ARL/DLF Forum Fellowship for Underrepresented Groups
In 2010, the Digital Library Federation made a positive change and commitment to being a more open organization, welcoming members from all parts 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 DLF Forum events have been enriched with new, dynamic voices and valuable perspectives.
The DLF Forum is fairly gender-balanced both for speakers and attendees. However, we seek to increase participant diversity. To this end, we began partnering with the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) in 2013 to welcome Forum Fellows from Underrepresented Groups.
I am the Metadata and Technical Services Archivist at Smith College Special Collections, where I lead efforts to develop policies and procedures for archival collection and special collections digital asset management. Previously I served as Project Manager for the Los Angeles Aqueduct Digital Platform at UCLA Library Special Collections and contributed to the development of the UCLA Library Special Collections Digital Project Toolkit. DLF, to me, is the confluence of all things digital—as it relates to the library, special collections, technical services and systems, and research and teaching—and I look forward to learning and thinking through the projects and ideas contributed at DLF. I see participation at the DLF Forum as a means of not only connecting Smith to the individuals and institutions who we see as models for digital initiatives, but also as a way to think deeply about the implications of the digital infrastructure we are planning to implement.
As the first Seminary Archivist at Payne Theological Seminary my primary work involves curating the Payne Theological Seminary and African Methodist Episcopal Church Digital Archive, a collaborative project between the Internet Archive and Princeton Theological Seminary’s Theological Commons Digital Initiative. Prior to joining the staff at Payne Theological Seminary, I served as the Reference and Public Services Librarian and Project Coordinator for the Religion in North Carolina Digital Collection at the Duke Divinity School Library. My research interests include digital literacy, African American religious history and archival evidence of how respective religious traditions engaged with social justice.
The DLF Forum is the perfect environment to dialogue with a diverse group of colleagues about providing quality digital resource instruction that will attract new patrons to our collections and encourage self-mastery of conducting research. I am especially excited about the opportunity the DLF Forum will give me to learn about best practices for curating collections of born-digital materials, building advocacy and support for digital libraries and how small repositories can go about selecting and financially supporting digital platforms. I look forward with great anticipation to hearing how other scholars understand digital inclusion and civic engagement. Website: Shaneemurrain.blogspot.com
Hi! My name is T-Kay Sangwand and I’m the Human Rights Archivist and Librarian for Brazilian Studies at UT Austin. For the past six years, I’ve been working with human rights organizations in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the US on collaborative archiving projects using the post-custodial archival model. I’m currently Co-Principal Investigator on a Mellon funded project, “Post-Custodial Archival Development and Digital Scholarship: Learning from Latin America” that aims to build archival collaborations with archival institutions in Latin America and work closely with scholars to build the resulting digital archival material into their research and teaching in innovative ways. I’m excited to attend DLF for the first time and learn from colleagues who are also engaging in inter-institutional collaborations and implementing digital scholarship initiatives.
As the point person for research data management (RDM) consulting on my campus, I can’t afford to keep a narrow perspective on the work of digital curation. I am curious to see if the wide array of representation at DLF will bear unique, yet transferable, approaches to RDM and the role of digital stewardship and research. I am looking forward to the Forum for the opportunity to learn from a larger landscape of digital scholarship and take that knowledge back to my institution to work towards impactful and sustainable practices. In order to build effective strategies that can be put into practice in a sustainable way, I believe that it is imperative to build a community of practice that is strong and diverse (in all meanings of that word).
DLF + ER&L Cross-Pollinator Travel Award Fellows
Electronic Resources and Libraries (ER&L) and DLF are pleased to announce the recipients of two travel grants to the 2015 DLF Forum.
The purpose of these grants is to extend the opportunity to attend the DLF Forum to two library professionals who would not typically be able to go, but who can envision and articulate a connection with their ER&L-related work and who see great value in building a dynamic and diverse peer network. The cross-pollinator grants are also part of an ongoing effort to explore connections between these two communities. In turn, DLF and ER&L will come together to support DLF community members in attending the ER&L 2016 conference.
Kelsey Brett
I am very excited to be attending the DLF Forum this fall as an ER&L cross-pollinator. As the Discovery Systems Librarian, my goal is to promote the discovery and access of all of the Libraries’ resources through a single interface. This goes beyond traditional print materials and subscribed electronic resources and extends to digital repository collections, digitized resources, data sets, and more. I hope to learn more about digital collections at the DLF forum, so that I can improve the discovery and access of such materials for the library users at the University of Houston.
I am Acquisitions and E-Resources Librarian at Northwestern University’s Galter Health Sciences Library, supporting the Feinberg School of Medicine along with several affiliated hospitals. While most of my day-to-day work is focused on managing electronic resources, I am also interested in digital collections, repositories, metadata, user experience and open access. I am excited to be given the opportunity to attend this year’s DLF Forum and learn from colleagues working in similar fields. In order for us to meet our users’ constantly evolving research and informational needs, collaboration is essential.
DLF Forum Museum Cross-Pollinators
For the second year, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and the DLF are supporting fellowships for practicing museum professionals seeking more exposure on the trends in digital libraries. 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.
The goal of these fellowships is to bring cross-pollinators—museum professionals who can provide unique perspectives to our work and share a vision of the cultural heritage world from their perspective—to the conference. In our increasingly networked world, we hope to increase communication between all groups interested in the future of digital resources, including museums, libraries, colleges and universities, and anyone working in the realm of digital collections and services.
As the Web Archiving Coordinator for the New York Art Resources Consortium (NYARC), I manage the project coordination and key deliverables for implementation of NYARC’s ambitious web archiving program. I’m working to create and document effective workflow procedures for capture, accessibility, description, and preservation of born-digital art resources at NYARC, which consists of the research libraries of The Frick Art Reference Library, The Museum of Modern Art, and The Brooklyn Museum. I’m very excited to attend my first DLF Forum this fall in Vancouver and am grateful for the opportunity to make new connections, gain insight, and share information with colleagues from diverse perspectives in the museum and library environments.
As manager of Digital Asset Systems, my primary responsibility is to preserve and provide access to the digital collections of the Dallas Museum of Art. I rely on my library and information science background to do this, and as I continue to develop professionally, it has become clear to me that museums, archives, and libraries face similar challenges when it comes to digital initiatives. Working with large data sets, data integration across multiple systems, and linked open data are topics relevant to current DMA initiatives and I look forward to discussing these in particular with colleagues at the DLF Forum. Website: neilsreenan.com
Bojana Vidović
Working in the library at National Museum Zrenjanin opens many doors and enables me to learn and work in varied fields of interest. Besides caring for literature required by our users, I am also in charge of the old and rare books collection, organize exhibitions and workshops with children, and edit articles for the museum’s catalogues. Recently, I was honored to represent my institution in Glasgow, Scotland after we were nominated for the 2015 European Museum of the Year Award (EMYA).
Hopefully, my participation at the Forum will help me develop digital media strategies and look into new business models, so as to manage our digital content with creativity. I also hope we will discuss the boundaries between new technologies and cultural heritage in museums and libraries, especially concerning their interpretation, consumption and interaction with audiences.
Scott Williams
I have been involved in museum technology for six years and serve as the Data & Database Administrator for the Yale Art Gallery since 2013. I look forward to learning about the collection, preservation and publication of born-digital objects as well as linked data projects, especially those which combine museum, library and archives datasets. I am also very interested in anything related to controlled vocabularies and their use in discovery systems or alternative methods for resource discovery.
DLF Forum Students and New Professionals Fellows
The DLF community welcomes newcomers to the profession and new voices at its annual DLF Forum. To further this aim, we continue to provide DLF Forum Fellowships for Students and New Professionals to attend the 2015 DLF Forum.
The DLF community includes staff who work in cultural heritage organizations 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. The Forum is an excellent place to hear about the latest advances in digital librarianship, to meet new colleagues and contacts, and to get involved with DLF initiatives.
Celia Emmelhainz
As a data librarian, I help students find resources for their research projects, as well as run a collaborative blog for librarians at databrarians.org. And as an anthropologist, I’m interested in how we can safely store text, video, and images from ethnographic projects (“qualitative data archiving”) and safely share these cultural notes to increase our understanding of local communities. I have an MLIS in library science from Kent State, and an MA in anthropology from Texas A&M—I’d love to talk with you if we have shared interests!
Angela Galvan
As Digital Resources and Systems Librarian for SUNY Geneseo, I work to refine discovery tools, improve access to content, and conduct outreach for digital resources. I administer a variety of systems with an eye toward interoperability and efficiency. My research centers on the exchange between scholarly communication, digital humanities, and resource sharing. I am excited about this year’s Liberal Arts Colleges Pre-Conference, sessions on open source software, and finding opportunities to support library-wide initiatives through resource sharing.
At the time of award, I was Digital Reformatting Specialist and Head of Interlibrary Services for The Ohio State University Health Sciences Library. I have an MLIS from Kent State University, where I researched digital memorials and the impact of technology on bereavement.
As the Library Fellow for Research Data Management at MIT, I work within the Libraries’ Data Management Services Team to provide tools and expertise to our community for managing their research products during all stages of the data lifecycle. Prior to transitioning to librarianship and attending the University of Washington’s iSchool, I was the Program Manager for the Broad Institute’s Chemical Biology Program where I worked to enable communication and collaboration among biomedical researchers. Throughout my career, I have cultivated my interests at the intersection of research communications, management, and optimization, and I look forward to this opportunity to interact and brainstorm with the DLF community!
I am a second-year Knowledge River scholar and an ARL/SAA Mosaic Fellow, part of a community of MLIS professionals committed to working on behalf of underrepresented and marginalized groups. A Chicana born outside the U.S., I have worked as library instructor with the Pima County Public Library for years, focused on providing access to information for our local Hispanic and Native peoples; after recent work with Special Collections at both the UA and UC San Diego, my goal now is to also ensure that our communities have a documented presence in the archives as well as access and an understanding of what those archives contain. A firm believer in interdisciplinary collaboration, I am eager to attend the DLF Forum to network and exchange ideas on the use of digital tools for effective outreach, the optimization of catalogs and repositories to facilitate discovery, access and preservation of cultural materials, and to further efforts in indigenous language revitalization.
VRA + DLF Cross-Pollinator Travel Grant Fellow
The Visual Resources Association (VRA) and the DLF are pleased to support a Cross-Pollinator Travel Grant for the 2015 DLF Forum.
The goal of the VRA + DLF Cross-Pollinator Travel Grant is to bring a cross-pollinator—a visual resources professional working in a library, archive, museum, or academic setting who can provide a unique perspective with DLF and share a vision of the digital library world from their perspective—to the conference. The grant recipient can envision and articulate a connection with their work and sees great value in building a dynamic and diverse peer network.
The Cross-Pollinator Travel Grant is a reciprocal program between the DLF and VRA. The program will also bring a digital library practitioner who typically attends the DLF Forum to the 2016 ARLIS/NA + VRA conference.
Andrea Schuler
I’m the Visual Resources Librarian for Islamic Architecture in the Aga Khan Documentation Center (AKDC) at MIT, part of the MIT Libraries. In that role, I provide access to the Documentation Center’s visual collections for the MIT community and for a worldwide community of users. As part of the AKDC team, I also contribute content to Archnet, the largest open, online architectural library with a focus on Muslim cultures. This will be my first DLF Forum, and I’m looking forward to meeting a new community of people, learning about the work being done at other institutions, and the opportunity to bring back new ideas to MIT and to VRA. I’m excited to represent VRA at the Forum, and for increased communication and collaboration between the two organizations.
