Consulting
After a long career in the automation industry, I have been working for the past ten years as a consultant to the information industry. In this capacity, I have undertaken assignments that have called on my research skills, analytical abilities, and extensive knowledge of non-Roman languages and character sets.
Publishing
I have been the Production Manager for Traditional Studies Press, a not-for-profit organization, for 20 years on a part-time basis. The titles produced are visible at www.traditionalstudiespress.com and include both regular printed books and audio recordings in CD format. My duties with Traditional Studies Press included the supervision of editorial work and translation, research, layout and design, and liaison with printers.
I have a thorough familiarity with standard Microsoft Office tools (on both Mac and PC platforms), and have supervised layout work in Quark and InDesign.
Font creation and development
I am an acknowledged expert on the automation of character sets, especially Unicode. From 1984 to 1990, I created a system using a unified Chinese, Japanese and Korean character set of 50,000 characters in a single, expandable collating sequence. A similar system, now called Unicode, is in wide use.
I have been a senior team member on a number of projects that required the creation of new fonts. This included several new, Unicode-based fonts created to improve the automated processing of Inuktitut data for Nunavut. I was instrumental in the design of a font called NunacomU created by Multilingual E-Data Solutions. I was the advisor on the creation of a number of other fonts for Inuktitut as well as the creation of syllabic fonts for Cree. In the Russian publishing project for Traditional Studies Press, I commissioned a small caps font for Cyrillic from Tiro Typeworks. This font required pre-revolutionary Cyrillic characters. In the 1970s, I worked with the Xerox Corporation on the creation of what were, at the time, revolutionary new multilingual fonts for use in the library community’s automation projects.
Language skills
English: Mother tongue and a BA in English.
French: Fluent in speaking, reading and writing.
Other: Knowledgeable about the computer processing requirements for Chinese, Japanese & Korean, having designed software for these languages. Rudimentary conversational and reading knowledge of Mandarin Chinese. Thorough familiarity with the Cyrillic script and with Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics.
Translation skills
Translator (from French to English) of four full-length books. A range of subject matter, some of it very technical.
Writing skills
I am regularly required to produce written reports and other documentation. Early in my career, I was a technical writer for several years. I am a contributor to professional magazines such as Multilingual Computing (www.multilingual.com). As a hobby, I sometimes write haiku poetry; some of my poems have been translated into a number of other languages and have been widely published.
Selected Consulting Assignments
Knowledge Management and Metadata (2007)
An 8-week project with the xml content management firm SiberLogic in March and April of 2007 has given me a good grounding in recent emerging standards such as Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA), Resource Description Format (RDF), and Web Ontology Language (OWL).
Consulting contracts for the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
1. Revision of Character Set Documentation (2007)
This assignment required the redrafting of the MARC (Machine Readable Cataloging) documentation for character set handling. The revision was necessitated by the acceptance of the full Unicode character set as an alternative to the original character set used in MARC records – a character set that dated back to 1968.
2. Unicode Study (2004-2005)
This study was commissioned by the Library of Congress to assess the impact on the library automation industry of the possibility of moving from the encoding system used by the library sector since 1968 (formerly called the ALA character set and now called MARC21) to the Unicode standard. I carried out this study in consultation with the Library of Congress and major industry players such as Harvard, OCLC and RLIN.
Trylus Computing (1987-2007)
Trylus Computing is the name under which I operate as a private consultant. In this capacity, I have done work for the University of Toronto Library as well as a number of other libraries and institutions such as the Library of Congress and the Japan Foundation.
Multilingual E-Data Solutions (Partner) (1998-2007)
- Multilingual E-Data Solutions (Multedata) was founded in 1998 to provide consulting services to the Canadian arctic territory of Nunavut, which was created in 1999. These services have centered around the computerized support for “Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics,” a set of characters used in the territory for writing the Inuktitut language.
- One important project has been the creation of a web-based collaborative dictionary called “Asuilaak: the Inuktitut Living Dictionary” (www.livingdictionary.com). This trilingual dictionary has been batch loaded with data scanned from printed sources, converted to text, and machine-analyzed into component elements. The original concept, the overall design and the data processing were the responsibility of Multedata; programming was carried out by the Ottawa firm, Macadamian Technologies.
- Multedata created MS Word and Excel macros for conversion between non-standard Inuktitut fonts and Unicode and between Roman and Syllabic Inuktitut writing systems. The specifications for this development were my responsibility.
- Multedata has done the machine processing on the syllabic sections of the NorthwestTel (www.northwestel.ca) phone book for Nunavut for the last 6 years. This work has involved the creation of sorting routines for syllabic characters – a complex process that had not been attempted before.
- A 2005 project for the Avataq Cultural Institute in Montreal involved the upgrading of a French/Inuktitut dictionary to modern orthographic standards. This process required the semi-automated analysis of the data into separate French, Inuktitut and Latin text strings.
Digitization (1999)
Project coordination for a library digitization project involving the University of Toronto, ISM Library Information Systems and Maruzen Bookstore in Japan. (Sales of replicated books and storage of digital images.) The project was called “Back in Print.”
Employment
Utlas (1977-2006)
Utlas is the name of the Canadian “bibliographic utility.” This company began as a division of the University of Toronto Library and was sold to private enterprise in 1983. It was known for a time under the name ISM/LIS and currently is known as A-G Canada (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Auto-Graphics of Pomona, California).
Education:
BA from the University of Toronto and a library science degree from the University of British Columbia.
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