[00:05] Chloe: Just to start off, would you mind introducing yourself with your name, where you work, and any other information that you would like to share? [00:16] Daniel: Sure, my name is Daniel Gelaw Alemneh and I currently work at the University of North Texas as the Digital Curation Coordinator. [00:30] Chloe: What is your current job description? You can talk about what your duties are, what a typical day looks like, or what your biggest goals are. [00:39] Daniel: Yeah. I think the best way to describe my job description is based on the name. What's digital curation in tech, really? My current position just didn't come out like that. It kind of evolved. But I started as a librarian some 20 years ago, and my position just evolved. Currently, for lack of a better term, we call it digital curation, but it includes all kinds of activities related to managing the digital resource lifecycle, in a sense, from the very early state of selection, identification, then digitization if it is not born digital, maintaining access, and resource description. It is similar to analog, really. It's only because the contents are now digital, it adds another layer into the activities, but preservation is the main aspect of digital curation activities. The definition of preservation is slightly different from the traditional notion of preserving, regardless of access. The simplest definition we use for digital preservation is ensuring long-term access. It's about access—really, uninterrupted access—regardless of the type of materials, the type of equipment required. Ensuring access to the user. All activities revolve around, "How do you make the resources available as long as they are necessary?" That's the centerpiece of our work. [02:36] Chloe: What type of digital work do you do? Do you work with specific collections, and is there anything related to Texas that you think is super interesting? [02:49] Daniel: Sure. First of all, we have academic libraries. As an academic library, the primary objective for all of our activities is to serve our community, which is the faculty, students, and researchers. At the same time, the University of North Texas is a public institution, and we also have the responsibility to serve the public in some way. Actually, the very first digital product we did was The Portal to Texas History. We call it, passionately, "PTH". That involves various stakeholders and players. We have, right now, more than 200 collaborators, the ones who hold the unique items. We provide the infrastructure, the technology, and the guideline system, but the resource owners actually come from multitudes: private collectors, small museums, archives, libraries, and other ways. That itself provides us the opportunity to collaborate with a wide range of people, and also, helps us to deal with a wide range of resources: video, audio, letters, books, all kinds of things. I don't know if you know, for Texas middle school—I think grade seven—they require, for studies, the history of Texas as a lesson, and we actually provide lesson plans for school lessons, teachers, and primary users, too. We deal with all kinds of resource types, from audio, video, and from one single-page letter to thousand-page documents, and anything in between. In terms of users, we serve all communities in Texas. If you search Google "Texas", one of the top search results would be PTF. It's very [INAUDIBLE] resources. That gives us the opportunity to translate our collection type, our resource type. It's an opportunity to serve many communities. I should also mention that that’s the main thing: even if that's the first project, our digital collection now has so many kinds of resources, from locally generated content, [INAUDIBLE] which is faculty works, usually, and also students' theses and dissertation. ETD is one of the unique contents that we share globally. Of course, we are very known for our ETD, Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Not only that, we are one of the first to require a digital submission of digital formats. In 1999, only a couple of universities in the US or in the world required that at that time. We also went back and digitized all our theses and dissertations prior to 1999, all the way back to 1974: the first thesis we have, retrospectively. We are one of the few institutions who fully digitized all our theses, and it's widely used globally by millions of users from 200 countries. So we are sharing our student research, and also faculty. The digital repository also has other contents. That unique content we share as well. It is very known for its music collection. We share those music collections globally. Government domains: we are one of the repositories for that. We have many projects with, even, the state of Texas, like the Texas Register. We have actual, archival Texas Register every week. The newspaper is another collection. Actually, we receive, continuously, grants to digitize newspapers for the [INAUDIBLE]. Not just Texas. We go to Oklahoma, Mississippi, and other nearby states [INAUDIBLE]. All of those are part of our digital project related activities and collections, all the way. [07:20] Chloe: What is your personal, educational, and career background, and what brought you to digital libraries? [07:28] Daniel: I may not be the typical digital librarian in terms of experience and background, because digital libraries require a multitude of skills. In our environment here, we have all kinds of skill, background, experience, and preparedness. But we work together. I think collaboration is a key factor here. Everybody brings something to the table. In fact, it's almost impossible to complete one project by one, unique department. We bring together a multitude of skill sets from different departments. My personal experience. My first degree—undergrad—was Information Science in [INAUDIBLE] university in Ethiopia. Then, I went for my master's degree to England, the University of Sheffield, one of the top information schools in Europe. I think that was really great. They had a solid background. Then, I came to the US in 1999 for postmaster's programing: digital imaging, one of the first programs at the time. Then, within a year, I continued my PhD. My PhD is in Information Science. For my dissertation, I worked in the metadata area. I think the title was "Identifying and Assessing Preservation Metadata". I picked PREMIS as a sample, and saw the adoption of PREMIS in helping preservation metadata. That kind of puts me into the digital library world. While I was a student, I was working as [INAUDIBLE] for UNT libraries, which started The Portal to Texas History projects. I fit together my work, my study, and kind of got a natural marriage there. When I finished, I automatically continued working as a faculty member here at the university. Because I have a PhD, that also allows me to do research while I'm working as a practitioner here. I also continue doing my personal research in the digital library area. I don't know if you know, but in academia, librarians have faculty positions. Of course, some universities have tenure. That faculty position means you have three kinds of responsibilities. One of the primary assignments is the main job you are hired to do. The second one is research, and what kind of research activity you can bring in. The third one is service, which is professional service serving in committees, as volunteers, and that kind of stuff. We are fortunate to focus on those three areas. That allows me to bring all my interests together. I also teach in the library school here. I get to work with some doctoral students in the digital library research area, and I’m a committee member for dissertation. All of those things helped me to develop my skill and interest into one place. As I say, the work requires collaboration. In our digital library division, we have a variety of skill sets from different angles. It could be grant writing, programming, systems, metadata, or cataloging. [INAUDIBLE] this environment. I think that everybody's journey might be different but still, they have something to offer for the overall work of digital libraries in general. [11:28] Chloe: Would you mind talking a little bit about the type of research you do? [11:35] Daniel: Sure. As I said, the fact that we are in an academic environment allows us to be involved with research. In fact, I'm fortunate to have been able to take my sabbatical leave last year and I got a Fulbright scholarship offer, which is a rare opportunity. Very prestigious. I'm very grateful. That allows you to go for almost a year and fully focus on the research area. I picked open access as a research agenda for me, and I promote the open access and benefits of open access, particularly in developing countries. Since I was originally from Ethiopia, I had that network already. Africa has lagged behind in the digital divide. I think open access is a great opportunity, not only to be able to access what's out there, but to be able to also share what's available out there, too. Even if there is not a huge amount of research, even the minimum research helps. Some of them are very unique and really impactful. Research on tropical area diseases, for example. Very unique and really important research. Sharing whatever local research is also helpful. I think I have succeeded in that. Unfortunately, the pandemic interrupted the whole process. Again, I am fortunate I was able to get another opportunity to continue. I will continue my Fulbright this year in South Africa, Pretoria. The goal is to start an open access or digital library conference for Africa. As you know, different regions have their own conferences. For example, Asia. There is a specific Asian digital library conference. For Europe, there's a specific European digital library conference. Now, the name changed to TP. For the US, or North America, it's international. JCDL: Joint Conference on Digital Libraries. But for Africa, there is nothing. There are specific issues that need to be dealt with in the context of Africa. My colleagues there are excited to work on that. Hopefully, very soon we will see a digital library conference in Africa. That's the plan I have right now. Actually, I'm currently writing a book on digital open access from a global perspective. But the conference will be focused on Africa and developing countries. [14:21] Chloe: What do you love about digital libraries, and what keeps you motivated to work in this field? [14:26] Daniel: For digital libraries, by definition, the contents are in digital format. The fact is that in digital format, it can be shared easily. Accessibility is a key term here. The fact that I started as a metadata librarian allows me to see the backend. How do we make things accessible? It's not only technological migration or the preservation aspect, but the user side, like how our users use, request, interact, or access those documents or items. That part really fascinates me. I teach indexing, abstracting, and the presentation. How do we present based on the user's information seeking behavior as well? Looking at both sides: from the backend—technical aspects—to the front end, the user aspect—how do they search, and how do they request or access? Bringing those two dots together really allows me to see both sides. So that's interesting to me. [15:39] Chloe: How do you define digital libraries and digital librarianship? [15:45] Daniel: I think to make it simpler, a digital library is the library of digital contents. The digital content is the multimedia. It's not just limited to one type. It's got text, audio, video, WAV format, just all kinds of things together. The only common thing there is that it’s digital, so the fact that in digital, you bring the technology aspect into play. The infrastructure is key. The traditional definition could be internet library, but the key aspect is electronic. It's in digital form. That brings both challenges and opportunities, challenges in terms of access. How do you make them accessible in terms of preservation, in terms of visually impaired users, or in terms of various aspects? It's a challenge and at the same time, it's an opportunity when you talk about open access. I mentioned earlier that our ETD is accessed by people from 200 plus countries using different devices. All those are really opportunities. Challenging opportunities in [INAUDIBLE] but unlimited to open up. [17:22] Chloe: How do you think the field of digital libraries will change in the next five years? [17:29] Daniel: Yeah, the fact is that it's dependent on the technology lies there. It makes it vulnerable. It’s evolving and it's changing. If we review the curriculum of information science, you can easily see how things have changed. If you see the organizational chart of libraries currently, you will find new names that have never been there before, like Scholarly Communication Librarian. In the last 10 years, all kinds of new names are out there. But the basics—the foundational skill sets—are the same. The transferable skills, really. Organization is organization. Whether it's in print form or electronic form, the resources need to be organized in a way that's accessible to the user. Because of the dependence on technology, the change is continuous. It's continuously evolving, continuously changing, new standards, new development, new ways of viewing things, expecting things. Even users' information seeking behavior is changing. How do you serve people who want, you know, just the most recent reference library, for example? There's no way we know it, but the service is still there in a more effective way. It’s continuously changing, continuously evolving, and that's what makes it exciting and interesting. [19:16] Chloe: What do you think that library programs should be teaching students about digital libraries, and do you have any advice for students who are interested in a career in digital libraries? [19:28] Daniel: Well, by looking at our group, how they got there, and their skill, it's different. Everybody can play a part. The one common factor is upgrading our skills all the time. Because things change really fast, even sometimes in academia, they are not keeping up with the change. You know, it's funny. Normally in the academic environment, you assume the research done in [INAUDIBLE], for example, is far ahead of the practice. Technology really reverses that. It's amazing. Sometimes, the Google research pushes libraries to do things faster than even academia, before the curriculum is in place. We are doing something in a very different way and have to go back and change: "We should teach this course because it's relevant, already working." I think that kind of openness and network—I think conferences, staying active in the community is very important. Staying active in a specific area. There are many groups using social media or professional societies. There are continuous skill upgrades. I think staying abreast with the change is extremely important. Whatever skill sets they have previously can easily fit into the digital environment. I think continuous learning is very important if you are working in a digital library because of the fact that things are changing so fast. [21:17] Chloe: Is there anything that we didn't cover that you would like to share about either your experience or digital libraries in general? [21:27] Daniel: Collaboration is a key, key term here because of all the skills required, all the network required, and not in one place at all, so that collaborative environment is extremely important. I think Texas Digital Library is one one good example of bringing statewide professionals into learning, helping each other, guiding each other, supporting each other, and sharing experience with each other. And the resource! Having that kind of shared infrastructure is extremely important. I think the collaborative aspect in many ways is extremely important: university to university, collaborator to collaborator, individual to individual. I think we are grateful to TDL in our context, for allowing us to work together, and to share resources, be it human or infrastructure. The collaborative aspect is the key, key, key aspect here on an institutional level or an individual level.