By l.martinez-uribe | April 10, 2014
The IASSIST Fellows Committee is glad to announce through this post the four recipients of the 2014 IASSIST Fellowship award. We are extremely excited to have such a diverse and interesting group with different backgrounds and experience and encourage IASSISTers to welcome them at our conference in Toronto, Canada. Please find below their names, countries and brief bios:
Antonin Benoit, Head Librarian at the African Institute for Economic Development and Planning. Dakar, Senegal.
“As the head Librarian I am the manager of our Online Database called IDEP document server (http://www.unidep.org/library). We provide via this tool an access to bibliographical and textual references. In another hand I am the a focal point of IDEP to work with African Centre of Statistics (ACS) to compile an Inventory of all existing data resources in my Institute. The ACS is a division of UNECA and it is located in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia). I am then devoted to provide data used for statistical analysis and publications in the Existing Data Resources of UNECA (http://ecastats.uneca.org/cdsr/). I am also very familar with metadata standards like MarcXML and Dublin Core that I use frequently in my job through our Document server. My main objective is to make our Institute the first African Library catalog to enter the Open Linked Data project. So, attending the IASSIST conference could improve my capacities on data management, because my initial professional background is Librarianship and I still have some weaknesses on data management”
Fei Yu, Acting Manager of Research Data Collections at the University of Queensland Library. Brisbane, Australia.
“Fei has gained a wide range of experience in academic libraries including bibliometrics and research data management. She was recently successful in being appointed as Manager, Research Data Collections. This has involved drafting the Research Data Management Procedures which will underpin the University of Queensland Research Data Management Policy that was approved at the end of 2013. She is involved in promoting best practice in data management for all of UQ and has established a wide range of Data Information Literacy training courses for UQ researchers and ensuring that their research data collection metadata is accurate and available on the institutional repository - UQ eSpace. She is presently rolling out the online data management tool (based on the UK Digital Curation Center (DCC) tool) university wide to ensure that all university researchers and research students have an easy and accessible tool to create their data management plans. The Research Data Collections team lead by Fei created the Research Data Management Guide - a one stop shop – containing detailed information on all aspects of data management. Fei also works collaboratively with the University’s Research Computing Centres and the Queensland Cyber Infrastructure to ensure that staff are aware of the many data storage options. "
Aileen O’Carroll, Policy Manager of the Digital Repository at the Digital Repository of Ireland. Dublin, Ireland.
“I am currently Policy Manager of the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI). DRI is a newly established national organisation (the project was established in September 2011) whose remit is to link together and preserve the rich and varied cultural, historical, and qualitative social science data held by Irish Institutions. It will be a central access point to this digital data and provide multimedia tools to research and interact with archived data. My role requires me to have a thorough understanding of international best practice in licensing frameworks, digitisation policy, archival management, and an understanding of the different needs and perspectives of a wide range of stalk-holders and users. It is of key importance that this emerging national infrastructure is aligned both with European and International best practice along with practice and policy already in place in a diverse field of Irish cultural, educational and social scientific organisations.”
Winny Nekesa, Senior Library and Documentation Officer at the Public Procurement and Disposal of Assets Authority. Kampala, Uganda.
“Winny Nekesa Akullo obtained a Bachelors degree in Library and Information Science in 2003, Postgraduate Diploma in Demography in 2014 from Makerere University and finalized her thesis for the Masters Degree in Information Science. Before joining the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Authority as a Senior Library and Documentation Officer in 2014, she worked as an Information Officer/Librarian at Uganda Bureau of Statistics where she was in charge of information management and data dissemination and was spearheading the establishment of a UBOS Digital Library and a School Senior Librarian. She has international training and exposure in establishing digital libraries, preservation and construction and application of information systems. She is the Country Coordinator of the International Librarians’ Network, Publicity Secretary, Uganda Library and Information Association and the General Secretary, Uganda Textbook-Academic and Non-Fiction Authors’ Association. Her area of expertise is digital preservation and data dissemination. Currently her main research interests are information retrieval, digital preservation and open access repositories. She presented at the 2013 IASSIST Conference “Establishing a National Statistical Information Repository in Uganda; Challenges and Opportunities” she got a lot of exposure, and new ideas about data and information management. This year, I hope to gain more information which I can apply to my new institution especially in the area of data management which is still virgin.”