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Digital Library Center: Organizational Structure

The DLC organizational chart is current as of Fall 2009 and staff bios are available below. The DLC also participates in numerous committees within the Libraries which are listed at the bottom of this page.

People

Laurie Taylor, Interim Director
Laurien@ufl.edu, brief cv, blog, website

Laurie received her PhD in English, focusing on digital media and visual rhetoric (largely video games and comics). Her articles have appeared in various journals and edited collections, including Game Studies, Media/Culture, Computers and Composition Online, Works & Days, and Videogames and Art. Her current research includes methods to digitally represent and contextualize archival materials.

Joining the Digital Library Center in 2007, Laurie is working to better align, integrate, and promote the Digital Collections with the University of Florida. She works closely with the Libraries' subject specialists, University of Florida faculty, student researchers, and courses at the University of Florida. For more information, see her blog about the Digital Library Center or her website.

Randall Renner, Operations and Digital Project Manager
ranrenn@uflib.ufl.edu

Randall Renner received his MFA in Creative Photography in 1997, focusing on the intersections of traditional and digital photography. Before coming to the Digital Library Center in 2002, Randall taught college level courses on computer art and montage, mixed media studio classes, black and white photography, training seminars on various computer applications, and worked as a photographer, photographing rare books, artwork, 3-D models, in a studio environment and on location. His experience in photography spans the entire process, from image capturing via digital or analog methods to the printing and display of the captured images.

Randall is an imaging expert for two and three dimensional objects. He supervises all of the production units in the Digital Library Center (Copy Control/Ingest; Main, Newspaper, and Large Format Imaging; A/V Digitization; Quality Control; Text Processing and Archiving) to ensure quality control of the all production in regards to preservation and presentation. His current projects include digitizing oral histories for the Matheson Museum Digital Collection and the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program and creating three dimensional renderings of the Harn Museum's archival objects.

Lourdes Santamaria-Wheeler, Museum & Special Projects Coordinator
lousant@uflib.ufl.edu, Brief CV

Lourdes Santamaria-Wheeler received her BFA in Creative Photography in 2003 and her MA in Museology in 2009 with her thesis on “Digitizing Museum Collections: The Elmer Harvey Bone Photographic Collection.” Before joining the Digital Library Center in 2005, Lourdes worked in print production. Her museum knowledge and experience is essential to the construction of the Digital Collection display interface as well as to the many exhibit pages and to museum collaborations. At the Digital Library Center, Lourdes coordinates the imaging of all non-newspaper items including books, photographs & slides. She also assists with on-site training in imaging for partner institutions in the Digital Library of the Caribbean. Lourdes is further developing her training, museum, and library experience, building from her Museum Studies research which concentrates on Contemporary and Modern Art as well as technology in museums. Her recent projects include online exhibits for Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept.-Oct. 2009); Architecture Archives @ UF Tour (Oct. 2009); and American Archives Month (Oct. 2009).

Dina Benson, Institutional Repository Coordinator
dbenson@uflib.ufl.edu, Brief CV

Dina received her BA in Philosophy and Classics from the University of Florida and her Masters of Science in Library and Information Studies from Florida State University. Dina oversees all aspects of the Institutional Repository, which is currently in its first development phase. During this first phase Dina coordinates resource collection and development from University of Florida materials to build the Intitutional Repository. Dina also works with the Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Committee and library subject specialists to digitize University of Florida materials related to their collections, as with the IFAS materials and the British Parliamentary Debates, among others.

Carrie Salazar, Library Associate 2, Digital Production Supervisor
carrie28@ufl.edu, Brief CV

Matthew Mariner, Text Processing Unit Head
matmari@uflib.ufl.edu, Brief CV

Matt received his BA in English, focusing on modern literary criticism and film. Matt's film studies background supports his current research in film theory and historic preservation, just as his textual studies background supports his work with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. He is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Historic Preservation at the University of Florida. Matt recently published an article on Optical Character Recognition and its use in digital libraries. Matt is the project manager for the Florida Aerials Phase III grant (10/1/2009- 8/1/2009) to digitize historic aerial photography which will be openly and freely available in the Florida Aerial Photography Digital Collection.

As the Text Processing Unit Head, Matt coordinates all aspects of the text finalization, verification, and archiving processes. This includes supervising metadata (METS) file validation, digital archiving, text processing for Optical Character Recognition, and coordinating data transfer to additional archives and libraries (International Childrens Digital Library, Internet Archives, Library of Congress) and to the Florida Digital Archive for long-term digital preservation.

Traveler Wendell, Digital Imaging Assistant
trawend@uflib.ufl.edu, Brief CV

Will Canova, Newspaper Imaging Coordinator
wcanova@uflib.ufl.edu

After working part-time in the Libraries as a student, Will accepted a position as the first full-time Microfilm Sales Manager in the Preservation Department. As a student, he had worked in the serials section of the Catalog Department and as a newspaper microfilm technician in Preservation, so he was already familiar with the titles available for reproduction in relation to their copyright. Will later became Head of the Microfilming Program within the Reprographics Unit in Preservation, supervising and coordinating microfilm sales and the entire regular microfilming schedule, with Florida newspapers, and Caribbean, African, and Jewish titles. When the Reprographics Unit, which housed both the Microfilming and Brittle Books Programs, moved to the Digital Library Center, Will became the Newspaper Imaging Coordinator. Will transitioned from filming to digitizing newspapers, acquiring new permissions from the publishers and extolling the advantages of online presentation over microfilming for the general public.

Currently concentrating on Florida newspapers, Will’s section will also resume processing Caribbean newspapers for the Digital Library of the Caribbean's Caribbean Newspaper Digital Library in October 2009. As operational efficiencies increase speed of processing, other specialized areas will be added to the Newspaper Imaging Unit. In fall 2009, Will wrote his first Mini-Grant for the Libraries to digitize Florida and Florida-related military newspapers and to continue to sustainably grow the Newspaper Imaging Unit in the process.

Joe Kaleita, Digital Imaging Assistant
joekaleita@ufl.edu, Brief CV

Jane Pen, Metadata & Quality Control
dlcjpen@ufl.edu, Brief CV

Jane received her BA in Library Science from Tamkang University in Taipei, Taiwan and her AS in computer information at Santa Fe Community College. Jane brings a wealth of library experience from all aspects of traditional and digital library operations, and she stays up-to-date in current practices and technologies through continuing education. Before coming to the Digital Library Center, Jane spent three years handling all aspects of library operations at the library of Nuclear Engineering Department at Tsing-Hua University, Taiwan; eight years as a cataloger at Follett Library Resources in Illinois; one year conducting reference service and computer lab assistance at Schaumburg High School in Illinois; and four years as patron services in Florida’s Alachua County Library System. At the Digital Library Center, Jane oversees the Quality Control Unit to ensure the quality, consistency, and completeness of non-newspaper digital products, including textual, visual, and metadata contents. She is also working to enrich the Digital Collection's holdings for Asian studies.

Nelda Schwartz, Bibliographic Control Coordinator
neldas@uflib.ufl.edu
Graduating with a Bachelor’s in Library Science, Nelda decided not to be a public school media specialist and instead plunged into the University of Florida’s library system. Beginning as a clerk-typist in the Catalog Department (creating those cards for filing into the now-a-historic-memory Union Card Catalog), working her way up with five promotions and two department changes after 19 years in Cataloging, spending 13 years in the Preservation Department as the Coordinator of the Brittle Books Program, she is currently the Gatekeeper of the Digital Library Center, maintaining the flow of materials from incoming through completion of digitization and disposition of the physical objects afterwards.

While running the Brittle Books Program, she managed all of the print materials microfilming grants, including those from Solinet, NEH and RLG, covering materials from the Caribbean Basin and Africa as well as specialized grants of Baldwin Children’s Collection titles, Daniel DeFoe writings, French drama pamphlets, American slavery documents, Theological pamphlets, historic Florida agricultural publications and the Writers Project Administration materials, She also included non-granted general brittle materials from the Open Stacks as budget permitted, including over 8,000 Judaica titles. Her first grant was the RLG Caribbean Basin grant, where she nearly doubled the projected amount of titles without going over budget, increasing the grant from 4500 to 7600 volumes, developing the solid reputation for UF being a microfilming grant “can do” University.

She has won three Davis Productivity Awards. Two as a team member of groups winning in both Cataloging and Preservation, and earning a solo award for managing three department sections simultaneously in Preservation (Brittle Books, Thesis and Dissertation Binding, Serial Binding) as well as authoring procedure manuals for them. She is on her DROP countdown and will have completed 40 years of service when she retires at the end of 2010.

Mark Sullivan, Digital Library Programmer (Systems)
marsull@uflib.ufl.edu, Brief CV

Mark Sullivan is responsible for the software development of the digital library management system of UF. He leads the
development of the deployment and customization of an enterprise-level open source digital library management system. Sullivan authored the dLOC metadata submission toolkit that enables Caribbean and U.S. partners to send images and metadata to a centralized processing system. Sullivan plays an integral role in the application of all existing and new technological innovations to improve accessibility and usability of resources.

Location

The Digital Library Center is located in the George A. Smathers Libraries on the campus of the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida. The Center's offices are located on the second floor of the Smathers Library, in room 200. However, staff from through-out the Libraries and, indeed, across the University collaborate to plan and carry out the Center's programs and projects.

DLC Representatives on Committees and Groups within the Libraries

  • Grants Management Committee (rep: Randall for 2008-2011)
  • Emerging Technologies Advisory Group (rep: Traveler for 2009-)
  • Convocation Planning Committee (rep: Jane for 2009-)
  • Employee Recognition Committee (rep: Assistant 2, TBA for 2009-2011)
  • Open Access Task Force; AGRSSR; (rep: Laurie for 2009-)
  • TSS (rep: Laurie for 2009-)
  • Digital Dialogue [Informal group for coordinating technical aspects of project support with Preservation, CatMet, GIS, Special Collections, and others] (rep: Laurie and Randall for 2008-)
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