Draft:Donald A. Barclay
Donald A. Barclay | |
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| Born | July 14, 1958 Alexandria, Louisiana, U.S. |
| Alma mater | |
Donald A. Barclay is a retired academic librarian, literary scholar, and author of articles, book chapters, and books on the literature of the American West, children's literature, library services, and the use and misuse of information.[1] As an academic librarian, he played in instrumental role in founding the library for the University of California, Merced and spent four years as the head of the library there.[2]
Early Life and Education[edit]
Barclay was born at England Air Force Base, Louisiana. At that time, his father, Louis H. Barclay, was a United States Air Force Chief Master Sergeant. His mother Mary S. Barclay (née Ingrassia) was a homemaker. During World War II, his father had served as a first sergeant in the United States 32nd Infantry Division, while his mother served in the United States Women’s Army Corps. In 1962, the family transferred to MacDill Air Force Base, Florida. In November 1966, after his father returned from a year in Vietnam, the family transferred to Hamilton Air Force Base, California.
Upon his father’s retirement from the Air Force in August 1969, the family moved to Boise, Idaho where Barclay attended sixth through twelfth grades. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from Boise State University in 1981 and a Master of Arts in English from the University of California, Berkeley in 1985. In 1990, he earned a Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) from the University of California, Berkeley.
Career[edit]
From 1976 through 1986, Barclay worked as a seasonal employee of the United States Forest Service, spending most of that time as a fire fighter with the Boise Hotshot crew.
From 1985 through 1989 he held a position as adjunct faculty at Boise State University, teaching freshman composition and American literature.
While earning his MLIS, he was employed at as Library Assistant in the Cataloging Division, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Items from the Bancroft collections on which he worked included Irish pamphlets, a set of first editions of the Obras Completas of Spanish playwright Lope de Vega that had once belongs to Phoebe Hearst, and a collection of corridos from the time of the Mexican Revolution.
In October 1990 he began his career as a professional librarian at New Mexico State University, where he worked as a Reference Librarian and Coordinator of Library Instruction. From November 1996 to November 1997, he worked at the University of Houston Libraries as Coordinator of Electronic Services. From December 1997 to August 2002, worked at the Houston Academy of Medicine–Texas Medical Center Library in Houston, Texas where he was initially employed as the Assistant Director for the Health Informatics Education Center (December 1997 to July 2001) and subsequently as Assistant Director for Systems and Informatics (July 2001 to August 2002). In 2001 and 2002 he also served as adjunct faculty for the University of North Texas Graduate School of Library and Information Sciences.
In September 2002 Barclay began working for the University of California, Merced, the first new U.S. research university of the twenty-first century. As founding librarians at a start-up university, Barclay and his colleagues had the unique opportunity of inventing from the ground up a research library for the twenty-first century.[3] While employed at UC Merced, Barclay held the positions of Assistant University Librarian, Associate University Librarian, and Deputy University Librarian. From May 2011 to June 2015, Barclay served as University Librarian. He retired from UC Merced in June 2022.
Writings[edit]
Barclay is the author of numerous articles, book, and books, including the well received Fake News, Propaganda, and Plain Old Lies: How to Find Trustworthy Information in the Digital Age, of which Publishers' Weekly wrote, "his evaluation (and endorsement) of Wikipedia as a viable of information source is spot-on."[4]
Books
Disinformation: The Nature of Facts and Lies in the Post-Truth Era. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020.
Fake News, Propaganda, and Plain Old Lies: How to Find Trustworthy Information in the Digital Age. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018.
Serving Online Customers: Lessons for Libraries from the Business World. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.
The Library Building Construction, Renovation, And Maintenance Handbook. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, 2011. [In collaboration with Eric Scott.]
Teaching and Marketing Electronic Information Literacy. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, 2003.
Different Travellers, Different Eyes: Artists’ Narratives of the American West, 1810-1920. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 2001. [In collaboration with James H. Maguire and Peter Wild.]
The Medical Library Association Guide to Consumer Health Information. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, 2001. [In collaboration with Deborah Halsted.]
Managing Public-Access Computers in Libraries. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers, 2000.
A Rendezvous Reader: Tall, Tangled, and True Tales of the Mountain Men, 1805-1850. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1997. [In collaboration with James H. Maguire and Peter Wild.]
Into the Wilderness Dream: Exploration Narratives of the American West, 1500-1805. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1994. [In collaboration with James H. Maguire and Peter Wild.]
Teaching Electronic Information Literacy. (Editor and Contributor.) New York: Neal- Schuman, 1995.
Selected Articles and Book Chapters
“Confronting the Wicked Problem of Fake News: A Role for Education.” Cicero Foundation Great Debate Paper. No. 18/03. May 2018. http://www.cicerofoundation.org/lectures/Donald_Barclay_Confronting_Fake_News.pdf.
“Space and the Social Worth of Public Libraries,” Public Library Quarterly, June 16, 2017, 1–7, doi:10.1080/01616846.2017.1327767.
“Turning a Page: Downsizing the Campus Book Collections.” The Conversation. August 19, 2015. https://theconversation.com/turning-a-page-downsizing-the-campus-book-collections-45808.
“No Reservations: Why the Time Has Come to Kill Print Textbook Reserves.” College & Research Libraries News. 76: 6 (June 2015): 332-335, https://crln.acrl.org/index.php/crlnews/article/view/9331.
“The Myth of Browsing: Academic Library Space in the Age of Facebook.” American Libraries. 41: 6/7 (June/ July 2010): 52-54. http://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2010/05/19/the-myth-of-browsing
“Creating an Academic Library for the Twenty-First Century.” In Merritt, Karen and Jane Fiori Lawrence, eds. From Rangeland to Research University: The Birth of the University of California, Merced. San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2007.
"Frank Waters." In Cracroft, Richard H., ed. Dictionary of Literary Biography: 20th Century American Western Writers. Detroit: Gale, 1999.
"Charles M. Russell." In Smith, Stephen, ed. Dictionary of Literary Biography: American Magazine Illustrators. Detroit: Gale, 1998.
"Early Narratives of the American West." In Updating the Literary West: A Supplement to The Literary History of the American West. Fort Worth: TCU Press, 1997. [In collaboration with Peter Wild.]
"Charles A. Siringo." In Gale, Robert, ed. Dictionary of Literary Biography: Western American Writers. Detroit: Gale, 1997.
"Native Americans in Books from the Past." The Horn Book Magazine. 72:5 (1996): 559-565. http://escholarship.org/uc/item/9ph721fd
"Teaching Standard Features of Electronic Databases." In Barclay, Donald, ed. Teaching Electronic Information Literacy. New York: Neal-Schuman, 1995.
"The Role of Freshman Writing in Academic Bibliographic Instruction." Journal of Academic Librarianship. 20 (1994): 213-217, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/0ts9q74h. [In collaboration with Darcie R. Barclay.]
"Evaluating Library Instruction: Doing the Best You Can With What You Have." In "Library Literacy," RQ. 33(2) Winter 1993: 195-202, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7z41p7k8.
"The Laughing Horse: A Literary Magazine of the American West." Western American Literature. 27 (1992): 47-55, https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5z44p1jn.
"Interpreted Well Enough: Two Illustrator's Visions of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." The Horn Book Magazine. 58:3 (May-June 1992): 311-319. http://escholarship.org/uc/item/0wj7r88k
Personal Life[edit]
Barclay’s family includes two sisters: Mary A. Betournay (née Barclay), born 1948 and Laura L. Barclay, born 1950.
He was married to Darcie R. Barclay (née Reimann) from 1990 until her death in 2005. They had one daughter, Mary Elizabeth “Tess” Barclay, born 2001.
Barclay Married Caroline L Dawson in 2013. His stepdaughters are Emily Dawson Featherston (born 2002) and Alexandra Dawson Featherston (born 2006).
- ^ "Donald A. Barclay." Gale Literature: Contemporary Authors, Gale, 2016. Gale Literature Resource Center, link.gale.com/apps/doc/H1000152780/GLS?u=ucmerced&sid=bookmark-GLS&xid=775100c8. Accessed 7 Jan. 2024.
- ^ “Creating an Academic Library for the Twenty-First Century.” In Merritt, Karen and Jane Fiori Lawrence, eds. From Rangeland to Research University: The Birth of the University of California, Merced. San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2007.
- ^ Conway, Mike. "UC Merced Girds to Reinvent the College Library. The Modesto Bee. January 6, 2004. Page 1.
- ^ “Fake News, Propaganda, and Plain Old Lies: How to Find Trustworthy Information in the Digital Age by Donald A Barclay,” PW: Publishers Weekly, April 2, 2018, https://www.publishersweekly.com/9781538108895.