, Web sites and a lot of miscellaneous multimedia-ware. Some of the people I worked with at the Media Forge included Brad Smith, Carla Teague, Ray Roddick, Scott Guest, Chris Bower, John Bastin and Thomas MacDonald, Art Curry, as well as a number of contract people. At any given time there are also many students working on internships, special projects, summer contracts, etc. July 1998 was a busy period with 16 people in The Forge working on 8 major projects.

The Media Forge no longer exists, but since October of 1998 The Forge had occupied the upper floor of a newly renovated building (the old TV building), with the XEDC on the main floor. For a few months prior to this the Forge was located in the basement of Morrison while the new building was under renovation. Before Morrison the Forge had a long and successful stay in the basement of the Coady International Institute, and various locations in the Angus L. Macdonald Library.

I had acted as WebMaster for the St.F.X. Website since the beginning (X was the one of the 1st websites in Canada, thanks to the NeXT system).

Prior to The Media Forge, I was Systems Librarian at St. F. X., and the Xel Coordinator. Xel is the Xavier Electronic Library Project at St. F.X., which was the foundation of the St. F.X. Web System. The Library currently only maintains their own pages on the campus web. You might want to listen to my daughter Maia describe what she thought I did as Systems Librarian. [159 K AU audio file]

Prior to coming to St. F.X. I was Project Manager at a CD-ROM development company in Ottawa (OPTIM Corp. - now Dataware Canada, now IHS), where I worked extensively with SGML and multimedia, so the Web feels like home.

I founded the Grassroots Information Association, which was a not-for-profit group setup to promote the use of information and computer technology in the community of Antigonish. I continue to be active in Community economic development, particularly in the area of IT.

I was a part-time faculty member at StFX and taught a number of classes, both academic and continuing education. This included a 4th-year course in the BIS program called Introduction to Multimedia Systems. This new course was offered twice in the 1998-99 academic year. Previous to this I taught CS 130.13 (Computing and Business Applications with Microcomputers) and and Hypermedia and The Net. The latter course was offered (1995-96) at the Dalhousie University School of Library and Information Studies, where I was an Adjunct Professor.