New Member Spotlight

Nancy Dulniak spent the first eighteen years of her life in a small, picturesque valley with the foothills of the Adirondacks to the west and the Green Mountains of Vermont to the east, in a town named Granville, New York. Because it was a small town where everybody knew everybody else, it was possible for her to get a library card at the age of six. This was one whole year before the “legal” age of seven! Books and reading have always been an important part of her life; so it was completely natural that she would choose librarianship as a career.

She worked in her hometown library during high school and then her college library, SUNY Fredonia. After college, she continued to work in libraries such as the University of Rochester (NY), Montana State University, in Bozeman (the main and the architecture library), Ohio Wesleyan University, Piedmont Technical College, and Lander University. These positions allowed her to gain experience in several areas including Circulation, Acquisitions, Library Instruction, Special Collections, Reference, and Cataloging.

It was 11 years after she graduated from college before she had the opportunity to go to graduate school. The University of South Carolina granted her a Masters of Librarianship in 1988 and inducted her into Beta Phi Mu.

Since then Nancy has worked at the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals Library in Nashville, Tennessee; Austin Peay State University, and Maitland Public Library. Her current position is at Florida A&M University College of Law Library in Orlando, Florida, where she is the cataloging librarian.

Activities that Nancy and her husband enjoy are theater, concerts, football, basketball and relaxing in or by their pool. They now spend most of their vacations visiting their 2-year-old grandson in Knoxville.

Amy Emerson joined the Cornell Law Library in November, 2008, where she currently serves as Research Attorney and Lecturer in Law. She obtained her joint J.D. and M.L.S. degrees from Syracuse University in 1999 and thereafter practiced as a real estate attorney for eight years in the private sector in both Ithaca and Syracuse, New York. During this time, she also served as adjunct faculty at Ithaca College where she taught courses in legal research and real estate law. This is her first library position, and she wishes that she had made the career transition long ago. She loves working in the library setting, performing research, writing, and teaching. When she is not working, Amy spends every moment possible with her husband and their amazing four-year-old son.

Originally, Kathryn Gordon is from Washington D.C. Growing up, however, she lived mostly in Western Massachusetts - although she later returned to the D.C. area to finish high school and attend college. As an adult, she has spent time in North Carolina, Colorado, and now Michigan.

As for law and library school, she attended law school at Indiana University, Bloomington, and she is currently enrolled in Wayne State University’s MLIS program. After law school, she practiced civil litigation for several years at Dykema, a Detroit law firm. However, the billable-hour life-style was not for her, particularly when her practice did not allow her to focus on the issues that interest her most.

She decided to enter Wayne State University’s MLIS program and look for library work. Because she is interested in doing her own research, she targeted academic libraries and she was fortunate. She found her current position as a reference librarian at the University of Detroit Mercy Law Library last fall.

She is interested primarily in information policy, which goes well with working in a library. As a result, she finds first amendment and copyright issues fascinating. She loves working one on one with students. She enjoys challenging reference questions. She also likes constructing research guides, learning about website design, and working with people who enjoy books as much as she does.

Vacations are still a fairly new (and welcome) concept for her, but she and her husband are looking forward to renting a cottage on Lake Michigan this summer, along with swimming, boating, and relaxing by the water with their two elderly dogs and a good book. Her other interests include reading, gardening, and tai chi.