During my first stint in graduate school at UC-Berkeley's Library and Information Studies program (1985-1986), I worked in the library of Pillsbury, Madison & Sutro, a large law firm in San Francisco. I provided reference support to attorneys, law students, and legal assistants. I ran searches in Lexis/Nexis and Westlaw (two large legal information databases available then), in addition to searching paper editions of Jury Verdicts to assist the firm's lawyers in finding qualified expert witnesses for trials.

I received my Master's in Library and Information Studies in December 1986. I was hired as a reference librarian at the Main branch of Oakland Public Library. I worked in the Science, Business, and Sociology section of the library with four other librarians, processing an average of five thousand reference questions a month.