• Director of the Library & Archives at the Buffalo & Erie County Historical Society
• President of the Board of the Preservation Coalition of Erie County
• Creator of BuffaloResearch.com
• Founder and moderator of Buffalo Issue Alerts
  
• Founder of the E.B. Green Society
• Co-Founder of Queen City Contra Dancers
  

It goes without saying that the bottom five activities on this list are undertaken on her own time and are not endorsed by her employer.  Want to know more? Here is the whole tedious tale--Cynthia's resume. She began her library career as a page at the wonderful Egyptianate Rochester Public Library.  She knows that you are not one of those people burdened by silly librarian stereotypes.

In 1996 she took a short HTML course, but she is mostly a self-taught web designer, which is obvious, given the primitive appeareance of this website. She became a webmaster in December 1995, when she assumed responsibility for Roots, which ranks as one of the oldest genealogy websites in all of cyberspace.  Roots was launched in December 1993 at Buffalo Freenet and has since been incorporated into BuffaloResearch.com.

As a bicycle commuter who once got two broken bones thanks to a motorist's negligence (guy flung open his SUV door in her path), Cynthia adores her Breezer bike and refers those who think she is crazy to "Is Cycling Dangerous?"

Cynthia is a member of:

• Auburn Crossroads Block Club
  
• Beta Phi Mu Honor Society
  
• Burchfield-Penney Art Center
• Lexington Food Co-op
  
• National Trust for Historic Preservation
  
• National Writers Union
  
• Preservation League of New York State

• BuffaloResearch.com
  One stop-shopping for Cynthia's many Buffalo-themed websites
  
• Queen City Contra Dancers
  Nope, not country-western line dancing. Cynthia cofounded Queen City, which specializes in New England-style contra dance.

Oops, there's too much damned opinion to fit it all here. See Essays & Rants instead.

Some of you will be puzzled to learn that Cynthia does not consider herself a genealogist. Though she loves local history & genealogical librarianship, she doesn't do genealogy as a hobby (or for hire, or as a favor-just-this-once-please). If this seems odd, remember that schoolteachers and pediatricians do not have to have children of their own in order to succeed at their jobs.

The truth is that genealogical librarians do not find your ancestors for you, just as medical librarians do not operate on you and law librarians do not represent you in court.

Those of you with VAN NESS queries are invited to post them on FamilyTreeMaker's VAN NESS Family Forum.

Just in case you were worried that she does not have A Life.

• Shape Note ("Sacred Harp") music and New England style contra dance
  
• Jane Jacobs and James Howard Kunstler
  
• Urban policies that don't work the way they're supposed to--wish I could have said it as well
• Vegetarian living--yup, she hasn't eaten a cow, bird, pig, etc., since 1982 (or was it 1981?)
• The Buffalo Gay Men's Chorus
  
• The novels and essays of Nicholson Baker
  
• Northern Exposure TV series and This American Life radio program
  
• Ginger, cumin, and cilantro
  
• That wacky Vince guy

• Cyclists who do not wear helmets
• Wobbly tables in restaurants
  
• Apostrophized plurals  (that's apples and oranges, not apple's and orange's, people!)
• Those who dump "quotation marks" all over their "essays" to "emphasize" their favorite "key words"
  
• Anyone who drives under the influence of cell phones
• The use of religion to justify bigotry

Those of you who read all the way to the bottom have probably figured that this page is only a ridiculously elaborate way to manage her bookmark collection and refer people to links that are amusing or personally relevant. Having thus 'fessed up, she is at a loss for how to gracefully end this little excursion, so she just hopes that it was as pleasant for the reader as it was for the author.