Being the Director of Library and Information Services at a federated college within University of Waterloo, Tony in charge of library services and on-going development of the library’s collection in support of the College’s academic programs and research activities. Prior to his Renison appointment, Tony was the Head, Digital Initiatives and Electronic Resources at Athabasca University (AU), where he oversaw the library’s digital preservation, repository development, electronic publishing, mobile library, the metadata harvesting service, and other digitization initiatives. Tony led the library digitization unit, providing a variety of scanning, OCR, and text encoding services to the library, AU academic centers and external clients, and contributed to major projects funded by provincial and federal agencies.
Tony is an experienced information professional with many years of E-learning leadership and consultant experience. He was the Multimedia Consultant of the Learning Technology Unit, Saskatchewan Education. He was responsible for developing and maintaining the online Evergreen Curriculum. Tony represented Saskatchewan Education in local, regional, and provincial (Multitype Library) database licensing consortia, co-ordinating 129 School Net Grassroots projects in Saskatchewan, and developed online educational modules for the World Bank on Information Technology in Education. Tony also has extensive experience in school libraries. He has worked as a teacher-librarian and resource-based learning consultant in the past.
Tony is very passionate about harnessing the power of mobile devices for education, training and research. Tony was the technical lead of the University of Waterloo’s mobile learning project, Foundations of Academic Success: Innovative Mobile Learning to Enhance Academic Integrity which received the eCampus Ontario Research and Innovation Grants in 2017. The mobile Academic Integrity App project also won the International e-learning Award in 2018 and the Canadian Network for Innovation in Education Award in Excellence and Innovation in the Integration of Technology in a partnership in 2019. Tony also co-ordinated many Athabasca University’s mobile learning projects, which won the International E-Learning Association’s E-learning Award (Mobile Learning) in 2012 and the Canadian Library Association Library Research and Development Grant Award in 2006. His Mobile ESL project received an honorable mention for Excellence and Innovation in Use of Learning Technology from the Canadian Network for Innovation in Education in 2008. In 2012 he won the AU wellness Award by designing and developing an IOS app to promote health and wellness in the work place. Tony has demonstrated exceptional leadership qualities and strong commitment to excellence in student services. In 2002, he was honored as recipient of the AU Sue and Derrick Rowlandson Memorial award for service excellence.
He attained his Master of Library and Information Sciences from University of Alberta, Master of Arts in History from McGill University, Bachelor of Arts in History from McGill University and Bachelor of Education in Social Studies and School Librarianship from University of Alberta. He is currently pursuing his Doctor of Distance Education degree from Athabasca University. He has published articles and book chapters and presented at conferences on topics such as library technology, digital libraries, and mobile learning. Tony was a featured speaker at The Asian Conference on Language Learning and The Asian Conference on Technology in the Classroom 2015, discussing “Using Mobile Technology in Information Literacy Skills Training to Enhance Students Learning Experience.”