Jean Armour Polly


Jean Armour Polly is a librarian by profession, the author of a series of books on safe Internet services, and has been an active Internet user since 1991.

Education

She received her BA in Medieval Studies at Syracuse University in 1974, and her Master's in Library Science from the same university in 1975.
Polly was key in popularizing, but is often credited with coining the phrase "surfing the Internet", being the author of an article called "Surfing the INTERNET", published in the University of Minnesota Wilson Library Bulletin in June, 1992. Coining the phrase has since been attributed to internet pioneer Mark McCahill, who used the same phrase months earlier in February 1992. It turns out that even earlier, in October of 1991, surfing the Internet was popularized in a comic Book, "The Adventures of Captain Internet and CERF Boy", published by one of the early Internet Service Providers, CERFnet.

Publications

Polly is the author of the well-known series of books The Internet Kids & Families Yellow Pages. Because of her long-standing work, devoted to family- and child-related issues on the Internet, Polly is often referred to as one of the original "Mothers" of the Internet.
She was Director of Public Services and Internet Ambassador at NYSERNet, Inc. She has served on the Internet Society Board of Trustees and on the ICANN At-Large Advisory Council , as well as on the board of ICRA.

Personal life

She lives near Syracuse, New York, where she runs the Internet site. She has one son, Stephen, who is in the doctoral program at the Rochester Institute of Technology.