Last updated: Feb 26, 2024
The following people have already confirmed their participation in the Week:
Renaud Adam, Digitisation Project Manager, University of Liège (Belgium) [LinkedIn]
Historian of early modern books, Renaud Adam is in charge of the ULiege Library’s digitization unit. He is also a scientific collaborator in the Modern History Department of ULiège University and member of the Gabriel Naudé Center (enssib – Lyon). His work focuses mainly on the book ecosystem in the former Low Countries (15th-17th centuries), with particular attention to socioeconomic issues, cultural transfers, and the reception of Italian culture. He has addressed these themes in several books, including Vivre et imprimer dans les Pays-Bas méridionaux (des origines à la Réforme), published by Brepols in 2018 – awarded the prestigious 2022 ILAB Breslauer Prize for Bibliography (3rd prize).
Laurent Aucher, Head of IT Department – Digital Library Project Manager, Université Paris Cité (France) [LinkedIn]
During his long career in academic libraries, Laurent Aucher has worked on almost every aspect of librarianship: ILL, serials, electronic resource, digitization, team management, staff training and more. Since 1997, he has managed numerous library systems and website projects worldwide. He is also involved in non-profit associations such as ACEF (French-speaking group of Ex Libris users) and AUFO (French-speaking group of Omeka users). Over the past ten years, he has taken a particular interest in the dissemination of digital collections.
Eva Auseja, Digital Service Librarian, National Library of Latvia (Latvia) [LinkedIn]
Eva Auseja is an accomplished librarian and digital preservation expert. She is the project manager of the Industriālais mantojums (Industrial Heritage) and Digitālā bibliotēka (Digital Library), both project that aims to digitize Latvia’s cultural heritage. She is also a member of the Europeana Pro Community. Auseja is passionate about preserving Latvia’s cultural heritage and ensuring that it is accessible to future generations. She is a valuable asset to the Latvian library community and an inspiration to others who are working to preserve cultural heritage.
Saskia van Bergen, Head Services & Collection Information Special Collections, Leiden University (Netherlands) [LinkedIn]
Art historian and medieval studies scholar, finished my PhD in 2007. From 2008 to 2022, I worked as Project Manager in Leiden, overseeing digital heritage projects. Key projects include implementing ArchivesSpace and Islandora, enhancing access to special collections, and managing digitization initiatives. Prior to that, I worked for the first Dutch large scale digitization project for 18th ct books at the Royal Library and worked for a database for medieval manuscripts. Part-time lecturer at the University of Amsterdam from 2001 to 2007. An experienced professional with a passion for preserving and promoting cultural heritage. I live with my partner, chickens and cats on a 19th century farm near Leiden.
Junior Browne, Librarian, University of the West Indies (Barbados)
Junior Browne is the current Head of the Faculty of Law Library and the CLR James Cricket Research Centre at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus in Barbados. In addition to being the lead administrator for these libraries, he is also engaged in developing innovative solutions to ensure that there is access to these unique cultural and heritage collections. He has been a librarian for almost 30 years and has worked in all areas of the Faculty of Law Library – including acquisitions, cataloguing and public services.
Joris Colla, Data Manager ODIS and Heritage Expert, KADOC-KU Leuven – Documentation and Research Centre on Religion, Culture and Society (Belgium)
Historian and master in International Relations. Since 2009, I work at KADOC, the Documentation and Research Centre on Religion, Culture and Society of KU Leuven. I am the data manager of ODIS (authority database on the history of civil society) and coordinator of the ODIS renewal project 2022-2027 (FWO – Research Foundation Flanders). As a heritage expert, I support archive creators in the care for and valorization of their documentary heritage. I am also involved in several (digital) heritage projects, such as the citizen science project ‘Chapels in Flanders’. My research mainly focuses on the religious and cultural history of Belgium in the long nineteenth century.
Nicolas Di Méo, Head of the Collections Department, University of Strasbourg (France)
Nicolas Di Méo is the head of the Collections Department at the Strasbourg University Libraries. He is responsible for the definition and the implementation of the university documentary, cataloging, conservation, and digitization policies. Before that, he has worked for the French Ministry of Research and Higher Education and was in charge of evaluating documentary projects. As a scholar he holds a PhD in French literature. He has published more than 30 articles and 3 academic books on twentieth century French and Francophone Literatures.
Mălina Duță, Special Collections Librarian, Central University Library ‘Eugen Todoran’ Timisoara (Romania)
Mălina Duță is a Special Collections librarian working mainly with research archives and atypical items and resources. Her main focus within the Special Collection unit is the Oral History Archive, a corpus of documents meant for socio-anthropological research in areas such as intergenerational memory transmission and immaterial heritage. Currently a PhD candidate, Mălina’s academic interests are centered around migration studies and intercultural identities.
Nele Gabriels, Digitisation Process Manager and Policy, KU Leuven (Belgium) [LinkedIn]
Trained as a historical musicologist (PhD 2010), I currently work at KU Leuven Libraries where I am responsible for the domain of digitization. Besides developing the library’s digitization processes and managing the many different projects for both heritage and modern collections, my work also focuses on digitization policies and on how to incorporate new approaches to digitised collections into the library’s core activities. In this context, I have set up various experiments with collections as data, including the organization of the BiblioTech 2023 Hackathon and the dataset preparation this required.
Olivier Ghuzel, Document and Software Engineer, Université Paris Cité (France)
A bit literary, a bit software engineer, raising digital library ecosystems for a dozen years.
Despoina Gkogkou, Librarian, University of Patras (Greece) [LinkedIn]
Despoina Gkogkou worked as a librarian in various institutions in Greece before working at the Library and Information Center of University of Patras (2008), where she is mainly responsible for the institutional repository. She holds a PhD and a Master of Arts in Modern Greek Literature and a Diploma in Archive and Library Science. Due to her research in the literary field of Greek periodicals in the first half of the 20th century, she became highly involved with the Library’s digital collections and participated in the LIBER Digital Humanities Working Group. Her interest for periodical studies and the data she has collected working with Greek magazines led to a new project, in collaboration with the Department of Philology – a database for the translations of literary works published in the Greek press. Even though she lives in Greece, she always moves around the city on a bicycle, never by car and loves mountain hikes.
Dália Guerreiro, Librarian, Lisbon School of Economics and Management (Portugal) [LinkedIn]
Dália Guerreiro holds a PhD in Information and Communication Sciences in 2018 from the University of Évora. She is an integrated researcher at the Interdisciplinary Centre for History, Culture and Societies (CIDEHUS), University of Évora. She is co-manager of the Digital Cultural Heritage Working Group (GT-PCD) at the Portuguese Association of Librarians, Archivists, Information and Documentation Professionals (BAD). She is a librarian at the Library Francisco Pereira de Moura at the Higher Institute of Economics and Management of the University of Lisbon (ISEG), University of Lisbon, where, besides the public attendance service, she maintains the library’s website and co-manages the catalogue and the repository of the ISEG, as well as in charge for collecting the library’s statistical data and preparing the respective reports.
Saga Jacksen, Information Specialist, National Library of Finland (Finland) [LinkedIn]
I work at the National Library of Finland within the Finna services, focusing particularly on user experience design and research. My role involves collaboration with museums, archives, and libraries. I recently graduated from the Master’s program in Cultural Heritage at the University of Helsinki, majoring in ethnology and minoring in museology. I am passionate about cultural heritage and I aim to expand my practical knowledge in the field.
Laura Moré, Special Collections Librarian, University of Girona (Spain)
Graduate in Librarianship and Documentation by the University of Barcelona and graduate in Documentation by the Open University of Catalonia. I specialized in Bibliographic heritage with a postgraduate and a master degree in Heritage Libraries and Collections both by the University of Barcelona. I am currently engaged in a doctorate program at the University of Barcelona in order to write my thesis on the ingress of personal archives in Catalan university libraries. I work at the Library of the University of Girona in the Technical Processing section and I am the Special Collections curator.
Cécile Oger, Special Collections Curator, University of Liège (Belgium) [LinkedIn]
Cécile Oger is an art historian specializing in the technological and archaeometric analysis of ancient paintings, and curator of the collections of manuscripts, old and rare books at ULiège Library. Her research is devoted to the study of ancient painting techniques. She works mainly on illuminated manuscripts and easel paintings from the Ancient Low Countries and the Principality of Liège from the 15th and 16th centuries.
Riitta Peltonen, Lead UX Designer, National Library of Finland (Finland) [LinkedIn]
Riitta Peltonen has long career with user-centered design and background in usability engineering and service design, first in IT industry and the last 7 years as Lead UX Designer of the Finna Services of The National Library of Finland. In Finna Riitta is responsible of driving service to develop its user experience and user centered design processes. Part of this work has been e.g. renewing the concept of national search service Finna.fi to better serve the approachability and reuse of Finnish cultural heritage, library and research based materials. Currently Riitta also holds responsibilities as substitute Development manager of Finna Services.
Annika Peurell, Team leader Publication Infrastructure & Media, KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden) [LinkedIn]
My name is Annika Peurell and I work as a Team leader at KTH Library in Stockholm. My focus area at KTH is Collection Development and Publication Infrastructure. The importance of, and the challenges and opportunities in all aspects of cultural and research collections at archives, libraries and museums are of great interest to me. I started with degrees in Library and Information Science, Art History and Ethnology about 20 years ago. Since then, I have been working at several Cultural Heritage and Research institutions, as head of collections and projects including acquisition, preservation, metadata, research, digitization and digital accessibility.
François Renaville, Head of Library Systems, University of Liège (Belgium) [LinkedIn]
François Renaville studied linguistics, literature, and translation. He joined the University of Liège Library as a subject librarian in 2001. He has been working on library systems since 2005. Since 2022, he has been a member of the IGeLU (International Group of Ex Libris Users) Steering Committee and has been coordinating the “Systems & Data” unit at ULiège Library. He is interested in discoverability, integrations, delivery and user services.
Gislene Rodrigues da Silva, Librarian and Post-doctorate in Knowledge Management and Organization, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (Brazil) [LinkedIn]
PhD in Knowledge Management and Organization (ECI/UFMG), master in Knowledge Management and Organization (ECI/UFMG), postgraduate degree in Document and Information Management (AVM) and graduated from Library Science course at the School of Information Science (UFMG). She is currently the coordinator of the Department’s postgraduate library of Physics at UFMG. She also worked as an information manager at Nitro Imagens LTDA, managing the institution’s photographic collection and coordinating the team for seven years. She is part of the Knowledge Representation and Information Retrieval research group (RECRI/UFMG) and is interested in indexing and representing image content and digital marketing.
Marika Sarvilahti, Information Specialist, Aalto University (Finland) [LinkedIn]
My professional experience is from academic libraries and archives from Finland and the UK with current role at Aalto University, Finland, focusing on archives and special collections. I manage the archive’s collection management system and develop the public facing access portal to the University’s digital cultural heritage. I develop metadata and licensing policies for a harvesting integration with national harvester Finna.fi. In addition to collection management I promote the use of digital cultural heritage in student training and workshops. My passion is in providing students and researchers with knowledge and skills in making the best use of digital cultural heritage in their learning and creative work.
Teresita Scalco, Special Collection Curator, Università Iuav di Venezia (Italy)
Teresita Scalco, design and architectural curator, holds a PhD in Design Studies and Museology at Università Iuav di Venezia in 2013 and the European Master in Architectural History from University Roma Tre. She designed ApOnline, the integrated digital strategy of communication and valorization of cultural heritage of the architectural, design, photography archives kept at Archivio Progetti, the archival and research center that fosters and supports academic activities, both at national and international level. She also curates the digital project of online exhibitions called Petit tour.
Rouven Schabinger, Data and System Specialist, Swiss Library Service Platform (SLSP) (Switzerland)
Rouven Schabinger has been working as a Data & System Specialist at the Swiss Library Service Platform (SLSP) in Zurich since 2023. His main interests relate to the areas of data migration, collection management and third-party integration. Previous positions in his professional and academic career include the topics repositories (re3data.org) and research data management at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology as well as bibliographic and information technological consulting at the Württemberg State Library in Stuttgart (Germany).
Mimi Seyffert-Wirth, Director: Scholarly Communication and Marketing, Stellenbosch University (South Africa)
Mimi Seyffert-Wirth started her career at Stellenbosch as Special Collections in 1997. Since 2013 she has been involved with digitisation and digital repositories. She currently the Director: Scholarly Communication and Marketing, responsible for digital repositories, Open Access initiatives, Marketing and Communication and Special Collections.
Nikol Stepan, Data and System Specialist / Business Analyst, Swiss Library Service Platform (SLSP) (Switzerland) [LinkedIn]
Since 2019, I have worked as a Data & System Specialist at Swiss Library Service Platform (SLSP), including two years coordinating the ‘Discovery’ domain. Starting in 2023, I have taken on the additional role of Business Analyst. I have had the pleasure of contributing to and managing various projects. Prior to SLSP, I served as an information specialist in a cantonal library. Before that, I worked at a school library, where I also taught, my former profession. My academic journey includes degrees in Requirements Engineering, Information Science, and German Studies from the University of Zurich.
With also the exceptional participation of:
Pierre Hallot, Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, University of Liège (Belgium) [LinkedIn]
Pierre Hallot is a full professor and Dean of the Faculty of Architecture at ULiège. His research focuses on geomatics and spatial information theory. He specialises in the study of built heritage and its digitisation.
Francesca Petricca, Training and Consulting Partner, Clarivate [LinkedIn]
Francesca Petricca holds a PhD in Islamic Studies from Martin Luther University – Halle Wittenberg and a Master Degree in History and International Relations from the University Roma Tre. She started her career in publishing in 2012. She joined ProQuest /Clarivate in 2018. Since then she has been in charge of historical collections in different roles. Archives, better if dusty, have always been her passion. She is based in Paris, France.