Instructor Details

International Library and Information Consultant

Biography:

Forest Woody Horton holds undergraduate degrees from the University of California at Berkeley and UCLA. Following a year of graduate work at Columbia University as a Teaching Fellow, Dr. Horton received a doctorate from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland. Virtually his entire workforce career has been working with the U.S. and foreign governments, often in multilateral international contexts, while employed by the Executive Office of the President, the State Department, USAID and USIS, including 8 different countries overseas.

Horton has authored, co-authored or edited 30 books and monographs, and hundreds of articles, which have been published in professional journals, trade magazines and newspapers including the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. He has consulted with or for nearly three dozen foreign governments and foreign institutions, including international intergovernmental institutions such as U.N. agencies, primarily in the areas of information policy development, national and regional library and information infrastructure strengthening. He worked with UNESCO and IFLA (the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions) in planning and implementing two major international meetings of world experts in the field of Information Literacy and Lifelong Learning, one held in Prague in September 2003, and the other in Alexandria Egypt in November 2005.

Horton’s current major professional interest is advocating how information professionals, especially librarians, can and should play much stronger and higher level managerial and policy roles in all kinds of public and private sector enterprises, not just technical roles for which they were academically trained. Since 2003 Horton has been a Fulbright Senior Specialist, and has undertaken grant assignments in Nepal, Chile, Peru, Slovenia, and Holland, and will go to China and Egypt in 2006.  

Status: Confirmed