Mark Palmer
Content Editor
After
doing a degree in Natural Sciences (mostly biological) at Cambridge University I
decided that I was interested in dealing with and making available the
information generated by scientific research, so after spending a year working
in the library at the University of York I went on to do an MSc in Information
Management at Sheffield University. My dissertation was about biological
information on the Internet – by today’s standards, back in 1995 there wasn’t a
great deal, as the Internet had only recently emerged into public consciousness
after many years as the domain of a few computer enthusiasts. My next job
involved cataloguing spare film in a Portakabin in the car park at the BBC
Natural History Unit in Bristol, and from there I moved to CABI.
Initially I spent most of my time abstracting and indexing parasitology records,
but the job has evolved over the years, including some time helping with
managing the CAB Thesaurus of indexing terms, and these days I look after the
parts of the database covering parasitology, medical entomology and mycology,
and (an interesting addition a few years ago to my previous knowledge) the sugar
industry. I am editor of the printed abstract journals ‘Review of Medical and
Veterinary Mycology’ and ‘Sugar Industry
Abstracts’.
Mark