About HP

Why ‘Hidden Peanuts’?

Honestly, the story and meaning has very little to do with this blog in its current form. I was hunting for an available URL one day, something that would have a unique search engine footprint and let me build a bit of a personal brand. A friend hid some peanuts in my car while that hunt was ongoing, and for some reason the phrase just popped into my head. Sorry, it’s not very exciting 🙂

A bit about me and what you’ll find on this site

I’m currently “Emerging Technologies Librarian” at UNC Chapel Hill. And I love my job! I get to serve in an advisory role to projects throughout campus involving new tech, plus spearhead some pretty interesting things myself. I spend a lot of time trying out new tech tools and trying to think of ways they can be used in a library or educational setting, and I provide a number of staff development opportunities to try and keep everyone else up to date. I’m lucky to be at an institution where I receive incredible support from my colleagues!

Some of my more particular areas of interest at the moment are eBooks, mobile devices, gaming in education, and location-based services. So, of course I end up writing about those things here more often than anything else. Every so often I throw in a video game or book review, when I stumble on something that pushes some particularly strong buttons for me (good or bad). I’m a nerd/geek at heart, and my hobbies & reading interests tend to reflect that. Lots of the 21st century still seems like magic (even if we don’t have our jetpacks and flying cars) and the impact of technology on our lives fascinates me.

Where I’ve been in the past:

I grew up near Rochester, NY (where I got my start in libraries shelving books in high school), earned my MLIS at the University of Pittsburgh, and held my first librarian job with the wonderful people at the University of Alabama Huntsville. Now I’m pretty well settled into North Carolina, and I plan on sticking around for the long haul.