I Need to Know: How to Find & Learn Anything / The Basics (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781523662647)

Although Mark S. Thompson was born into a family of librarians (his mother, brother, and uncle all became library directors in public or academic libraries), his path took a decidedly different turn. As a kind of George Plimpton of research and learning, Mr. Thompson used his finding and learning skills to navigate many different arenas. They include becoming a professional French hornist and performing in opera, musical, chamber, and orchestral ensembles. During his early professional library years, he became one of the first to be trained in the OCLC System (now the premier shared online catalog in the world), and cataloged hundreds of sound recordings for the Ohio State University collections. In the corporate world, he became skilled in database structures and created AT&T Marketing Center's first online index to telemarketing case studies. At Bell Communications Research, he used the precursor to the Internet to share research files across major research institutions in the United States. He lead efforts at current awareness such as the BIC Center News that informed the President of Hoffmann La Roche USA on critical product news. Along the way, Mr. Thompson obtained market research expertise and the first focus groups on the new Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition (WSJ Online). Mr. Thompson has responded to the demand for knowledge solutions among a host of institutions and companies. These have included the Cleveland Institute of Art, Morristown and Township Free Public Library (NJ), Fairleigh Dickinson University (NJ), and Bergen Community College (NJ). Among his corporate clients were Hoffmann La Roche, AT&T, Bell Communications Research, Lucent, Motorola, and Dow Jones. Mr. Thompson has been called on to investigate, research, write, report, and teach many different topics. His experiences are now captured in writings on information literacy and learning. He believes that the challenges of finding information are even more critical today. The information game is never ending, always fascinating, and an intellectual challenge of the greatest magnitude.