Martin B. Wolske, Ph.D.

User Services Coordinator, Office of Information Technology and Research

Graduate School of Library and Information Science

University of Illinois

501 E. Daniel St.

Champaign, IL 61820

Office: Rm. 211, LIS Building, UIUC

Phone: (217)244-8094

Calendar: Publicly Accessible Oracle Calendar

Teaching Links

For those searching for my Fall class syllabus for LIS 451 (formerly LIS315, "Introduction to Networked Information Systems", you can find a copy at http://www.isrl.uiuc.edu/~mwolske/lis451/fall04.

An important aspect of the class is it's service learning final project. I've written a reflection of how use of service learning in the class evolved and lessons learned from the experience. It's primarily for my own use, but if you're really bored and looking desperately for that one last page on the Internet you haven't read before you come to the end, you can find it at: http://netfiles.uiuc.edu/mwolske/www/315ServiceLearning.html.

More About Me

Background

After my birth in Michigan during 1964, I wandered aimlessly through my elementary and junior high schools. I did manage to win a few science awards in 7th and 8th grade. The budding hacker in me also emerged about that time, as my junior high had a teletype connected to a mainframe. I was even invited by Whirlpool to exhibit a swell basic program I wrote which converted measurements into board feet. A relatively uneventful tenure at Benton Harbor High School was followed by an even more uneventful stay at Lake Michigan Junior College. To prevent being enlisted into the work force, I then went on to earn a B.A. in Psychology at Anderson University.  At the encouragement of my most excellent undergraduate advisor, Dr. Curt Leech, I opted for another 6 years of study, gaining both a M.S. and Ph.D. in Behavioral Neuroscience and Biopsychology at Rutgers University, studying under the expert tutelage of Dr. Mark West. The last stop in my whirlwind tour of research academia took my to the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois as a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratories of Dr. Michael Gabriel.

In 1995 I moved on to become Manager of Systems Services for Prairienet (http://www.prairienet.org), the Community Information Network for Central Illinois. Being the oldest of three, I grew up showing others how much I knew and how much they needed to learn.  So I guess it was natural that I began teaching courses at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science.  And in keeping with my research background, I also managed the comptuer systems for the Information Systems Research Lab at GSLIS. I was also director of Prairienet for a year, but decided enough was enough and stepped back to focus on systems work and teaching.

Current Work Activities When the IT staff in GSLIS was reorganized January, 2004, I volunteered to become a member of the new User Services group. I now hold the title of User Services Coordinator, with responsibilities that blend my technical, research, and public engagement background to understand users needs throughout all of GSLIS and build a knowledge center that aids users in accomplishing their professional responsibilities that they perform on behalf of GSLIS.

If you're still awake at this point, you can find other boring details of my life in my current curriculum vita.

Outside World Interests

I've been married to my wonderful wife Angie for 15 most excellent years now. I have two well groomed children, Eric (14 yrs. old) and Joey (10 yrs. old). I enjoy woodworking and have built most of the nice furniture we have in our house. I'm a member at New Horizon United Methodist Church. I'm assistant scoutmaster for my sons' Boy Scout troop, Troop 314.

Deciding that wasn't enough insanity, I am remodeling our house. This last summer we replaced the front wall of the living room (leaving only the bedroom and basement walls original), sided half the house, put electrical circuits in the garage, and worked on panelling the inside of the garage. Past projects have included:

• gutting and rebuilding our basement bathroom;
• gutting and then rebuilding our kitchen;
• building a front deck and refinishing the back deck;
• reroofing the house; and
• building an attached garage (20x36, leaving enough space for a full woodshop in back).

Throw in an occasional golf game, fishing trip, or card game, and you now know the extent of my life.

Some Recent Pictures

Images of the current state of our kitchen remodel
An MPEG walkthrough of our kitchen (2.7MB)
A collage of my boys
Angie and my trip to Mexico
Inside of garage before finishing (East View)
Inside of garage before finishing (West View)
Outside front view of house after siding garage and living room.
View of living room after replacing outside wall (that's the trestle table I built in the foreground).