Computing experience: Four and a half years of specifically archaeological computing at the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn and through association with the Institute of Archaeology, London, got me started in the field of humanities computing. I served two years as programming advisor to humanities departments of Westfield College in the University of London, 1977-79. During employment from 1979 to 2000 at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, I built computer support services from a single microcomputer in 1980...
to a nested series of UNIX-based intranets in 2000. As Information Services manager, I was responsible for long-range planning and budgeting for data processing and for planning computing facilities for a new archives building project with a computer budget of over $900,000.00. I designed the locational database for the movable shelving purchased to accommodate MDAH’s archival collections in 1990. I was project director for an NHPRC grant-funded archival electronic records program development project from 1997-2000. I have thus been involved with humanities-oriented computing since 1974, and my experience includes (hardware) IBM and CDC mainframe computers, DEC (VAX) and AT&T (3B2) minicomputers, and personal computers and Intel-based servers; (operating systems) OS/VS, SCOPE, UNIX, VMS, MSDOS, Windows, and Linux; (programming languages) Pascal, FORTRAN, SNOBOL, and PHP; (markup languages) SGML, HTML, and XML; and relational databases and SQL. Since I have been an information technology practitioner for much of the modern history of computing, I am interested in developing some historical writing in that area. I have supervised professional computing staff for fifteen years and served in Mississippi state government on the multidepartmental Information Technology Professional Development Committee, charged with reviewing all IT staffing decisions in Mississippi state government for its State Personnel Board, from 1998-2000.
Other teaching experience: I have taught French and German language and French literature; I have presented various lectures on topics in humanities computing, archaeology, history, and literature for university groups and grant-funded programs; I have provided in-house training in computer applications. I have also served as external advisor to history and archaeology graduate students working on southeastern North American ethnohistory at a variety of institutions including the University of Mississippi, University of Kentucky, University of North Carolina, University of Michigan, University of Chicago, and University of Kansas.
Historical and archaeological research: My first independent scholarly work was on medieval European material culture from archaeological excavations. One thread of my research and writing since 1979 has been the French colonial history and Muskogean tribal ethnohistory of southeastern North America. I have published extensively in this field and worked actively to make research available to the public through television documentaries, public lectures, and museum exhibits. I am presently serving on the editorial advisory panel for the Southeast volume of the Handbook of North American Indians for the Smithsonian Institution. In archaeology, I planned and administered a county archaeological survey of historic-period Chickasaw sites for the Mississippi Department of Archives and History in 1980-81, I edited the MDAH Archaeological Reports series and Mississippi Archaeology from 1981 to 2000, and I have published on the application of historical documentation to the study of colonial-period archaeological sites. In museology, I served as project director and core scholar on the permanent exhibit "Mississippi 1500-1800," installed at the Old Capitol Museum of Mississippi History in 1997, and I currently serve as core scholar for a complete redesign of all permanent exhibits for the planned new Mississippi state historical museum. I have recently completed a dissertation for a PhD in anthropology, specializing in early modern medical epistemology.
Administrative work: As an archaeological finds supervisor for four years in Europe, I organized and maintained systems for the processing and cataloging of artifacts, supervising up to ten people of different nationalities in various phases of this work, including conservation, identification, and recording. I designed a system of archaeological data capture and recording implemented on a microprocessor system for fieldwork as early as 1976. In Mississippi I put together and administered a cooperative city/state government project of archaeological site survey on Chickasaw sites and coordinated a joint universities project of prehistoric-historic Choctaw site survey. At the Mississippi Department of Archives and History I was classified as a systems manager, serving as director of the Information Systems section of the Administration Division. In that capacity I chaired the departmental Information Management Committee and the Website Committee. I supervised a senior desktop publishing specialist, a webmaster, a computer systems analyst, and a programmer in providing a full range of end-user oriented computing services to the entire Department, coordinating additional computer support staff with subject-area specialties in the Museum, Archives, Records Management, and Historic Preservation divisions. As author and recipient of grants from NEH, the Mississippi Humanities Council, and corporate donors, I supervised staff of all divisions of MDAH and contract personnel in documentary research, museum exhibit design and implementation, and development of public programs in history. I have been involved in specifying electronic records policy for Mississippi state government and am presently working with Texas state government officials in a consultative capacity on similar issues.