The Crew

Cassidy Cataloguing's professional staff have taught at four New York area Library and Information Science schools, and have lectured extensively on the successful application of national bibliographic standards for the private and special library setting.

The People Behind the Business

Joni and MichaelJoni Cassidy, President and Chief Executive Officer

Michael Cassidy, Vice President and Chief Financial Officer

Joni and Michael Cassidy co-manage Cassidy Cataloguing. She's our Rainmaker and the Catalogue Librarian who designs and oversees the cataloging projects. He's the Computer Guy who keeps the staff online, tends to the web-hosted OPACs, designs the data-manipulation and cleanup projects, and battles hackers everyday. Together they juggle finances, personnel management, and client satisfaction.

In their leisure time they relax in the company of K-9 ambassadors Darla Jane and Rocker (beautiful Bernese Mountain Dogs) in the western mountains of New Jersey.

RobertaRoberta Bertrand, JD, MLIS, Chief Operating Officer

By the time I graduated from college, I had not been swept off to Oz by a Kansas twister nor had I received an invitation to Hogwarts. Disappointed but undaunted, I went off to earn my J.D. at Cornell Law School instead. After more than a decade of litigation practice and subsequent partnership, I gave up big firm life in favor of a new career providing consulting and grant writing services for nonprofit organizations, combined with raising my two daughters. My growing interest in information technologies led me to pursue a Masters in Library Science at L.I.U., where I had the great fortune to meet Professor Joni Cassidy. Walking into her classroom, I found my yellow brick road! I have been working for Cassidy Cataloguing on a part time basis since 2005, while also holding a faculty position in an academic library. At Cassidy, I focused initially on law-related projects including CassidyCat's Digital Law Library and Hein's World Trials Library. I was thrilled when Joni and Michael asked me to come on board full time as Cassidy Cataloguing's Chief Operating Officer. I love being able to use my varied skills and experience in such an exciting and innovative atmosphere: with all the wonderful characters and intriguing projects, it's sort of like being in Oz!

PaulaPaula Perry, Senior Metadata Quality Control Supervisor

BA, University of Delaware

MS(LS), Simmons College

Paula takes a break to share her passion for Sherlock Holmes and mystery fiction with company mascot Darla Jane Cassidy. She's led the pack of catalogers at Cassidy since 1989 after working for an impressive list of libraries including the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, the American Museum of Natural History, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and Harvard University.

Paula's MS(LS) is from Simmons College and she is our Rare Book Cataloger, having trained at Columbia's Rare Book School.

Previous positions: Indexer, Tozzer Library of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University; Research Librarian, Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research; Reference Services Librarian, American Museum of Natural History; Cataloger, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY; Technical Services Librarian, Davis Polk & Wardwell.

NatalieNatalie Bejarano, Marketing Director and Projects Coordinator

After writing my first book at three years old (on the controversial topic of a singing bowl of cereal) I knew that I had to work with books or libraries in some capacity. I found myself at Cassidy Cataloguing Services in September 2006 and have been here ever since. The position I currently hold, Director of Marketing and Project Coordinator, is quite diverse and grants me the opportunity to find creative ways to streamline processes and also combines my love of books and learning with my other love, technology. Working at Cassidy Cataloguing has given me a real opportunity to market for a company that relies on its customers' opinions and feedback to frame future projects. It has also opened a door to a side of information science that I likely would have never realized existed!

DonnaDonna M. Rosinski-Kauz, Senior Metadata Specialist and Software Training Specialist

My interest in organizing and classifying information officially reared its head when I was 10, and created a subject index of my family's National Geographic collection. Little did I know I was playing with destiny. After studying anthropology and psychology and realizing that I really did not want to work in sweltering, undeveloped areas or with people whose problems might not be solvable, I decided to study librarianship. A long, interesting path through law libraries, automation vendors, and an academic law library led me to Cassidy Cataloguing Services. I thank my lucky star frequently, as my current position is the most interesting job I have ever had.

QingQing Fan, Senior Metadata Specialist

When I was young my parents often brought me to visit different libraries. There I saw the many librarians who worked diligently, connecting people with books. They really inspired me to pursue my career as a librarian when I grew up.

I obtained my MLIS degree from Nanjing University in China. I began my professional career at the Anhui University library and worked there focusing on cataloguing for ten years before I immigrated to the United States. Recently the state of New Jersey evaluated my professional credentials from China and granted me the New Jersey Professional Librarian Certification.

I joined Cassidy Cataloguing in early 2008. I feel so proud to be part of the professional staff of the company and really love working here with everyone.

NancyNancy Sheffield, Metadata Specialist

BA, Beloit College

MLS, Rutgers University

I was fortunate to get a taste of the world of research libraries as an undergraduate when I spent a semester as a student fellow at the Newberry Library. I also worked there part-time and my job included verifying name authority entries in the NUC and filing catalog cards; the rest, as they say, is history. To fulfill Beloit's field term requirement I spent six months working at a college library in Stirling, Scotland and then studied in London for a semester before returning to the states to complete my BA. I received my MLS in 1978 and spent over 15 years as a cataloger for both academic and public libraries. I first worked for Cassidy Cataloguing from 1995-2001, the last year telecommuting from Florida. Since 2001 I have been Head of Technical Services for a public library in the Tampa Bay area and returned to Cassidy part-time in early 2008.

EdEd Graham, Customer Success Supervisor for Onsite Projects & Copyright Issues Specialist

Although librarianship is a new career path for me I like to think I am a librarian at heart. I love knowledge for its own sake, and I live to keep things organized. And in librarianship you get to organize knowledge. How cool is that?

Prior to becoming a librarian I taught English to children in Seoul, Korea. Although it was quite gratifying, it was there that I realized that what I really wanted to do was to work in a library.

Upon returning to the United States in 2005 to pursue my MLS I had the good fortune to have Joni Cassidy as one of my professors, and even better fortune to eventually be hired by her. Working for Cassidy Cataloguing is both challenging and rewarding, and I consider myself lucky to be surrounded by such experienced, knowledgeable and friendly co-workers.

MeganMegan Babbitt, Facilities Manager

Megan Babbitt, Cassidy Cataloguing's very own “horse whisperer”, came to work as our Girl Friday even before she bought her first horse. Seems like Megan is busy all the time, between her Equine Management studies, time she spends with horse number three Blue, working at the barn to cover some of Blue's stable fees, working at the tack shop to see all the cool new cowgirl stuff before it hits the racks, and here at Cassidy doing a little of everything to keep things flowing smoothly.

Susan Summers, Customer Success Supervisor for Electronic Products

Back in the Fall of 1993 I was very active in the profession of theatrical lighting design, touring extensively with a couple of different dance companies and lighting an opera here and there. One day a close friend asked me if I'd like to do some temp work with the firm where she worked. It had been a slow summer for me, so I said yes. My first temp assignment was to assist in the shifting and rearranging of a large law firm library where Cassidy Cataloguing had just completed a retrospective conversion.

The whole experience turned out to be a good fit, as they say. Pretty soon I was being called on to do other database-related assignments. There were more shifts of more re-classed libraries, and more database work. Before I knew what was happening I was personally re-classed, becoming a full-time employee in the summer of 1996. The rest is history.

Darla & RockerDarla Jane and Rockstar "Rocker" Cassidy, Dueling Company Mascots

Darla Jane and Rockstar ("Rocker" to his friends) are the 3rd and 4th canine ambassadors Cassidy Cataloguing has had. Rocker and Darla are half-brother and sister, and while they're not always fond of each other, they do love The Staff, The Office, The FedEx and UPS Guys, The Men Who Deliver Lunch, and just about everything else about coming to work. As K-9 ambassadors, they monitor all activity originating "at the door" and generally strive to create a cheerful atmosphere for their co-workers.

GusGus Cassidy, Original Cassidy Cataloguing Mascot

Cassidy Cataloguing's first Company Mascot was Gus the Wonder Dog (1998-2003). Because Gus was so smart, he held voting stock in the company. For a more intimate portrait of Gus and Chance (below), click here for Michael's postings "Dogtales."

ChanceChance Cassidy, Second Canine Ambassador to Cassidy Cataloguing

Few animal lovers are lucky enough to raise a "special needs" dog. But, we had that opportunity with Gus' successor and Darla's uncle, Chance (1999-2007). Chance came to work on rare occasions, as he found the hustle-bustle of greater downtown Harrison, NJ too stressful. For a more intimate portrait of Gus and Chance, click here for Michael's postings "Dogtales."

Our Launch Pad

My Favorite Part of the Site

By Joni Cassidy

From 2003 to the present, I've had the opportunity to teach Cataloguing (or Introduction to Technical Services) to graduate library and information science students. I've taught at Long Island University's Westchester Campus and C.W. Post Campus, Queens College of CUNY in Flushing, N.Y., Kean University in Union, N.J., and St. John's University in Manhattan.

From the classroom, I've been able to seduce several MLS-candidates over to “The Dark Side” to become full-time technical services librarians and catalogers. Working for Cassidy Cataloguing, others have discovered their true calling to be librarianship, having not known that when they first came on staff.

While lots of people have come and gone from the Cassidy staff, this group is special because in some way we influenced their career path into cataloguing, technical services and information science. There is no better sense of “giving back to the profession” than to recruit and train our own next generation!

Melissa Resnick

Melissa was a beginning M.L.S. student enrolled in the "Intro to Technical Services" course I was teaching at Queens College when we met. The first night of class, I got her guide-dog "Alta" in trouble because I kept making eye-contact with her thus distracting her from her responsibility of watching over Melissa. It didn't take long to notice that Melissa excelled at organization and classification. I was so happy to provide a Letter of Recommendation for her when she applied for a post-M.L.S. Associate Fellowship at the National Library of Medicine.

After completing the two year Associate Fellowship, Melissa was selected to receive a Research Fellowship in the NLM's Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications, where she is currently developing medical ontologies. Below is the abstract of her research:

An Ontology for Public Health to Support Enhanced Information Retrieval Melissa P. Resnick, M.L.S., Anna M. Ripple, M.L.S., Ione Auston, M.L.S., Thomas C.Rindflesch, Ph.D. National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD 20894
ABSTRACT
Semantic MEDLINE [1] is an advanced information management technology that helps
manage the results of PubMed searches using natural language processing, automatic
summarization, and visualization. The application depends on the Unified Medical Language
System (UMLS), which is largely limited to clinical information. We are constructing an ontology
for public health to allow Semantic MEDLINE to be used in that domain.
The three important themes of public health are: Assessment, Development, and Assurance.
Assessment monitors the health of communities to identify problems and priorities. Development
implements programs to solve these problems, and Assurance determines whether implemented programs are effective.
These core themes guide research on extending the UMLS to public health.
See Melissa's article in our May 2010 Cassidy Courier Newsletter

Zoraida Michaud

Zoraida and her best friend Karen Valinoti vie for the title of “First Employee” due to a tax technicality. They worked onsite with me in the early years building Cassidy Cataloguing. That was way before Zoraida even knew she wanted to be a librarian.

Mark Sandford

Mark was my student in library school. He started out in the back of the class, but moved up week 2 when he discovered he could make me laugh. He interned at Cassidy Cataloguing. Then he taught with me at Kean University. That led to appointments at Queens College library school and OCLC Eastern. I wouldn't want to do any of those projects without him!

See Mark's article in our August 2010 Cassidy Courier Newsletter

Tina A. Kiernan

Interning at Cassidy Cataloguing was a great experience. The opportunity to work with a wonderfully talented staff and gain real experience in the field of cataloging was excellent! I am grateful for the opportunity I had to learn and grow as a Librarian. — Tina

Jill Yael Milhorat

Jill came into my class not knowing she was a Cataloger. But she learned quickly, winning both an AALL conference scholarship and a grant to attend a cataloging workshop the same year!

Sharon Rork

Working at Cassidy Cataloging introduced me to a field of study that would segue perfectly from my previous career in show business. The skills in technical processing and client services I learned while working for the Cassidys have stuck far better than some library school classes. — Sharon

Evelyn Rouse

Evelyn was here full-time for 13 years. No one remembers how long she was part-time before that; we all grew up together.

Eva B. Harris

I can attest to the fact that YOU (Joni) taught me everything I know about law cataloging, and Paula made sure I did it right! — Eva

Professional Affiliations