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JPEG of Virginia Tucker

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Telephone:
  1-360-747-7007

Teaching & Professional Interests

  • Database and Other Retrieval Systems
  • Information Retrieval Theory and Practice
  • Law Libraries
  • Music

Research Interests

  • Database and Other Retrieval Systems
  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Information Architecture
  • Information Retrieval Theory and Practice
  • Law Libraries
  • Music
  • Organization of Information

Virginia Tucker

Lecturer

Virginia Tucker teaches full-time for SLIS and works part-time as a public law librarian. She is a PhD candidate through the Queensland Gateway program. Her career in information services began as head librarian at the Stanford University Physics Library. She was recruited by Dialog/Thomson (now ProQuest) to their sci-tech client services and training group and eventually was promoted to manage client training programs for the company worldwide. Her intense engagement with students and other instructors during that time gave her a deep understanding of how searchers perceive (and misperceive) database structure, search protocols and concepts, and techniques for searching efficiently and cost-effectively.

She has developed and written many teaching guides, multimedia tutorials, and self-study user guides. After years spent working directly with clients, Virginia moved behind the scenes to be an information architect for commercial web-based search products. Her key professional passion is teaching and researching how it is that people learn to search for and find information. Virginia was awarded the SLIS Outstanding Lecturer Award in 2011.

Watch Virginia Tucker's faculty introduction video

Courses Taught

Education

  • PhD Candidate, Information Technology, Queensland University-SJSU Gateway program
  • Paralegal Certificate, Whatcom Community College (2005)
  • Masters, Library & Information Science, University of California at Berkeley (1978)
  • BA, Music composition, minor concentration in Physics, Stanford University (1976)

Academic & Professional Experience

  • Lecturer, School of Library and Information Science, San José State University (2004-)
  • Head Law Librarian, Whatcom County Law Library, Bellingham, WA (2005-)
  • Product Architect, Dialog/Thomson (1997-2003)
  • Information Industry Consultant (1991-1996)
  • Manager, Client Training, Knight-Ridder Information (1982-1990)
  • Head Librarian, Physics Library, Stanford University (1978-1982)

Selected Publications  (last five years only)

  • Tucker, V. and Lampson, M. (2010). Finding the Answers to Legal Questions. New York: Neal-Schuman.

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