ARL/DLF Forum Fellowships for Underrepresented Groups
In 2010, the Digital Library Federation made a positive change and commitment to being an open organization, welcoming members from all aspects of the digital library community, soliciting contributions to the annual Forum from members and non members alike, and making every effort to connect conversations that extend beyond our organizational borders. Our community grew as a result and our Forums were enriched with new voices and perspectives that yielded a more dynamic and exciting event. The Forum, although technical in nature, is fairly gender-balanced. We have limited representation from a number of communities, however, and we seek to increase participant diversity. To this end, we continued to offer the ARL/DLF Forum Fellowships for Underrepresented Groups in 2014.
Celeste Â-Re
I am a doctoral student as well as a recorded sound processing technician at the Library of Congress, National Audio-Visual Conservation Center; having recently completed my coursework in the Library and Information Science program at the University of South Carolina, my research interests revolve around interdisciplinary approaches to heritage preservation through digital curation, cultural heritage informatics, and critical heritage studies. I’m encouraged by the Association of Research Libraries and Digital Library Federation’s commitment to increased participant diversity at the DLF Forum and look forward to broadening my network within the community of digital library practitioners.
George Apodaca
As part of a select cohort in the Knowledge River program at the University of Arizona’s School of Information Resources and Library Science, a graduate program focused on training librarians, archivists and information specialists on Latino/a and Native American cultural issues, I sought to bring attention to and address the issues historically faced by ethnic-minority groups in information environments. Academically, I did this by critically analyzing representations of ethnicity and immigration in America’s archives. Actively, I did it by leading efforts to communicate the importance of digital literacy and equitable language services at roundtables and annual fundraisers. I believe my career goals and personal aspirations to provide equitable access to digital information services fall in line well with the DLF’s objective to advance research, teaching and learning through the implementation of digital library research, technology and services. It is my hope to contribute to reducing the technological and representational void of historically underrepresented communities by learning about the vanguard and successful methodologies that provide digital access to obscured and hidden histories at this year’s DLF Forum.
I am a first year Digital Humanities Librarian at the University of Iowa, and this will be my first DLF Forum. Before I joined the library, I was an archaeologist and still actively follow and contribute to that community. I have a BA in Anthropology with minors in Art History and Classics, and obtained a MA in Digital Humanities from Kings College, London. I am very excited at the prospect of networking with my new colleagues, and learning about the digitization efforts of cultural artifacts (3D modeling/scanning), the integration of digital humanities efforts at various institutions, and the impacts of race and ethnicity on digital libraries. I cannot wait to meet you all.
Iyanna Sims
Since receiving a masters in library science from Clark Atlanta University, I have had the pleasure of contributing to the field of academic librarianship for ten years in the area of library technology. In my current position as Head, Bibliographic, Metadata, and Discovery Services at North Carolina A&T State University’s F.D. Bluford Library, I have the opportunity to combine my interests in both digital librarianship and technology. The Digital Library Federation Forum is an ideal way to participate in the conversation and learn from others experiences in the areas of digital libraries, research data management, preservation. I plan to apply the knowledge gained from the Forum to enhancing digital library services that support research, teaching, and learning.
I, Dorothy Terry, am looking forward to the Forum because it will allow me to connect with people in the field who are doing interesting things with digitizing libraries. Having just started my first job outside of my MLIS, I am excited to be creating various digital exhibits and records for our community. I know that attending this forum will imbed me with a plethora of knowledge that I can bring back to any institution I become affiliated with. I truly look forward to engaging with this community, especially to determine how I can be involved!
DLF Forum Fellowships for New Professionals
The DLF community includes staff who work in libraries and other information institutions who are lively, intellectually engaged, and inquisitive, but who are not always routinely funded to travel to conferences where they can learn more about the library profession, see digital initiatives from other institutions, and meet leaders in the profession.
DLF welcomes newcomers to the profession and new voices at the Forum. To further this aim we provide the DLF Forum Fellowships for New Professionals.
As the IT Technical Specialist II in the Alabama Digital Humanities Center (ADHC), I collaborate with faculty and graduate students to create projects such as cultural heritage digital archives and exhibitions. My goal is to educate and empower these principle investigators by teaching them how to data-mine literary texts, create immersive experiences with 3D modeling, or manage crowd-sourced collaborative work. One of my favorite parts of working in the digital humanities is creating visualizations; as such work allows me to combine my background in both arts and programming. Prior to my time at the ADHC, I completed a Masters in Visual Effects from Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), where I specialized in procedural modeling and animation. I also worked for several years in commercial photography, advertising, and photojournalism after receiving a BFA in Photography from the University of Georgia. Website: muzelchen.com
Bret Davidson
I am currently a Digital Technologies Development Librarian at the North Carolina State University Libraries. I am technical lead on Suma, an open-source space and service usage assessment toolkit, and a developer on several other active NCSU projects including lentil, an open-source gem for creating community-driven collections of photos from Instagram, and Library Course Tools, a custom application for integrating course-specific resources into the library web site. Previously, I was an NCSU Libraries Fellow, a public school music educator, and a performing musician with the River City Brass Band in Pittsburgh, PA.
I am the Digital Curation Coordinator for the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I manage UW’s institutional repository and work with research data management and curation issues across campus, including acting as co-lead for the interdisciplinary group Research Data Services. I graduated with my MLS and MIS from the Indiana University School of Informatics and Computing in May 2014. Website: briannamarshall.com
Brendan Quinn
Developer (former Digital Initiatives Librarian), Northwestern University Library
At the time I was named a New Professional Fellow, I was an undergraduate English major and Digital Humanities minor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). I worked on digitizing the rich history of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) Board of Education Records, with the Center for Primary Research and Training (housed in Special Collections). After my recent graduation, I was hired at Powell Library on the UCLA campus as the first Online Learning Library Assistant, where I create online modules to supplement classroom learning. In the future, I will continue my education and get my MLIS degree. I am in love with libraries, and am excited to learn more about everything digital libraries have to offer, and ways I can offer to digital libraries!
DLF Forum Cross-Pollinator Fellowships for Museum Practitioners
The DLF community is always looking for ways to expand the conversation around digital collections and related activities and include new perspectives at the Forum. This year, we are actively seeking participation from those who work with digital collections and services in museums in order to enrich our understanding of how cultural heritage organizations operate, add value, and serve our social mission in a networked world.
Through generous support of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the DLF program was able to offer four travel stipends to support travel and registration for museum professionals who have not attended a previous DLF Forum to join us for the 2014 Forum.
Caroline Dechert
I am the Librarian and Archivist of the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I’m always looking for new connections, opportunities for collaboration, and fresh ways to make information more discoverable, so it is very exciting to be able to attend the Forum this year. Our Museum faces real challenges in preserving and presenting digital material. I hope attending the Forum will help me find creative answers for us, for our sister institutions in the Museum of New Mexico, and for other arts libraries and archives.
Jana Hill
In my role as Collection Information and Imaging Manager, I use skills traditionally associated with both the library and museum professions to create, manage, and promote the Amon Carter Museum of American Art’s vast digital collections. The DLF Forum presents an exciting opportunity to hear of developments in the field of digital collections, and also to learn how my library colleagues have fostered collaboration and innovation through digital projects. I am looking forward to joining the DLF community in Atlanta and contributing to a growing dialogue between libraries and museums as both fields explore the use and advancement of cultural heritage information.
As a curator of Wistariahurst Museum, an historic house museum located in Holyoke, Massachusetts, I am responsible for collection pieces and our full research archive of manuscript and document collections relating to local history, industrial history, and the William Skinner Family, 19th century silk manufacturers. Recognizing the importance of digitizing these collections in order to provide wider access to the rich, historical materials in our care, I am looking forward to attending the DLF Forum so that I can get assistance developing a more comprehensive and well thought out digital archives management plan. In addition, as an historic records advisory board member and volunteer for various support organizations that assist small historical institutions, I am eager to share what I have learned about digitizing collections efficiently, and to help others to develop their own digital asset management programs. I love to network with other professionals who face similar challenges, and look forward to developing some working relationships in the field of digital archives/libraries management.
I am the Archivist at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) and a Community Representative for the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). Since beginning at the IMA in January 2014, I have become involved in digital collections initiatives that the museum is currently pursuing—initiatives to expose both the museum’s permanent collection of artwork and the special collections of the IMA Archives in the digital realm. I am particularly interested in exploring the many possibilities for making digital objects and associated metadata available to a variety of audiences in dynamic new ways. Through my work as a DPLA Community Rep, and now by attending the 2014 DLF Forum, I hope to encourage more collaboration between the library, archives, and museum communities, all of which are engaged in cutting-edge digital collections work and stand to gain a lot from increased collaboration.
