Virtual Trainer: Bobby Bothmann

Bobby Bothmann is a professor at Minnesota State University, Mankato where he serves as the catalog and metadata librarian. Bobby catalogs analog and digital resources of all kinds, including books, serials, moving images, objects, cartographic resources, musical and spoken word audio recordings, and music in between many meetings. He is a member of the editorial board for Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, an active member of OLAC (OnLine Audiovisual Catalogers) where he has served in various leadership roles including treasurer, president, and the current archivist. He was recently elected as vice president/president elect for the Open Rules for Cataloging board (2025-2028). Bobby is the recipient of the Esther J. Piercy Award from ALCTS (2007), and the Nancy B. Olson Award from OLAC (2012). He holds an MLIS from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and an MS in Geography and English Technical Communication from MSU Mankato. He was a Fellow in the 2019/2020 cohort of the SPARC Open Education Leadership Program and wrote his capstone on “Core Metadata Elements for OER”. Bobby moonlights as an adjunct instructor for the School of Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he teaches cataloging and classification courses, helping students embrace the logic of metadata. He and his partner are guardians of three dogs, and he is a Star Trek superfan.