Terry Ballard

Born in 1946 in Phoenix, Arizona. My dad was in the Air Force, but kept getting reassigned to Phoenix-area bases until I was 12 when we all had to move to the Philippines for 18 months. My experiences there on the air base helped mold me into the sort of deeply pessimistic person that I am. Afterwards, I sleptwalk through four years of high school, then attended and graduated from Phoenix College and Arizona State University. I can trace my interest in writing to English 101 at Phoenix College. My teacher Laura Macklin was the first ever to see the makings of a writer in what I handed in. After college I began working at a paraprofessional job at the Phoenix Public Library which gave me a comfortable living while I settled the matter of what I wanted to do when I grow up. At the library I had met Donna Weiss, who was good friends with a woman who hated me. We married in 1972 and she is still with me today. Early in our marriage, I was active in science fiction fandom - writing for freely distributed "fanzines," but my chief goal was to be a REAL paid author. This happened fairly quickly when I began writing humorous articles for the Arizona Republic's Sunday supplement. Later I switched to writing for library publications and won three writing awards. Our son Robert was born in 1982, and is now a librarian working in Queens. After getting a master's degree in education and doctoral work, I finally got my library degree in 1989 from the University of Arizona and achieved my goal of leaving the Phoenix Public Library. Since then I've worked as a systems librarian in academic libraries in New York and Connecticut. During that time, I've written a book on library automation, and published more than 50 articles in the field. In 2011, I was given a contract by Chandos Publishing of Oxfordshire to write the book "Google this: Putting Google products and other social media to work for libraries," and it was published in May, 2012. Information about the book is found at http://googlethis.com. Among other things, this work got me an invitation to visit the Googleplex and talk to product developers. The idea of a very personal book about library automation was a new one, and kudos to Chandos for taking a chance on this. In the summer of 2012 I retired from full-time work. Months later I signed on to work as an adjunct librarian at the Gill Library of the College of New Rochelle, and I retired from there in late 2016. I was recently awarded a second contract from Chandos/Elsevier to write the book "Fifty specialty libraries of New York City: Botany to magic." This appeared in early 2016. I plan to write one more book, which will take a close look at Mark Twain's first time in New York City as a teenaged printer. Now at age 73, keeping my hand in by writing for library publications, I am thoroughly enjoying my status as Late Bloomer.