Joe Barker

Until June 2007, Joe worked full time as a reference and instruction librarian at the University of California, Berkeley, in the Doe library and the Moffitt undergraduate library. He also maintained an online web searching tutorial which remains one of the most heavily used resources for finding and evaluating information on the web.

Joe Barker has been teaching web searching for Infopeople, especially in connection with answering reference questions, since 2000 on topics such as PowerSearch, State of the Art Web Searching, Extreme Googling, Making the Most of the Post-Google Web, and Web 2.0: Searching Innovations.

Joe Barker has a unique awareness of what library staff and librarians need to know to step into the post-Google future that now includes the world of blogs and the convenience of RSS feeds. His newest class captures ways to explore, use, and find quality information in these and other 2.0 spaces, while it tracks new trends in web searching.

Joe has an MLIS from Berkeley and a PhD in French Lit from Emory University. He is a third generation California native who grew up in the foothills in between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe.