John Sterbenz has been employed at the Kresge Business Administration Library at The University of Michigan since 1992, joining its librarian ranks in 1998. He has spent over 18 years serving in various Technical Services roles at the library, including as manager of the unit since 2000. In 2016, he was promoted to the rank of Senior Associate Librarian. He’s responsible for primary administration of Kresge’s Innovative Interfaces library automation system and electronic collection development. Professionally active across the region and nationally, he has participated in numerous presentations, panel discussions, and committees related to Technical Services, cataloging, and systems matters.

Some fun facts about John:

• He is a professional instrumental musician–and sings barbershop, too!
• He likes to travel–especially to our national parks and to cheer on the Michigan Wolverines in football, ice hockey, and women’s softball
• He enjoys trying out new recipes in the kitchen
• When he teaches for MCLS from home, John’s cat, CinderFella, knows it’s “serious time” at the computer and sits quietly nearby, but isn’t afraid to get vocal if he thinks John is asking him (and not the class) a question!

John has been working in libraries since his freshman year of college (1988), with nearly all of his time spent in support of Technical Services operations. When he started, he processed and repaired books, filed card catalog cards(!), and checked in serials issues using a Kardex(!!). It was discovered early on that John had an aptitude for working with electronic cataloging data and retrospective conversion projects; his relationship with MARC started in 1989 and continues to grow to this day. He started teaching for MCLS (then MLC) back in 2005. John currently teaches two workshops, MeLCat Cataloging and MARC: An Introduction, for MCLS. His workshops are some of our highest-evaluated, and we are very grateful to have him on our teaching team.