Curriculum vitae : Paul F. Schaffner

Paul F. Schaffner

Curriculum Vitae

Digital Content & Collections (LIT)
316 Hatcher Graduate Library North
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MI 48109-1190

Office Phone: 734/647·1824
Mobile/Cell: 734/773·2481
E-mail: pfs@umich.edu

employment | education | service | publications | extracurriculars

EMPLOYMENT HISTORY (chronological)

(» = present positions)

1. Temporary jobs before and during grad school (ever the librarian)

Library-designer and cataloguer, American Board of Missions, Orangeburg, NY (1979-80).: Created a 3000-title professionally catalogued theological library from scratch.
Industrial materials cataloguer, Purchasing Computerization Project, Ideal Basic Industries, Denver, CO (1981-82).: Supervised a working group that rationalized and computerized the purchasing system of the country's second largest cement company.
Teaching Assistant, Program in Medieval Studies, Cornell University (1984-87).: Created, developed, and prepared courses, taught, tutored, etc.
Research Assistant, Special Collections, Olin Library, Cornell University (1987).: Researched and prepared rare-books exhibit on Martin Luther.
Research Assistant, Fiske Icelandic Collection, Olin Library, Cornell University (1988).: Served as consultant and digital type designer for multilingual publications; edited and prepared manuscripts for publication.

2. After grad school (the fledgling academic & lexicographer)

Assistant Professor of English (sabbatical replacement), Ithaca College, Ithaca, New York (1988-89).: Prepared and taught a four-course load (Medieval, Shakespeare, comp., etc.).
Lexicographer, Middle English Dictionary, University of Michigan. Successively Assistant- (1989-1993), Associate- (1993-1997), and Review- (Supervising) Editor (1997).: Analyzed corpora in several languages; performed primary research; wrote definitions and etymologies; composed dictionary entries; edited for elegance and concision and to conform to house style; selected illustrative quotations; instructed junior editors in procedures; revised the work of other staff lexicographers for publication--all under strict deadlines, in a genuinely collaborative environment.

3. Then and now with MLS in hand...

» Technical Services Librarian, Jackson (Community) College, Jackson, Michigan (September 1996-present)

Serve as the entire 'Tech Service' department of the library: including original and copy cataloguing, holdings maintenance, managing course reserves and archives, and occasional stints at Circ and Reference. Managed two platform migrations (Dynix to Horizon and Horizon to Symphony).

Production Coordinator, (rank: Assistant Librarian), Middle English Dictionary digitization and Compendium creation project, Univ. of Michigan Libraries. (Oct. 1997-Oct 1999)

Managed the retro-conversion of the MED from its print format to an online resource, as well as the ingest of new material emerging from the MED offices.

» Head of Text Creation Unit (exact job titles differed over time; ranks: Associate Librarian [1999-2003], Senior Associate Librarian [2004-present]), in units variously named and renamed: Digital Library Production Service, Digital Content & Collections, etc.), University of Michigan Libraries. In this role, I set standards, write specs, manage workflow, deal with vendors, supervise staff, etc. -- every detail -- associated with several small and two very large projects:

Smaller projects included:
- Corpus of Middle English. First batch of texts 1999-2000, second batch 2017. A collection of about 300 Middle English primary texts in the public domain, made available in accurate texts for cross-searching.
- University of Michigan Encyclopedic Survey. Full text and markup.
- American Verse. Full text of 19th-century American verse, proof-read, corrected, and encoded.
- Michigan 1924 Alumnae Survey. Defective full text re-edited for accuracy, marked up for searchability.
- Faculty CV harvesting. Intended to produce a publication list for all Michigan faculty.
- Knight's American Mechanical Dictionary. Full text, encoded to elaborate specs as befits a major reference work.
- Michigan maps. All place names and features recorded from six Michigan county atlases.
Two large projects together have set the world standard for the documentation of English.
- Text Creation Partnership (EEBO-, ECCO-, and Evans-TCP, 2000-present). Produced full-text transcriptions of about 73,000 early printed books, including most pre-1700 English imprints, about a third of unique pre-1800 American titles, and a sampling of 3,000 18th-century English books. A revolutionary resource for many historical, literary, and linguistic fields.
- Middle English Dictionary Revived. (2016-present, beginning with a 1.5-year NEH grant and continuing thereafter.) Now serving as Editor. A major effort to revise the MED (with tens of thousands of additions and corrections), place it on a new technical platform, and position it for a future as a living, dynamic resource.

EDUCATION (chronological)

B.A. Haverford College, 1979: English major (espec. early English, Greek, Latin, and Welsh).: Course-work, Bryn Mawr College, 1975-79; Graduate course-work, University of Penn., 1977-78.
M.A. Cambridge University, 1984: Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic (B.A. Cantab., 1981).: Specializations: palaeography, codicology, Latin, Celtic & Germanic languages
Ph.D. Cornell University, 1990: Medieval Studies (M.A. Cornell, 1986).: Specializations: English, French, Norse, and Welsh philology
M.I.L.S. University of Michigan, School of Information, August 1996.: Specializations: electronic document management; archives management; academic librarianship
Continuing education: Various, including workshops on Python and editing TEI ODDs at the Oxford Digital Humanities Summer School and at TEI Members' Meetings. in Lyon (France) and Victoria (Canada).

SERVICE and LESS FORMAL PRESENTATIONS (select)

1991	Digital font designer, Middle English Dictionary.
1992	Lecturer, session on ME exemplary literature, University of Michigan Medieval Research Colloquium
1999	Consultant on digital dictionary conversion, Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), Madison, Wisconsin.
1998-2000	Consultant on digital dictionary conversion, Scottish National Dictionary Association (SNDA), Edinburgh.
1999	Presenter and panelist, Colloquium on Digital Publishing Solutions, St. Edmund Hall, Oxford University, May 1999.
1999	Presenter, "Middle English Resources on line: Performance, Prospects, and Desiderata," International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, July 1999.
2000	Panelist, "Glossarial Databases of Middle English: Past, Present Future," Thirty-fifth International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, May 2000.
2000	Presenter, "Electronic Publishing: the Production Perspective," Thirty-fifth International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, May 2000.
2000	Participant, Workshop on encoding standards for electronic theses and dissertations, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, May 2000.
2000-2001	Consultant on digital text conversion, Bywgraffiadur project, Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru (National Library of Wales), Aberystwyth, 2000-01, especially September 2000.
2001	Presenter, "The Corpus of Middle English and the Michigan way," biennial conference of the Dictionary Society of North America, Ann Arbor, Michigan, May 2001.
2007	Presenter, "Text, Tools, and Typists," TEI Members' Meeting, University of Maryland, College Park, November 2007
2009	Speaker, "Speed Dating, or what Paleo(typo)graphy Means to Me," roundtable in honor of Professor James J. John, 44th Annual Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 2009.
2009	Participant, closing panel on Trends in the TEI Community, TEI Members' Meeting, Ann Arbor Michigan, November 2009.
2010-14	Co-convener, five workshops designed to introduce XML-based TEI encoding to library staff, library-school students, and grad students in comparative literature and English.
2012	Member of the advisory board ABBOT project, University of Nebraska Lincoln.
2012	Member of the planning committee Folger Digital Folio project (of Renaissance drama), Folger Shakespeare Library.
2008-2009, 2012-13, and 2014-2015	Elected member, TEI-C Technical Council (three 2-year terms). Hosted the Council in Ann Arbor, May 2015.
2014	Invited reviewer, National Endowment for the Humanities, Washington DC.
2014-2016	Essay-prize reviewer, Renaissance Society of America.
2015	Visiting faculty, Folger summer institute "Early Modern Digital Agendas 2015" (#EMDA2015).
2017	Invited participant, workshop on processing TCP texts as a species of 'big data' corpus, Rice University, Houston.
2019-22	Member of the advisory board, Lexicons of Early Modern English project (LEME), University of Toronto.
2019	Blogger, Michigan Library Tech Talk, October 2019 "Drill-motors, Lexicography, and the Middle English Dictionary."
2021-24	Member of the Publications Committee, Dictionary Society of North America.
2022-present	Pre-publication reviewer, Oxford English Dictionary.
various	Presenter, various inhouse events, including reports to the TCP Advisory Board (2004, 2006) and Selection Committee (2003); a talk on management and character-encoding issues by invitation of Oxford Computing Services (OUCS, Sept 2004); on text-mining the TCP corpus ("Ctrl-F" Text Mining Workshop, Palmer Commons, Feb 2016); on hints for travel in the UK (Travel panel, Hatcher Gallery, Feb 2016); on the revival of the MED (Sharefest, June 2019; revised for LIT Collections update later that month); on the TCP and TCU as engaged in binge reading (Sharefest, May 2019); on the guesswork involved in writing dictionary entries (Sharefest, July 2020); on managing soft funding (RCPC roundtable, March 2021); on volunteer service experiences ('Kiwanis for Librarians' at Volunteerfest, March 2021); on cultivating a community of MED contributors (Sharefest, March 2022); and doubtless others.

PAPERS, TALKS, & PUBLICATIONS

"Britain's iudices," in Gildas: New Approaches. Ed. David Dumville and Michael Lapidge. Woodbridge: Boydell, 1984. 151-55.
"Customized Screen and Laser printer Fonts," Old English Newsletter 22 (1989): 25-8.
The Ethics of Body and Soul in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," dissertation, 1990.
Director: Thomas D. Hill; Committee members: +Robert E. Kaske, Wayne Harbert, Arthur Groos.
Review of Penelope D. Johnson, Equal in Monastic Profession: Religious Women in Medieval France, in Envoi: A Review Journal of Medieval Literature 3.2 (Autumn 1992): 418-425.
Review of Jan M. Ziolkowski, Talking Animals: Medieval Latin Beast Poetry, 750-1150, in Bryn Mawr Medieval Review 94.4.10 (1994): 32kB file.
"The Ethics of the Body in Sidrak and Bokkus." Paper given at the twenty-ninth International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, 1994.
Review of Larry D. Benson, A Glossarial Concordance to the Riverside Chaucer, in Chaucer Yearbook 3 (1996): 151-56.
"Exempla and the Art of Persuasion." Paper given at the International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, July 1995.
"The Errant Morsel of Solomon and Saturn II: Liturgy, Lore, and Lexicon," Mediaeval Studies 57 (1995): 223-57.
"Tagging the Silences: Retrospective Encoding of the Middle English Dictionary," paper given at the thirty-first International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, May 1996.
"Towards an Interlingual Lexicon." Paper given at the Conference on Multilingualism in Late Medieval Britain, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, September 1997.
Middle English Dictionary. Approx. a thousand entries appearing in fascicle T7 (1996) et seq. (as well as the 500+ new entries created during the revision project, 2016-)
Lyfe of Soule, ed. with transl. and introd. in: Cultures of Piety: Middle English Devotional Literature in Translation (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1999).
"A Brief History of man and woman." Paper given at the Third International Conference on Middle English, University College, Dublin, July 1999.
"Digitising the Middle English Dictionary: Ten Lessons in Practicality." Paper given at the Conference on Digital Resources for the Humanities (DRH'99), King's College, London, September 1999.
"The Lyfe of Soule in Context." Paper given at the thirty-fifth International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, May 2000.
"Scaling Mt. EEBO: Creating a Production Process for Large-scale Text Conversion." Paper given at the 2000 conference on Digital Resources for the Humanities (DRH'2000), University of Sheffield, September 2000.
"Gains and Losses in the Mass Production of Electronic Texts for Scholars." Paper given at the thirty-seventh International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, May 2002.
"Reading without Understanding: an Elusive and Dubious Goal of Text Conversion." Paper given at the annual conference of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing (SHARP), Institute of English Studies, University of London, July 2002.
"'Keying what you see' in Early English Printed Books." Paper given at the 2002 conference on Digital Resources for the Humanities (DRH 2002), University of Edinburgh, September 2002.
"Three Easy Pieces: A Modular Approach to Building Digital Libraries." Paper given at the 2003 conference on Digital Resources for the Humanities (DRH 2003), University of Gloucestershire, Park Campus, Cheltenham, September 2003.
"Transcription as Translation: Complicated Answers to Simple Questions about the Production of Textual Surrogates." Paper given at the 2004 conference on Digital Resources for the Humanities (DRH 2004), University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, September 2004.
"DOST and MED and the Virtues of Sibling Rivalry," in Perspectives on the Older Scottish Tongue, ed. Christian Kay. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005. Pp. 119-31.
"Transcription as Treason." Paper given at the fortieth International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, May 2005.
"What can you do with 40,000 early English (and Welsh) books: or TCP for psammophiles." Paper given at the 2009 conference on Digital Resources for the Humanities and Arts (DRHA 2009), Queen's University Belfast, September 2009.
Review of Character Books of the English Renaissance: a Selection, ed. Peter Groves and Geoffrey Hiller, in Sixteenth Century Journal, 41:4 (Winter 2010), 1245-1246.
Review of The Complete Works of Gerrard Winstanley, edited by Thomas N. Corns, Ann Hughes, and David Loewenstein (2 vols., Oxford University Press, 2009) in Sixteenth Century Journal 42:2 (Summer 2011), pp. 584-585.
Presenter, plenary panel on "The Future of TCP", joint TEI Members' Meeting and Chicago Digital Humanities Colloqium, Northwestern University, October 2014.
Representative of MEC and TCP at the 'Corpora Colloquium' ("Big Data and Medieval Studies:the Present and Future of Medieval Text Archives"),Trinity College Dublin. July 2017.
"Meta-munging with Hammer and File." Talk on the sophisticated use of simple tools given at a 'popup' conference on batch editing sponsored by the Cataloging & Metadata Interest Group of the Michigan Academic Library Association (MiALA), Lansing Michigan, December 2018. Abridged version published as one of the University of Michigan 'Library Tech Talk' blogs, Feb 2019.
"Language in Limbo," paper presented by invitation at the Centre for Mediaeval Studies, University of Toronto, January 2019.
"The 'New' Middle English Dictionary: Resurrection or Zombie Apocalypse?" Paper given at the biennial meeting of the Dictionary Society of North America, Bloomington. May 2019. Revised and less colorful version published by the Society as "The Middle English Dictionary Revenant," Dictionaries 40:2 (2019), pp. 201-219.
"Quidels and crotels and 'glosing tails': attractions and distractions of ME lexicography." Talk given by invitation to the Oxford Medieval English Research Seminar [remotely], May 2021.
"The Limits of Lexicography." Talk given at the International Conference on Historical Lexicography and Lexicology (ICHLL 14). Westminster University, London. June 2024.

EXTRACURRICULARS

Volunteer, Ann Arbor Kiwanis Thrift Sale, 2014-present. Since 2017, team lead for the hardware and tools section. Honored as a '2017-18 Volunteer of the Year.': To be regarded as applied librarianship in a retail setting: researching, refurbishing, organizing, labeling, and shelving things (mostly tools and hardware) with a view toward customer needs and expectations. Fielding reference questions, providing advice, and enjoying customer interaction.
Volunteer, Saline Methodist mission construction team, 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023, 2024.: Drywall work, carpentry, electrical, painting, as needed. Supplier of many personal tools to projects.
Area Director, Area "C", Midwest Tool Collectors' Association, 2019-21.: Organize meetings, lunches, and swap meets for members in Michigan, Ohio, and Ontario (till interrupted by Covid).