Barbara Bibel is a reference-collection development librarian at the Oakland Public Library in California. She is also a medical librarian, certified as a Consumer Health Information Specialist by the Medical Library Association. When she is not staffing the reference desk and selecting books, she reviews for Booklist, Reference Books Bulletin, Library Journal, ARBA, the Jewish Book Council, and the Association of Jewish Libraries. She also serves as the book review editor for Consumer Connection, the newsletter of the consumer health section of the Medical Library Association and the Journal of Consumer Health. Outside of the library, she enjoys cooking, travel, reading , attending concerts and theatre, and spending quality time with her dog. Her grown daughter is a screenwriter who calls home when she has reference questions.
Christine Bulson retired in 2002 after over 30 years as an academic reference librarian and assistant director of Milne Library, SUNY Oneonta. She has reviewed for Reference Books Bulletin since 1988 and was chair of the Reference Books Bulletin Editorial Board 1991-1993. She received the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Librarianship in 1989. Her reviewing interests are dictionaries, atlases, classical music, opera and cooking. She also reviews cookbooks for Library Journal. Her motto is once a reference librarian, always asking questions and hopefully finding the answers!
Lindsay Harmon is a solo librarian at the American Academy of Art, a visual arts college in Chicago, where she fields a surprisingly wide variety of reference questions on any given day. Despite working at an art school, she has undergraduate degrees in English and journalism, and her reviewing interests reflect all of these things and more.
Carolyn M. Mulac is Division Chief, General Information Services at the Chicago Public Library. She has reviewed for Reference Books Bulletin since 1991 and chaired the Reference Books Bulletin Editorial Board from 2004-2007. Her reviewing interests include biography and the performing arts, and she has never turned down an assignment involving quotation books. She also reviews performing arts books for Library Journal and is a contributor to the 6th, 7th, and the upcoming 8th editions of Reference Sources for Small and Medium-Sized Libraries. In 2008 she received the Illinois Library Association’s Reference Services Award. When not writing reviews she enjoys theater, opera, ballet and life in Sweet Home Chicago.
Sue Polanka is Head of Reference and Instruction at Paul Laurence Dunbar Library, Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio and has been a past chair of the Reference Books Bulletin Editorial Board. She writes about e-books on her blog, No Shelf Required.
Admin Rebecca Vnuk is the Editor for Reference and Collection Management here at Booklist. She is also the author of 2 Reader’s Advisory nonfiction titles for Libraries Unlimited: Read On…Women’s Fiction, and Women’s Fiction Authors: A Research Guide; and the forthcoming Women’s Fiction Authors: A Guide to Reading Interests, in the Genreflecting Series.
