Lynn Yarmey (MS '11) has been profiled in Library Journal's "Librarians Abroad" series, which highlights professionals who either work outside libraries and archives or who hold somewhat less traditional positions in libraries and archives. Yarmey, who completed the GSLIS Specialization in Data Curation, currently works for the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, as the senior data curator for the NSF-funded Advanced Cooperative Arctic Data and Information Service (ACADIS) project:
[image1-right:resize-180w]The Data Curation specialization at the Univ. of Illinois Urbana Champaign Graduate School of Library and Information Science (GSLIS) was a great fit for me. The program offered strong theoretical underpinnings and brought my practical experience into a much broader context. The LEEP distance option meant I could keep working in the labs while learning about the theory, a perfect balance for my data work.
I love that I get to do a little bit of everything! I am involved with two Agile development teams, user interface and design work, refining dataflows, scoping and implementing metadata profile updates, data management education, defining new projects and products in support of Arctic scientists, and tying all of these together in presentations, papers, and proposals . . . My role is almost as diverse as the data. Every day I am bridging between so many different groups of fantastic people to promote understanding across the project horizontals, and then vertically mapping the detailed daily operations with the project vision. I am a jack-of-all-trades type of person much more than a deep specialist; my work allows me to use and celebrate that quality.
In 2010, Yarmey was selected by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) to receive the A. R. Zipf Fellowship in Information Management. She holds a bachelor's degree in geophysics from Boston College and has experience as a programmer and information manager.