About Jan Fransen

Maybe the better question to answer is, "Why do you need to know me?"

If you're an undergraduate or graduate student or a faculty member in Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Computer Science & Engineering, or History of Science & Technology, then I'm your librarian.

I can help you by:

• Answering reference questions. Can't track down a citation? Want to make sure you found all the research that's been done on your thesis topic? Contact me. I can work with you via email, or meet with you at the library or your office to help you find what you need.
• Selecting the books, conference proceedings, and journals you need to do your work. Contact me if you have specific titles in mind.
• Leading workshops tailored to your research group's needs. We offer regularly scheduled workshops at Walter Library and other campus libraries, and I'd be glad to customize any of them for your group.
  Note that although many of our workshops are about library tools and resources, we do go beyond the library's walls with classes such as Google for Researchers and Web Tools for Working Collaboratively.
• Developing Web pages of library resources geared specifically for the courses you're teaching. I can also come into your class to teach your students how to use those resources effectively.
• Helping you add your works, whether published in a journal or written as a student, to the University Digital Conservancy (UDC). The UDC offers long-term archiving, a persistent URL you can share with your colleagues or post to your Web site, and indexing by Google and other search engines.

I joined the University as a librarian in May 2008, but my ties to the U go back a lot farther. I graduated from the U in 1986 with a BA in Speech-Communication (now the Communication Studies department) and a BS in Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics.

After graduation, I joined my husband (Lee Graba, BS AEM 1983) in Los Angeles and worked as a Systems Analyst for Hughes Aircraft. PCs were just making a place for themselves in the corporate world, and my job was to create PC-based database applications. Within a couple of years, I was building applications for clients all around Southern California as a consultant. I continued that business when we moved back to Minnesota, and began teaching other people how to do what I did by leading training classes, filming videos, and writing articles.

I love helping people use technology to do their jobs better, but after 20 years I needed something more than just figuring out the "next big thing," learning it inside-out, and teaching it. I found something more in library school. I attended College of St. Catherine, earning my Masters in Library and Information Science a couple of days before I started work here.

I still do some programming as a part of my job, as well as designing and co-leading workshops. As the liaison to Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics and Civil Engineering, it's my job to learn about the teaching and research of those departments. You'll probably see me out and about at graduate seminars and open houses. Please say hello and help the Libraries help you by telling me about your work.

Using Twitter? I tweet primarily about topics that might interest other librarians, but you can follow me at twitter.com/umjanlib

For library information aimed at your department, check out my blogs:

• News from the AEM Librarian
• News from the Electrical & Computer Engineering Librarian
• News from the Computer Science & Engineering Librarian
• News from the History of Science, Technology & Medicine Librarian

I update every couple of weeks, typically about upcoming workshops, new books and journals, and questions for you about what you'd like to see at the library. Subscribe to the RSS feed so you don't miss something!