Raleigh Muns
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Raleigh C. Muns is an American writer, currently working as a reference librarian at UMSL in St. Louis, Missouri. He has created many of the major indexes and archives of government documents on the internet. For example, he was one of the first people to archive the CIA's World Factbook.
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[edit] Biography
Muns was born November 16, 1957 in Richland, Washington (near one of the first American nuclear power plants, in Hanford Washington). He was the fourth of seven children to Ray Muns, a used car salesman and stockcar driver, and Patricia Barnes.
His early years were spent in Washington, but his family moved to California when he was 13. He graduated from Richard Gahr High School in Cerritos, California, in 1976, and then attended UCLA, receiving a BA in Psychology in 1982.
He joined the US Navy, serving from 1983 to 1987 as an E-5, working as a quartermaster (navigation). He was stationed in southern California, and served on the frigate USS Rentz (FFG-46). During his final six months in the Navy he was the Petty Officer in Charge of the Long Beach Naval Station funeral detail.
He married on August 9, 1985, in Phoenix, Arizona to Anne Lynn Wagner, an aerospace engineer who worked on the Space Shuttle at Rockwell.
In 1988, he and his wife moved to Florence, Italy, where he studied Italian language, music, and culture.
In 1990, he was writer and editor of the early 'zine "Fugitive Pope" which looked at the "seamy belly of libraryship". It was rated by Playboy magazine as "one of the top 10 'zines of 1991". Muns is also a frequent contributor to various political blog sites, such as DailyKos, under the name "Fugitive".
In 1991, he received Master of Library Science degree from UCLA.
He and his wife have two children, Isaac Michael Wagner-Muns born in 1991 in Los Angeles, and Rachel Oriana Wagner-Muns, born in St. Louis in 1998.
Muns presently lives in St. Louis with his wife and children.
[edit] Works
- "Online Scholarly Discussion Groups" IN Computer Mediated Communication and the Online Classroom, Volume 1 (Cresskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press, 1995) pp. 151-164.
- "Emerging Communities: Integrating Networked Information into Library Services (Book Review)", College & Research Libraries, vol. 56, no. 1 (Jan. 1995), pp. 86-87.
- "Appendix: List Review Service" IN Internet World's On INTERNET 94 (Westport, Connecticut: Mecklermedia, 1994) pp. 399-411.
- "The Encryption/Decryption Dickwads of Cipherspace", Steamshovel Press, no. 11 (1994), pp. 35-36.
- "Dicks" IN Alternative Library Literature 1992-1993 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 1994) p. 342.
- "Mysterious Tales of the Reference Desk" IN Alternative Library Literature 1992-1993 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 1994) p. 343.
- "Nasty Word Score Card" IN Alternative Library Literature 1992-1993 (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 1994) p. 344.
[edit] Selected articles
The following were columns in The Current (UM-St. Louis Campus Newspaper):
- August 22, 2005, "Do librarians think you're stupid?" (vol. 38, no. 1157), p. 5
- September 12, 2005, "This week: Beer, books and Abbie Hoffman" (vol. 38, no. 1160), p. 4
- September 19, 2005, "Libraries of TERROR: Are librarians the new secret weapon?" (vol. 38, no. 1161), p. 6
- October 3, 2005 , "The rogue guide to spicing up boring research papers" (vol. 38, no. 1163), p. 5
- October 17, 2005, "Where's Waldo? Not in the libraries because he's been banned" (vol. 38, no. 1164), p. 6
- October 31, 2005, "The loveliest librarian" (vol. 38, no. 1166), p. 4
- November 14, 2005, "Library invests in million-plus information retrieval devices" (vol. 38, no. 1168), p. 4
- December 6, 2005, "Sex and violence in the libraries (mostly sex) " (vol. 38, no. 1170), p. 4
[edit] Software
- Western Historical Manuscripts Search Engine (htdig using Linux)
- Waterways Journal Index 1891-1910 - indexes to materials to the Waterways Journals held by the Mercantile library
[edit] Lecturer
Muns regularly speaks on library science at various conferences, such as the Government Printing Office National Meeting. In 1994 he gave a talk on "Generic Network Resource Reviews", and one of his 1995 talks was titled "Civil War and the Internet".
Also in 1995, he was an invited speaker at the Depository Library Council Meeting and Federal Depository Conference[1]
- "Joyful Noise: Present and Future Librarians Sing the Internet", 1995 [www.umsl.edu/~muns/ proddir/joynoise/joyful2.htm]
[edit] References
- Muns' personal website
- St. Louis Post Dispatch, January 6, 1995, "Congress goes on-line in new open-door policy" - Cites Muns for helping launch the Congressional Legislative Information Service
- Guy Kawasaki, How to drive your competition crazy : creating disruption for fun and profit - describes "The Muns Test"
