Ellen is a librarian, historian and instructor, currently managing the circulation department of Birmingham Public Library's Avondale Regional Branch Library. Ellen also coordinates public programming for Eclectic Circle, a service organization that offers multicultural and non-denominational programming on a range of topics related to comparative religion, world spirituality and mythology.
Ellen's library experience includes both the public and academic sectors, and both public services and technical services. She has also worked as operations manager for an environmental training and consulting company and as a graduate research assistant in UAB's Department of History, where she earned her history degrees, focusing on British and Southern American history.
As the former Historical Collections Cataloger for the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Ellen provided special collections cataloging for the Reynolds Historical Library, a growing collection of more than 10,000 rare books and manuscripts pertaining to the history of medicine. Ellen also served as Senator for Lister Hill Library to the UAB Faculty Senate, as Co-Chair of LHL’s Preservation Management Committee and Chair of the Preservation Issues Subcommittee, and as an instructor for University 101, a university-wide course in interdisciplinary critical thinking.
Ellen's professional interests include web design, information technology, and education. She webmastered the Alabama Library Association Education Committee's teleconference website, served as Birmingham site coordinator for four years, and served as moderator for the 2003 teleconference, “Marketing Your Library in a Multi-Media World.” Previously she designed the Lister Hill Library Internet MEDLINE Training Site as instructional design consultant to LHL's National Library of Medicine MedTrain subcontract team providing Internet training to minority or unaffiliated rural health professionals. Ellen also served as president of the Alabama Special Libraries Association and as editor of the Chapter newsletter, The Bridge.
In what little remains of her free time, Ellen spends time with her wonderful husband Ted and their amazing son Griffin, makes jewelry, attempts artwork and music, and enjoys works of mystery, fantasy and science fiction, gardening, baking, writing, crafting, exploring mythology and religious studies, and playing with her dogs, not necessarily in that order.