The following Fedora community members were nominated for the 2020 Fedora Leadership Group election.
Bronze Members
1 seat is up for election
| Name | Organization | Title/Role | Personal Statement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oliver Schöner | Berlin State Library | Repository Manager | I am a repository manager at Berlin State Library, having introduced Fedora 4 five years ago. Our infrastructure consists of several Fedora 4 instances of different sizes and purposes. Being the library a Lyrasis partner for quite a time, I am engaging in the German and world-wide Fedora community as a participant and speaker in conferences and Fedora camps. In 2018, we hosted a camp at Berlin State Library. In my everyday-work, I find, and that not being restricted to repository systems, that migration of data is one of the most important and sometimes painful tasks for IT staff in libaries. Whereas in classical relational databases this is comparably easy, in other systems including repositories it can be a challenge. So my main concern, being elected, will be to strengthen Fedora's attempts to facilitate data migrations and make data more independent from (any) application. The OCFL strategy is a good way to make Fedora even more attractive for libraries. |
| Melissa Anez | Islandora Foundation | Project & Community Manager | I am the Project & Community Manager for the Islandora Foundation and have worked with Fedora since 2012. I work closely with a community that has over 300 sites using Fedora — mostly Fedora 3 at this point. I am keen on promoting the benefits of the latest versions of Fedora, especially the upcoming features of Fedora 6, and helping people to make the migration. This year I helped to host the first joint Islandora/Fedora camp in Arizona, and I have been seeking more ways to build stronger ties between the Islandora and Fedora communities, and to increase awareness in the Islandora community about Fedora and how it is built and maintained. I am based in New Brunswick, Canada, but the Islandora community is international. If elected, this would be my second term on the Leadership Group. |
| Thomas Bernhart | Docuteam GmbH | Project Manager | I have been working for Docuteam since 2014. Docuteam is a provider for archiving and information management services in Switzerland that implements digital archives with Fedora in Europe, mostly in Switzerland. We started using Fedora in 2009 and, since then, have created a set of open source Java/Ruby applications to provide ingest operations and handle submission and dissemination information packages. We've prepared to move on to Fedora 4, but postponed finalizing and migrating several times based on the Fedora roadmap. One of our main goals for the nearer future is to migrate our infrastructure to Fedora 6, which is why we're eager to participate in early adopter tests - especially for migration from 3 to 6. We're also working on a fully linked data-based standard for archival descriptions and a software stack that implements/uses this standard on top of Fedora. I've always been very interested in open source software projects, and I would be happy to contribute to the future development of the Fedora project. I have a good overview of the needs of digital archives which I'm happy to feed back into the fedora community. |
Silver Members
1 seat is up for election
| Name | Organization | Title/Role | Personal Statement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Este Pope | Amherst College | Head of Digital Programs | As head of the digital programs department at Amherst College, I’m responsible for the strategic direction of library digital collections. While my experience with Fedora began in 2017 when I arrived at Amherst and began supervising the developer and committer contributions of our institution to the Fedora project, my admiration for Fedora goes back to the early 2000’s when I watched the project develop from afar as a digital library systems analyst. I’ve had the opportunity to serve on Fedora Leaders and Steering for the past three years. I’m excited by the possibility to continue contributing to the Fedora community as a member of the leadership team. I value the longevity, flexibility, and care that I see in the work of maintaining Fedora software and in the community that guides this work. I was glad to be part of the Advisory Board for the IMLS-funded “Designing a migration path” planning grant for Fedora, and look forward to seeing the future of Fedora 6. Contributing time to Fedora leaders is important to me as a way to connect with peers from all types of institutions, and because I think it is essential to have academy-driven options for library digital infrastructure. |
Gold Members
3 seats are up for election
| Name | Organization | Title/Role | Personal Statement |
|---|---|---|---|
| Emily Gore | University of Tennessee, Knoxville | Asst. Dean, Digital Initiatives & Technology Infrastructure | I have spent a large portion of my career being an advocate for open source, open GLAM, preservation and supporting the broad sharing of our collections. As co-chair of the Rights Statements working group, I worked to build an internationally-adopted de facto standard that promotes a common framework for expression of rights information for our digital collections, and I am still working to increase adoption as chair of the implementation task force. My work to build out the hubs network at the Digital Public Library of America connected me with many digital libraries across the country, and I had the chance to advocate for broad sharing of collections and preservation of collections. At Florida State as Associate Dean, I advocated for the adoption of Fedora and Islandora as a statewide platform that supported open standards. Now at UT, I continue to work with the same platforms. I am a current member of the Board of Directors for the Islandora Foundation and have previously served on the Lyrasis Board of Directors and as a founding member of the Open Access Network Board. I have a deep understanding of non-profits in cultural heritage, having worked at DPLA and DPN and having served on non-profit boards. Fedora has been and continues to be a leader among open source platforms in our field, and I have experience working with it as a platform and have admired the work of the community for numerous years. I would welcome the opportunity to serve as a member of Fedora Leaders. |
| Tim Shearer | University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill | Associate University Librarian for Digital Strategies & Information Technology and Interim Head of Technical Services | UNC Libraries have been using Fedora as the core technology in the Carolina Digital Repository since 2010. We have just released a new version of our institutional repository using Hyrax 2.4 and Fedora 4.7, at the same time converting from a local data model to PCDM. With a target release of late 2020, we are also working towards a refreshed repository for our library managed collections. This will also involve a conversion from a local data model to PCDM and we are targeting Fedora 5 as the foundational technology. We have been engaged in the Fedora community and contributed developer time to Fedora 3, 4, and 5 as well as to the Samvera and Hyrax communities. UNC's commitment to Lyrasis, Fedora, and the Samvera community has only grown with the relatively recent adoption of an Open Access policy for the UNC's campus. Tim Shearer is Associate University Librarian for Digital Strategies and IT and is ultimately responsible for repository development at Carolina. He has served on both Fedora Leaders and Fedora Steering. |
At-Large Community Members
1 seat is up for election
| Name | Organization | Title/Role | Personal Statement |
|---|---|---|---|
