Tracy Mitrano received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and History from the University of Rochester in 1981, a doctorate in American history from Binghamton University in 1988, and a law degree from Cornell Law School in 1995. She has taught American political, social, and religious history at the University of Buffalo, women's and constitutional history at Syracuse University, and family and social policy at Cornell University. She is a member of the New York State Bar Association and was in private practice for five years. Currently she is the Policy Advisor and Director of the University Computer Policy and Law Program for the Office of Information Technologies at Cornell University.
James Neal is currently Vice President for Information Services and University Librarian at Columbia University, providing leadership for university academic computing and network services and a system of 22 libraries. Previously, he served as Dean of University Libraries at Indiana University and Johns Hopkins University, and held administrative positions in the libraries at Penn State, Notre Dame, and the City University of New York. Neal has served on the Council and Executive Board of the American Library Association, on the Board and as President of the Association of Research Libraries, and as chair of OCLC's Research Library Advisory Council, as well as on numerous international, national, and state professional committees. Neal is a frequent speaker at national and international conferences, consultant and published researcher with a focus in the areas of scholarly communication, intellectual property, digital library development, organizational change, human resources development, and library fundraising. He has represented the American library community in testimony on copyright matters before Congressional committees and was an advisor to the U.S. delegation at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) diplomatic conference on copyright. He was selected the 1997 Academic/Research Librarian of the Year by ALA's Association of College and Research Libraries.
Gary E. Strong has served as Director of the Queens Borough Public Library since September 1994. For nine consecutive years, the Queens Library has achieved the highest circulation levels of any public library system in the nation. Before coming to Queens, he was the State Librarian of California, the top administrative post in the California State Library system, from 1980 to 1994. He was a founder and member of the board of directors of the California State Library Foundation and is now a director emeritus of that body. Since coming to the Queens Library, he has won the Distinguished Service Award from the Chinese-American Librarians Association (1996) and has been named to the New York State Board of Regents Advisory Council for Libraries. He serves on the board of the New York Metropolitan Reference and Research Library Agency (METRO) and was elected Vice President of that organization in October 1999. He serves on the IFLA Committee on Copyright and Other Legal Matters, and as the IFLA Representative to the United Nations. Mr. Strong is the author and editor of numerous journal articles on library and literacy issues, and in 1988 won the H.W. Wilson Periodical Award for his editorial work on the California State Library Foundation Bulletin (1982 -1994).
Thomas Susman is a partner in the Washington Office of Ropes & Gray, where he conducts a diverse legislative and regulatory practice. Before joining Ropes & Gray in 1981, Mr. Susman served on Capitol Hill for over 11 years. He was Chief Counsel to the Senate Subcommittee on Administrative Practice and Procedure and General Counsel to the Antitrust Subcommittee and to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Prior to that he clerked for Judge John Minor Wisdom on the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, and was Special Assistant to the Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice. He graduated from Yale University and received his J.D. with high honors from the University of Texas Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the Texas Law Review. For over a decade Mr. Susman has been working with the library community on issues that include access to government information, the Children’s Internet Protection Act, the General Agreement on Trade in Services, the Government Printing Office, consolidation in the publishing industries, and the USA PATRIOT Act. Mr. Susman frequently testifies before Congress and lectures in the U.S. and abroad on legislative process, freedom of information, and politics.