Ken Irwin

Librarian, Developer

Portfolio

Web Development Portfolio

Education

Master of Library & Information Studies

University of Michigan

1996 - 1997

B.A. in English

Kalamazoo College

1992 - 1996

Languages

English (Native)
Spanish (Adv. Beginner)

Career Profile

As a university librarian for over 20 years, I am interested in using web-based technology to meet the needs of my students and colleagues.

I am committed to sharing information and open-source development.

Experience

Web Services Librarian

2019 - Present

Miami University, Oxford OH

Full-time web development librarian. Primary duties include the development of a new library website (converting from a Drupal-based site to a Jekyll-based site) and the leading the development of a customized library dashboard tailored to individual user needs. Also serving on the libraries' Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Committee and co-faciliting a facet of the libraries' strategic plan.

Reference Librarian

1998 - 2019

Wittenberg University, Springfield OH

In addition to typical librarian duties (teaching, answering reference questions, and selecting book for the library collection), I was hired to guide the development of the library's web presence in the early days of the Web. Projects have included creating one of the world's first searchable journals list (1998), converting the library website to a database-driven model, and creating our campus's first mobile-friendly website.

Freelance Web Developer

2002-Present

Freelance web development focused on designing information management systems, mostly for private intranets. Clients have included Consumer Advocacy Model (Dayton, OH), Stork-Climax Research Services (Wixom, MI), Kalamazoo College, University of Nebraska — Lincoln, and others.

Web Developer and Co-op Leadership Team

Wittenberg University Food Co-op

2007-2019

Founding member of the leadership for the Wittenberg Food Co-op. Designed and implemented front-end sales website and back-end inventory control, order management, and reporting tools. Also involved in the month-to-month management of in-person aspects of the buying-club style food co-op.

Projects

These projects are largely solutions for library-specific data management challenges. Two are add-on projects integrating with the much larger Suma space usage software package; I have contributed some pull requests directly to the Suma project; the projects listed here represent tools outside the scope of the main Suma program. See my portfolio for more details.

Sort Tetris - An educational game adaptable to many kinds of content. Originally developed as "Citation Tetris" to teach students to recognize citations for different types of materials.

Weeding Helper - Web-based software to help libraries make weeding/de-accession decisions based on item usage and external evaluations of individual items.

Suma Session Manager - Suma Session Manager is a tool for modifying data that has previously been submitted to Suma: A Space Assessment Toolkit. Suma is a space usage/statistics package; it natively does not allow users to delete or modify data once it has been submitted. This session manager allows the user to "delete" (actually hide from reporting) or to alter the timestamps on individual sessions.

Suma Retroactive Data Importer - Suma Retroactive Data Importer is a tool for retroactively submitting data into Suma: A Space Assessment Toolkit. Suma is natively intended for real-time data submission. This import generator allows the user to input data hours, days, weeks, or even years after the fact.

InnReachTracker - This suite of scripts takes data exported from Innovative Interfaces (III) catalog systems to show what books have been requested from other libraries using the INNReach request system.

Publications

Irwin, K. (2016) Comparing patrons’ renewal behavior before and after implementing more permissive loan rules. Journal of Access Services. 13(4): 237-246.

Irwin, K. (2014) Graphic nonfiction: a survey of nonfiction comics. Collection Building. 33(4): 106-120.

Irwin, K. (2011) The Homegrown Mobile Catalog: A Quick, Inexpensive Approach to Expanding Access. Technical Services Quarterly. 29(1): 42-57.

Irwin, K. (2008) Comparing Circulation Rates of Monographs and Anthologies of Literary Criticism: Implications for Cooperative Collection Development. Collection Management. 33 (1-2): 69-81.