About
My name is John Keogh and I describe myself as a “Theatre Techie Actor Nerd Office Worker Soon-to-be-Librarian Extraordinaire”. I’m 35 years old and this is my sixth semester in the GSLIS program. I’m planning on finishing in December 2010. My focus is on archives and special collections, and I also have an obsession with digital content – both converted and born-digital – along with the challenges we face in utilizing and preserving this material. Library 2.0 technologies are essential to any successful solution.
Librarianship and archival work will by my third(ish) career; I originally came to Chicago to attend college and be an actor. During school, I discovered that technical work (lighting, set construction, show run crews, etc.) paid better and tech jobs were a lot easier to get than acting gigs. So theatre tech is how I made my living for over 12 years. When I got tired of working job-to-job with no security or benefits, I started working in various offices in various capacities, and I’ve been a desk jockey for the past five years or so.
On July 16, 2009, I got married.
I grew up in Fargo, ND, to parents who were both historians. My father was a college professor in the Education Dept. of the local university. I grew up surrounded by books and spent a lot of time playing in the university library. I’m a bibliophile and I believe that the media we produce in all formats is the ultimate record of who we are – as people, as a culture, as a society, as a species. Acting as a caretaker of this record is greatest work I can conceive of – I’m just surprised it took me this long to figure out that I can actually make a living at it!
JohnK