Digital Pioneers

Interview Date: March 4, 2010 Denver, Colorado Summary: The first lesson Besser learned was that the most important things one should not take on alone and that things are best done in groups. Second is that you need a short range plan to fit into a long range vision. Having a vision of the future [...]

Interview date: March 4, 2010 Summary: Ray believes if something is worth doing, and worth doing well, people don’t want to have to keep reinventing the wheel. Digitization is an important part of strategy for all types of collections. People think of digitization primarily in regards to access, but it is more than just that. [...]

Interview date: March 4, 2010 Summary: Ray has seen the IMLS struggle with how much it can take on in a single project.  Ray found the best thing to do when narrowing a project is to ask people who the audience is.  When writing content , one has to try and show the audience that [...]

Interview date: March 4, 2010 Summary: Ray, coming from an archiving background, first faced the challenge of gaining more knowledge about libraries. She had to develop the knowhow to make decisions that would allow The Institute of Museum and Library Sources (IMLS)  to achieve their goals. The IMLS is the first and only funding agency [...]

Interview date: March 4, 2010 Summary: Ray began as a special collections librarian and became involved with archives early on in her career, working at the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio where she was head of special collections. Ray moved to Washington, D.C. in 1988 and began working at the National Archives, [...]

Interview date: March 4, 2010 Joyce Ray, Associate Deputy Director for Library Services at the US Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) in Washington, D.C., has been with IMLS since 1996. She began directing the agency’s discretionary library programs in 1997. An archivist by training, Ray also has responsibility for both agency-wide digital initiatives [...]

Interview date: December 3, 2009 Liz Bishoff is currently Director of Digital and Preservation Services for the Biographical Center for Research (BCR). She is the former Vice President of Digital Collection Services at the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) and Executive Director of the Collaborative Digitization Program (CDP). She also served as OCLC’s Vice President [...]

Interview date: February 11, 2010 Kaye Howe is the National Science Digital Library’s (NSDL) Core Integration Director. She also leads the Resource Center for the National STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) Digital Library. When the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR) received a grant from the National Science Foundation to start the National Science [...]

Interview date: January 28, 2010 Thornton (Thorny) Staples is currently Director of Community Strategies and Alliances for Duraspace Inc. a private nonprofit organization. He is also director of the Fedora Project, a repository management system created to make open source software available to that contributes to being able to make digital information durable over the [...]