About

So, uh… hi.

My name, as you’ve probably gathered, is Carmen Yount. I live in Spokane, WA, with my fabulous and talented husband, a cockatoo named Bee, and our lab mix, Lucy.

I am currently an MLIS (Master of Library and Information Science) student at San José State University. My area of interest is looking at how organizations collect, classify, share, and use data to tell their stories. Much of my coursework is focused on technologies that allow organizations to do all of those things: database design and administration, SQL, XML, data visualization, and front-end web technology. (FYI, SJSU’s MLIS has been fully online since 2009, which is how I can be a student there while living in Spokane.)

A chunk of my career before graduate school was spent working with election data at The Associated Press, and then as a freelance graphic designer (which was, unfortunately, not as much fun as I’d hoped it would be, but I loved going to school to study it).

Since spring 2012, I have volunteered as a raptor docent at my local outdoor learning center. I have experience with hawks (red-tail, harris’s, rough-legged), owls (great horned, barred, barn, western screech, and saw-whet), and a falcon (kestrel). I’m a reasonably good handler and an adequate program presenter. Also, as it turns out, I’m good at butchering rats, quail and mice (I never thought I’d be bragging about that particular skill ten years ago, but here we are). In addition to animal care and community outreach, I’ve been lucky enough to be able to incorporate some student projects into my experience: a UX card sort looking at the outdoor learning center’s district website, and a prototype for an animal care database.

I’m also a Montana Master Naturalist, and a nature journaler.

Other positions in my past: I was a church janitor, a student accounting clerk, an administrative assistant, a sandwich maker and barista, a freelance graphic designer, a newsletter editor, an art teacher, a GIS graduate student (super fun, but more theoretical than practical), and an aspiring natural science illustrator.

My LinkedIn profile: www.linkedin.com/in/carmenyount

I can be reached at carmen_yount@yahoo.com