We are pleased to announce the recipients of our 2016 DPLA + DLF Cross-Pollinator Travel Grants. These grants extend the opportunity to attend DPLAfest 2016 (April 14-15 in Washington, DC) to three people from DLF member organizations.
The awards are part of a broader vision for partnership between CLIR/DLF and the DPLA. We believe robust community support is key to the sustainability of large-scale national efforts. Connecting our energetic and talented DLF community with the work of the DPLA is a positive way to increase serendipitous collaboration around a shared digital platform. Through this program, we bring “DLF cross-pollinators” to DPLAfest—active Digital Library Federation community contributors who provide unique personal perspectives, help to deepen connections between our organizations, and bring DLF community insight to exciting areas of growth and opportunity at DPLA.
Meet the 2016 DPLA + DLF Cross-Pollinators
Image Technologies and Visual Literacy Librarian and Interim Head, Fine Arts Library
Indiana University Bloomington
Twitter: @jazz_with_jazz
Jasmine Burns’ primary duties are to manage and curate the libraries’ multimedia image collections for teaching and research in the fine arts, including studio, art history, apparel merchandising, and fashion design. She holds an MLIS from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee with a concentration in Archive Studies, and an MA in Art History from Binghamton University. She has worked previously as an assistant curator of a slide library, a museum educator, a junior fellow at the Library of Congress, and as a digitization assistant for a university archives.
Burns writes:
As a new emerging professional, one major limitation that I face is that I have yet to build a strong foundation in organizations outside of those few that guide my daily work… Attending DPLAfest would offer an alternate conference experience that would enhance my understanding of the field of digital cultural heritage, and introduce me to how individuals within this and other allied fields are approaching similar issues in collections building and support, teaching with a variety of visual materials, and the presentation and preservation of digital images. My participation in DPLAfest would give me broad ideas on how to expand the scope of my projects in a way that addresses a larger community, instead of limiting my sphere to art and art history. My ultimate professional goal is to explore, create, and enhance open access image collections through digital platforms. My DLF colleagues provide me with guidance for the technical and data management aspects of managing digital image collections, while DPLAfest would expose me to the nuances of managing and curating the content within such collections.
Nancy Moussa
Web Developer, University of Michigan Library
DPLA Michigan Representative
In her role at Michigan, Nancy Moussa has worked on various projects including Islamic Manuscripts, Omeka online exhibits, and with other open source platforms such as Drupal and WordPress. Her background is in information science, with a B.S. in Computer Science from American University in Cairo, an MMath in Computer Science from University of Waterloo, Canada, and an MSI in Human Computer Interaction from School of Information at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She is also a new DPLA Community Representative.
Moussa writes:
In the past three years my focus has been on customizing and building plugins for Omeka… I would like to research and investigate the DPLA API to understand how to integrate open source platforms with DLPA resources and digital objects. My second interest is to understand how DPLA’s growing contents can benefit teachers in schools, librarians, researchers and students. I hope there is more collaboration between DPLA and DLF. It is a very important step. The collaboration will reveal more incredible digital works that are contributed by DLF members. I am envisioning that DLF members (institutions) will have more opportunities to access digital works provided by other members through the DPLA portal & DPLA API /Apps.Therefore, I am looking forward to attend DPLAfest to increase my understanding and to network with other DPLA representatives and DPLA community in general.
Librarian for Digital Collection Development
Digital Library Program, UCLA
Twitter: @tttkay
Prior to her current position at UCLA, T-Kay Sangwand served as the Human Rights Archivist and Librarian for Brazilian Studies at University of Texas at Austin. In 2015, she was named one of Library Journal’s “Movers and Shakers” in the Advocate category for her collaborative work with human rights organizations through the UT Libraries Human Rights Documentation Initiative. She is currently a Certified Archivist and completed the Archives Leadership Institute in 2013. Sangwand holds an MLIS and MA degree in Latin American Studies from UCLA with specializations in Archives, Spanish and Portuguese and a BA in Gender Studies and Latin American Studies from Scripps College.
Sangwand writes:
As an information professional that is committed to building a representative historical record that celebrates the existence and contributions of marginalized groups (i.e. people of color, women, queer folks), I am particularly excited about the possibility of attending DPLAfest and learning about how the DPLA platform can be leveraged in pursuit of this more representative historical record…. While UCLA is not yet a contributor to DPLA, this is something we are working towards and a process I am looking forward to being a part of as my current position focuses on digital access for a wide cross-section of materials from Chicano Studies, Gender Studies, UCLA Oral History Center and more. Since DLF explicitly describes itself as a “robust community of practice advancing research, learning, social justice & the public good [my emphasis],” I am hopeful that DLF community members, including UCLA, can form a critical mass around building out a representative and diverse historical record in support of the values espoused by DLF.
Congratulations to all, and welcome to the community of DLF cross-pollinators!
