Jean is a public library advocate with over ten years as a trustee with the Cupertino Public Library and Santa Clara County (CA) library system, rated number one in its category in the 2003 Hennen’s American Public Library Ratings.  She is also on the adjunct faculty at the School of Library and Information Sciences at San Jose State University, and has been active in the Special Libraries Association (SLA).  In a previous life, she worked on library circulation systems at Washington State University.

Prior to joining Gale, Bonnie was the Director of Editorial Operations for MD Consult, a St. Louis start-up company now owned by Elsevier. Her career began in Louisville, Kentucky, at Data Courier, which was acquired by UMI (now ProQuest). There, she was the Managing Editor of ABI/INFORM from 1982 to 1995.  Bonnie holds a B. A. degree from Vanderbilt University.

Michael is also a bit of an eBook dinosaur having been involved with eBooks for about 5 years now. Michael is a member of OeBF, ALA, PLA, LITA, and AASL. He has served on several national and international committees through his connection with MARBI and NISO.

He has an MLS. from Pratt Institute and a BA in English from Vassar College.
 

From 1993 to1996 he served as vice president of the Higher Education Division of the Association of American Publishers, before founding Lightspeed, a consulting firm specializing in business development, marketing and e-business strategy. As part of his activities on behalf of the Book Industry Study Group (Board of Directors) and the Open eBook Forum, he is involved with emerging technologies and standards development.

A graduate of Harvard College in English Literature, he earned a Masters Degree in Socio-economics from the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research. He is a regular presenter at industry meetings including BEA, and the Frankfurt Book Fair. His articles on marketing, technology, culture, and educational policy have also appeared in The New York Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The EDUCOM Review, Change, Market Trends, and the Journal of Contemporary Business.

She developed business skills in sales management at ISI and Faxon and directed the Library at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University.  Her articles on e-publishing and web-based services appear in Against the Grain, Information Today, The Charleston Advisor and Smart Libraries (formerly Library Systems Newsletter).  Outside of her numerous professional activities, you’ll find her hiking and rafting the canyons of the southwestern US.

Since joining Proskauer, Chuck has concentrated on copyright, First Amendment, and defamation law.

He has represented the motion picture studios in their ground-breaking and successful litigation, under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, against hackers who were publicly providing illegal software for decrypting DVDs, and Lexis-Nexis in its victory against an Internet start-up which had attempted to steal the entire Lexis database for uploading onto the Web. He represents Lexis-Nexis in three national class actions brought by freelance writers seeking damages for inclusion of their articles on the Nexis database, which Nexis contends is authorized by rights duly transferred by newspapers and magazines. He has also represented the League of American Theatres and Producers in an arbitration over the ownership of the Tony Award™ programs, and England's Royal Court Theatre in connection with a copyright infringement lawsuit based on David Hare's play Via Dolorosa. With Ron Rauchberg and Jon Baumgarten, he represented eight leading publishers of trade, professional, and educational books in a groundbreaking (and successful) suit against a national copyshop chain, gaining one of the largest statutory damage awards then ever awarded, and an injunction against further unconsented anthologizing of the publishers' copyrighted works.

In the First Amendment field, Chuck has litigated challenges to content-based federal restrictions of cable television programming, which the Supreme Court largely invalidated in Denver Area Educational Television Consortium v. FCC, and handled, with Ron Rauchberg, a facial First Amendment challenge to New York's Son of Sam law for Simon & Schuster, which the Supreme Court unanimously invalidated. In addition to counseling leading cultural institutions in New York City on First Amendment issues, he has handled six major libel actions (for clients including Multimedia Entertainment, Phil Donahue, NBC, and UPS), with none decided adversely, one won before a jury, and five others dismissed without discovery or trial.

Chuck has also handled major unfair competition and trade name infringement litigation, as well as a variety of matters for New York City teaching hospitals, and for many years organized Proskauer's pro bono activities.

 She has a BA in History from D’Youville College; an MA in Political Science from SUNY at Buffalo; and an MBA in Finance from NYU.
 

Ms. Turner’s professional background in books includes establishing and operating a chain of physical and online retail bookstores, Undercover Books, which continues to supply books to international corporate, public and academic associations and libraries.  From the 1970’s thru 1990’s she was an active member of the American Booksellers Association.  She currently is the chairperson of the Open eBook Forum’s Business Special Interest Group, in which software technologists, publishers and retailers are building professional and public awareness of new eBook industry growth.

Technology has been a major focus of Walters’ efforts. Following his arrival, the District installed more than 500 new computer stations throughout the branches. Additionally, Walters improved access to electronic information by implementing a new Virtual Library accessible through the web site. Most recently, he oversaw the implementation of an automated computer reservation and print management system integrating on-line debit and credit card transactions, bringing the District to the forefront of eCommerce in the library environment.

Walters currently serves as Chair of PLA’s Technology in Public Libraries Committee.

 Where do libraries fit in the new e-picture? Do e-Books have a place in the modern library? The Library as a “Digital Filling Station” remains at the core of Michael’s findings and notions about how the e-Book fits on the shelves and servers of the modern public library. This concept enhances e-Book availability for library users, and expands the market for writers as well as hardware providers. In Michael’s view “Libraries of today and tomorrow are about so much more than traditional books, but if the e-Book industry doesn’t wake up to that fact, they’re going to remain a niche product in a glass case at the electronics super store.”

 He and his wife Debbie reside in Indianapolis.