Santi Thompson

Santi Thompson, head of Digital Research Services at University of Houston Libraries, has been selected as a fellow in the 2018-19 Digital Library Federation (DLF) Futures fellowship. Thompson is one of three fellows in the program’s inaugural cohort.

The DLF Futures program offers financial support and a communications platform for mid-career digital library practitioners whose projects and areas of research open new possibilities and future directions for the field. As part of the fellowship, Thompson will explore the transformative reuse of digital library content.

“Santi’s leadership, vision, and community spirit have made him a perfect choice as a DLF Futures Fellow in our program’s inaugural year,” said Bethany Nowviskie, director of the DLF Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). “The work he will take forward as part of this fellowship will be of great interest to all of us who seek better rounded, more humanistic ways to measure and assess the value of digital libraries. We feel so lucky to have Santi as part of the DLF community!”

In his role at UH Libraries, Thompson develops policies and workflows for the digital components of scholarly communications. He publishes on the assessment of digital repository metadata, software, and content reuse, and serves as co-facilitator for the DLF Assessment Interest Group (AIG). Thompson will use fellowship resources to continue researching and presenting on the reuse of digital library content, building on the success of the DLF AIG’s recent Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant, “Developing a Framework for Measuring Reuse of Digital Objects,” for which he served as principal investigator.

The DLF Futures Fellowship pilot is funded through the generous support of DLF member organizations.