Curriculum Vitae

Jay H. Bernstein
Robert J. Kibbee Library
Kingsborough Community College – CUNY
2001 Oriental Boulevard
Brooklyn, New York 11235
U.S.A.

Tel.: + 718-368-6548
Fax: + 718-368-5481
jbernstein@kbcc.cuny.edu

Education

M.L.S. St. John’s University, New York. Library Science, 1998

Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley. Anthropology, 1991

Doctoral Dissertation: Taman Ethnomedicine: The Social Organization of Sickness and Medical
Knowledge in the Upper Kapuas.

M.A. University of California, Berkeley. Anthropology, 1981

B.A. State University of New York College at Purchase. Anthropology, 1980

Present Appointment

Reader Services Librarian, Robert J. Kibbee Library, Kingsborough Community College – CUNY

Associate Professor in the Department of Library, 2010-present.

Interlibrary Loan Librarian, 2005-present.
Assistant Professor in the Department of Library, 2004-2010.

Previous Employment

Executive Director, Library of Social Science, Flushing, New York, 2002-2004.

Cataloger, Walsh Family Library, Fordham University, Bronx, New York, 1999-2002.
Cataloging and Reference Librarian, Purchase College Library, Purchase College, Purchase, New York,
1998-1999.
Assistant to the Collection Development Librarian and Research Affiliate in the Division of Library &
Information Science, St. John’s University, Jamaica, New York, 1997-1998.
Instructor in Anthropology in the Division of Continuing Education, Purchase College, Purchase, New
York, 1997.
Research Officer and Honorary Research Fellow in the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Kent at
Canterbury, Canterbury, England, 1992-1996.
Graduate Fellow, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1982.
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Graduate Student Instructor and Research Fellow, University of California, Berkeley, 1980-1991.

Funded Research
Measures of Author Impact and Eminence.2008 to present. Funded by PSC-CUNY Research Grant.
Document Type and Material Type: an Analysis of Basic Bibliographic Objects and their Distribution in
Library Collections. Spring 2006. Supported by Library Reassignment Leave from the City
University of New York.
Human-Rainforest Interaction in Brunei Darussalam. (R. F. Ellen, Principal Investigator). Fieldwork
1992-1993, writing and data analysis 1992-1995. Funded by grant from the Economic and Social
Research Council (United Kingdom).
Folk Medical Reasoning and the Storage of Technical Medical Knowledge in West Kalimantan,
Indonesia. Fieldwork 1985-1988, Writing and data analysis, 1988-1989. Funded by International
Doctoral Research Fellowship from the Southeast Asia Council of the Social Science Research
Council with the American Council of Learned Societies and Individual National Research
Service Award from the National Institute of Mental Health, with supplementary funding from
the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley, and the Luce Foundation.
Research on Ethnological and Archival Collections on Borneo. National Museum of Natural History,
1982. Supported by graduate fellowship from the Smithsonian Institution.
Research on Ethnological and Archival Collections on the Southern Philippines. Field Museum of Natural
History, 1979. Internship funded by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Research Interests

Bibliographic databases; Collection assessment; Culture and communication; Ethnology and social
anthropology of Southeast Asia, especially Borneo; History and bibliography of anthropology;
Informetrics; Multidisciplinary perspectives on the organization of information, including cataloging,
classification, and categorization; Scholarly communication and publishing; Sociology of knowledge.

Current Memberships in Professional Societies

American Library Association,, Association of College and Research Libraries, Association of Library
Collections & Technical Services, Anthropology and Sociology Librarians Section, Community College
Librarians Section, Association of College and Research Libraries—New York, International Society for
Knowledge Organization, Library Association of the City University of New York.

Languages

French, Indonesian, Malay.

Ongoing Projects / Manuscripts in Preparation

The bibliographic impact of literary authors: measures and correlations. (First in a series of articles on
measures of author impact and eminence, in collaboration with Nataniel Greene).
Study of classification and inquiry in libraries.
Shamanic knowledge: the challenge for information science.
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Publications

Book

1997 Spirits Captured in Stone: Shamanism and Traditional Medicine among the Taman of Borneo.
Boulder, Colo. and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers.

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

2009a “Nonknowledge: the bibliographical organization of ignorance, stupidity, error, and unreason: part
two.” Knowledge Organization 36(4): 249-260.
2009b “Nonknowledge: the bibliographical organization of ignorance, stupidity, error, and unreason: part
one.” Knowledge Organization 36 (1): 17-29.
2007 “New York placenames in film titles.” Names: A Journal of Onomastics 55 (2): 139-166.
2006 “From the ubiquitous to the nonexistent: a demographic study of OCLC WorldCat.” Library
Resources & Technical Services 50 (2):79-90.
2002 “First recipients of anthropological doctorates in the United States, 1891-1930.” American
Anthropologist 104 (2): 551-564. (Special centennial issue.)
2000 “An Interview with George De Vos.” Organdi Quarterly, no. 1. Published online,
http://www.geocities.com/organdi_revue/November2000/Bernstein1.html. (Currently offline.)
1998 [Reprint of 1985] “The perils of Laura Watson Benedict: a forgotten pioneer in anthropology.”
Philippine Quarterly of Culture & Society 26 (3): 165-191. (Special Issue: Commemorating our
first twenty-five years: Selected papers.)
1997 “The use of plot surveys for the study of ethnobotanical knowledge: a Brunei Dusun example.” (Jay
H. Bernstein, Roy Ellen, and Bantong Antaran.) Journal of Ethnobiology 17 (1): 69-96.
1995 [Published in 2002] “Licuala palms in Brunei Dusun ethnobotany.” (Jay H. Bernstein and Roy F.
Ellen.) Brunei Museum Journal 10: 97-110.
1993 “Poisons and antidotes among the Taman of West Kalimantan, Indonesia.” Bijdragen tot de Taal-,
Land- en Volkenkunde 149 (1): 3-21.
1985 “The perils of Laura Watson Benedict: a forgotten pioneer in anthropology.” Philippine Quarterly
of Culture & Society 13 (3): 171-197.

Book Chapters

2010 “Folk concepts.” In 21st Century Anthropology: A Reference Handbook, edited by H. James Birx,
848-855. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.
2004 “Taman shamanism (Borneo).” In Shamanism: An Encyclopedia of World Beliefs, Practices, and
Cultures, edited by Mariko Namba Walter and Eva Jane Neumann Fridman, 842-847. Santa
Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio.
1997 “The deculturation of the Brunei Dusun.” In Indigenous Peoples and the State: Politics, Land, and
Ethnicity in the Malayan Peninsula and Borneo, edited by Robert L. Winzeler, 159-179.
Monograph 46. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Southeast Asia Studies.
1996 “Higher order categories in Brunei Dusun ethnobotany: the folk-classification of rainforest plants.”
In Tropical Rainforest Research-- Current Issues: Proceedings of the Conference held in Bandar
Seri Begawan, April 1993, edited by D.S. Edwards, W.E. Booth, and S.C. Choy, 435-450.
Monographieae Biologicae 74. Dordrecht and Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
1993 “The shaman’s destiny: symptoms, affliction, and the re-interpretation of illness among the Taman.”
In The Seen and the Unseen: Shamanism, Mediumship, and Possession in Borneo, edited by
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Robert L. Winzeler, 171-206. Borneo Research Council Monograph Series, no. 2. Williamsburg,
Va.: Borneo Research Council.
1990 “The infusion of teachers from eastern Indonesia into West Kalimantan.” In Patterns of Migration
in Southeast Asia, edited by Robert R. Reed, 182-190. Berkeley, Calif.: Centers for South and
Southeast Asian Studies.

Other articles

1994 “Urbs in rure: cultural transformation of the rainforest in modern Brunei.” (Roy Ellen and Jay
Bernstein.) Anthropology Today 10 (4): 16-19.
1993 “The ecology and ethnobiology of human-rainforest interaction in Brunei.” ASEASUK News 14
(n.s.): 24-25.

Book Reviews

2007 Perfect Order: Recognizing Complexity in Bali by J. Stephen Lansing. Choice. 44 (11): 1965.
2006a Mien Relations: Mountain People and State Control in Thailand by Hjorleifur Jonsson. Choice 44
(4): 684.
2006b Burma at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century edited by Monique Skidmore. Choice 43 (6): 1066.
2006c After the Killing Fields: Lessons from the Cambodian Genocide by Craig Etcheson. Choice 43 (5):
911.
2005a Symbols and Meaning: A Concise Introduction by Mari Womack. Choice 43(2): 335.
2005b Why Did They Kill? Cambodia in the Shadow of Genocide by Alexander Laban Hinton. Choice 42
(10): 1877.
2005c Irregular Connections: A History of Anthropology and Sexuality by Andrew P. Lyons and Harriet
D. Lyons. Choice 42 (7): 1270-1271.
2002a Looking Both Ways: Heritage and Identity of the Alutiiq People edited by Aron L. Cromwell et al.
Library Journal 127 (11):74-75.
2002b Behind the Mexican Mountains by Robert Zingg. Library Journal 127 (5): 88.
2002c West Indian in the West: Self-Representations in an Immigrant Community by Percy C. Hintzen.
Library Journal 127 (4): 116.
2002d Delimiting Anthropology: Occasional Inquiries and Reflections by George W. Stocking Jr. Library
Journal 127 (2): 109.
2002e Between Past and Future: The Roma of Central and Eastern Europe edited by Will Guy. Library
Journal 127 (1): 132.
2001a A Social History of Anthropology in the United States by Thomas Patterson. Library Journal 126
(18): 101.
2001b The Seeds of Speech: Language Origins and Evolution by Jean Aitchison. Anthropological Theory
1(3): 394-395.
2001c The Lunda-Ndembu: Style, Change and Social Transformation in South Central Africa by James
A. Pritchett. Library Journal 126 (9): 130.
2001d Invisible Genealogies: A History of Americanist Anthropology by Regna Darnell. Library Journal
126 (9): 132.
2000a Culture in Practice: Selected Essays by Marshall Sahlins. Library Journal 125 (20): 152.
2000b The Kitchen Spoon’s Handle: Transnationalism and Sri Lanka’s Migrant Community by Michelle
Ruth Gamburd. Library Journal 125 (16): 114.
2000c Female Circumcision in Africa: Culture, Controversy, and Change edited by Bettina Shell-Duncan
and Ylva Hernlund. Library Journal 125 (14): 218.
2000d D’Albuquerque’s Children: Performing Tradition in Malaysia’s Portuguese Settlement by
Margaret Sarkissian. Library Journal 125 (14): 218-220.
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2000e Landscapes of Betrayal, Landscapes of Joy: Curtisville in the Lives of its Teenagers by Herb
Childress. Library Journal 125 (12): 107.
2000f Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics by Clifford Geertz. Library
Journal 125 (6): 109.
2000g Ashes of Immortality: Widow-Burning in India by Catherine Weinberger-Thomas. Library Journal
125 (4): 114.
1995 The Peoples of Borneo by Victor T. King. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 18
(1): 202.
1994 “Piper methisticum—from myths to postage stamps.” Review of Kava: The Pacific Drug by
Vincent Lebot et al. Journal of Biogeography 21: 447-448.
1993 The Folk Biology of the Tobelo People: A Study in Folk Classification by Paul Michael Taylor.
Anthropological Forum 6: 644-646.

Peer-reviewed Conference Presentation

2009 The data-information-knowledge-wisdom hierarchy and its antithesis. Presented at the Second
North American Symposium on Knowledge Organization, Syracuse University, June 18-19.
Available online, http://iskocus.org/publications/nasko2009/Bernstein-NASKO2009.pdf