Samvera Board Special Election 2024 Candidate Statements

Aaron Collier

Digital Library Software Engineer (Infrastructure), Library Technology, Stanford University Libraries

I am excited to put my name forward for a term as a member of the Samvera Board, representing Stanford Digital Library Systems and Services. As a Samvera founding institution Stanford has been deeply engaged in advancing our community's goals, outreach & engagement.

Prior to Stanford, I served as Digital Repository Services Manager for California State University and was instrumental in the adoption of Samvera as a system wide institutional repository. I will continue to bring that strong collaborative ethos and extensive experience collaborating with librarians, archivists, technologists, and various stakeholders to the Samvera Board. My aim is to continue supporting the development, maintenance, and expansion of digital libraries within our community. I am eager to continue this journey on the Samvera Board and contribute to the ongoing success of the Samvera Community.

Emily Lynema 

Head, Digital Media Software Development, Indiana University 

As Head of Digital Media Software Development at Indiana University Libraries, I work every day with the team that develops and supports the Avalon Media System and that relies on it to host on our own audiovisual collection. In planning the long-term roadmap for Avalon, we consider the trajectory of Hyrax and how the systems might interface in the future, which has given me the opportunity to learn about Hyrax as well. I also work with the IIIF community, which increasingly intersects with Samvera, and I am currently leading a Technical Specification Group there to propose new ways for IIIF to better support AV needs such as captions, transcriptions, and audio description. 

Although I have known about Samvera for many years through code4lib, I have been participating actively with the community for about 2 years and it is wonderful to see what has been accomplished by people working together collaboratively and openly. My experience makes me a relative newcomer, but also gives me a fresh perspective. I also have lots of years of experience working with or overseeing teams that develop software within academic libraries. In addition to my work with Avalon, I have served on the Samvera Virtual Connect planning committee for the past 2 years and I regularly attend Partner calls to learn about community work and planning. I would bring a pragmatic perspective to the Samvera Board, with an eye toward how we can craft a sustainable future with a vibrant community of contributions needed to maintain and grow software.