She has a BA from Stanford University, a master’s degree in Information Management and Systems from the University of California at Berkeley, and a PhD from the University of Washington. Before commencing her graduate education, Melanie had a ten-year professional career in technical communication and content strategy, working for companies such as Apple Computer, IDG Books Worldwide, Scient, and PeopleSoft. Her academic research focuses on the conceptual foundations, design, and assessment of controlled vocabularies and other schemes for organizing and describing information resources.