NDSA is happy to announce the 2024 slate of Coordinating Committee (CC) candidates. Elections will soon be held for three (3) CC members. The CC is dedicated to ensuring a strategic direction for NDSA, to the advancement of NDSA activities to achieve community goals, and to further communication among digital preservation professionals and NDSA member organizations. The CC is responsible for reviewing and approving NDSA membership applications and publications; updating eligibility standards for membership in the alliance, and other strategic documents; engaging with stakeholders in the community; and working to enroll new members committed to our core mission. The successful candidates will each serve a three-year term. Ballots will be sent to membership organization contacts shortly.

Kari May

Kari is a full-time digital preservationist for the University of Pittsburgh Library System. She became one of the university’s NDSA representatives and a member of the Excellence (Innovation) Awards Working Group (EAWG) in 2019. In 2023, Kari became a Co-Chair for the EAWG and has sought to increase transparency and ensure equity and inclusion in all aspects of EAWG processes by initiating new activities and encouraging more standardization in completing and documenting the awards cycle. Kari has also been a member of the NDSA DigiPres Planning Committee (PC) for 2022 and the 2023 Storage Survey Working Group and is currently a member of the Events Strategy Working Group. Her work with other professional organizations includes Co-Chair of the 2025 BPE Program Committee, member of DLF PC 2020-2024, member of LD4 PC 2022, Digital Preservation Coalition Digital Preservation Awards guest Judge 2022, and member of SAA Collection Management Steering Committee 2023-2025.

Kari feels that digital stewardship challenges continue to expand and require professionals to provide creative solutions supported by limited resources. Working with the Coordinating Committee would offer an opportunity to encourage valuable connections throughout the field of digital stewardship and offer strategies to foster collaboration to maximize benefits for all.

Matt McEniry

Matt McEniry is the Director of the Digital Scholarship Lab at Texas Tech University Libraries. The Lab provides digital preservation, digitization, and data management services for TTU and Lubbock organizations. His areas of expertise include project management, digital preservation, digitization, metadata description, data management, and copyright curation. Matt is currently working on a publication describing the complex working relationships between archives, collection owners, and digitization labs. He has previously presented on his work with community partners and their digital collections at DigiPres 2023 and DigiPres 2024 Redux. 

Matt first became involved in the NDSA in 2013 with the Infrastructure Working Group and helped with the Innovation awards until 2015. In 2023 he served on the DigiPres 2023 Planning Committee and is the current co-chair of the Excellence Awards Working Group. He along with his co-chair, Kari May, helped to successfully plan and present the awards at DigiPres 2023. Having worked with the Strategy Team to help update NDSA’s Foundational Strategy, Matt wants to be able to help see these goals and strategies through as part of the Coordinating Committee. He wants to learn from the committee and engage with NDSA on a broader level, especially during this time of transition.

Margo Padilla

Margo Padilla is the Digital Preservation Librarian at New York University where she unifies strategies and processes across the Division of Libraries to facilitate the preservation of digital resources. Prior to NYU, she was the Digital Archivist at the New-York Historical Society where she led the development of infrastructure for collecting, preserving, and providing access to born-digital collections. Margo recently served as a member of the National Best Practices for Archival Accessioning Working Group born-digital accessioning and digital preservation subgroup, and previously participated in Collective Responsibility: National Forum on Labor Practices for Grant-Funded Digital Positions. 

Margo received her MLIS with a concentration in Management, Digitization, and Preservation of Cultural Heritage and Records from San José State University and her undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Margo is interested in furthering the conversation on reliance on contingent labor in cultural heritage organizations, as well as advancing digital preservation best practices that can be realistically implemented by differently resourced institutions. She brings active engagement to committee work and believes the value of NDSA membership is derived from the collective dedication of the digital preservation community, as exemplified by the Interest and Working Groups.

Max Prud’homme

Patrice-Andre (Max) Prud’homme, PhD, is the Director of Digital Curation at Oklahoma State University. He provides leadership and management in the areas of digital curation, preservation, and discovery of digital resources, developing and applying digital and computational methods to augment the value of digital archival materials. He recently served on the 2023 NDSA Storage Survey Working Group. He served on the NDSA Membership Working Group, collaborating on writing membership engagement proposals, and on the 2021 NDSA Fixity Survey Working Group. He has also served as a Project Lead, instructor, and advisor in Digital POWRR since its inception in 2011, and helped bring one of the Digital POWRR Institutes to the Oklahoma State University campus in June 2024. He also serves as Digital Archivist for a five-year grant program funded by the Senate Historical Office. He is the former Head of Digital Collections at Illinois State University. Max looks forward to advancing the NDSA mission by advocating for greater collaboration and participation with other communities (including engaging students and new professionals). His goal is to augment sustainable knowledge-sharing in the area of digital stewardship to benefit the greater digital preservation community. 

Tuelo Ntlotlang

Tuelo Ntlotlang is a Subject Librarian at Botswana International University of Science and Technology (BIUST) Library, who is actively engaged in open science and digital scholarship initiatives. She is enthusiastic about open access and digital preservation activities in BIUST. Tuelo has sold the open science movement to BIUST research community, and then established an institutional repository (BIUSTRE) that focuses on ensuring that BIUST intellectual output remains accessible to the global community. She is also actively involved in advocating for adoption of open science and open access at a national level, working closely with Botswana Open Data Policy Working Group as a secretariat and Botswana Library Consortium Board Members as a treasurer. Furthermore, Tuelo is a standing committee member of IFLA Academic and Research Libraries (ARL) Section serving in the webinar team, where webinars are organized to address the new trends in academic and research libraries globally, including open science and digital preservation. 

She is pleased to report that she contributed to IFLA ARL, receiving the Dynamic Unit and Impact Award at the IFLA Conference in 2021. Therefore, Tuelo believes that her strong academic and intellectual abilities coupled with her experiences and skills acquired position her in good stead to perform well on the NDSA Coordinating Committee (CC). Tuelo holds a Master’s degree in library and information studies from University of Botswana. She vows to bring experience and welcomes the opportunity to engage in an environment that she will work with diverse community of peers and colleagues in NDSA Coordinating Committee (CC). Tuelo understands that time and effort will be required to understand, support and represent the interests of the group, therefore she is willing to make that effort.

Kathryn Slover 

Kathryn Slover has been the Digital Archivist at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) Libraries since August 2020. In this position she leads the exploration, evaluation, and implementation of methods, tools, and systems related to the preservation of born-digital and digitized content. She manages the web archiving program at UTA as well as works with donors and record creators to transfer digital materials to the archives. In addition to her digital preservation work, she also leads the departments collecting efforts related to LGBTQ+ materials in Tarrant County. 

Kathryn earned a Bachelor of Arts in History from the University of Redlands in 2014 and obtained a Master of Arts in Public History from Middle Tennessee State University in 2016. Prior to her current role at UTA, she previously served as the Electronic Processing Archivist at the South Carolina Department of Archives and History (from 2018-2020) and as the Archives Assistant at the Rutherford County Archives (from 2016-2018). She has been a Certified Archivist since 2020 and recently served on the NDSA Storage Survey Working Group from 2023-2024.

Sylvia Umana

Sylvia is a dedicated Digital Collections Librarian at the Namibia University of Science and Technology Library with a deep passion for her role in preserving and managing digital assets. She holds a Master’s degree in Library and Information Science from the University of Namibia in 2020, where her area of research focused on the digital preservation of institutional repositories. In her role as the digital collections’ librarian, Sylvia worked on various digitization projects including collaborations with the National Archives of Namibia and Desert Research Foundation of Namibia. She is committed to advancing her knowledge on active digital preservation, and thus continues to explore as she aims to actively implement these in her organization.

With a strong commitment to safeguarding digital collections for future generations, she is eager to expand her expertise and contribute to the evolving field of digital preservation and information management especially in developing countries such as Namibia. Her enthusiasm for learning and her attention to detail drive her mission to ensure the longevity and accessibility of valuable digital resources

 

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