First Lines is the creation of John Dobbins and Mary Ochs, two friends, both working parents who like to look at first lines and think wistfully of when they actually had time to read these books! We simultaneously came up with the idea of first lines as a challenge December 1996 and tried it out on friends and families at Mary's New Year's Eve party. We had a great time, and we hope you enjoyed it too.

John Dobbins works as an Electronics Engineer at the Cornell University Lab of Nuclear Studies which, interestingly, conducts no Nuclear Studies, but rather High Energy Physics Research. This involves a lot of scientists crashing things together at high speed in order to learn about the universe. If this sounds like boys behaving badly, don't worry it's not - but check it out for yourself.

Mary Ochs is a Reference Librarian at Olin*Kroch*Uris Libraries and spends most of this life making sure Cornell's freshmen learn to use the library. In her next life she will read all of these books, learn to play bluegrass fiddle, and have a home page.

Please, feel free to mail us with suggestions for these pages or ideas of what to make for dinner.