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Project Personnel

NIU Team Members | Partner Institutions & Project Leaders | Advisory Board

NIU Team Members 

Lynne Thomas (Principal Investigator)

 

Lynne M. Thomas is the Curator of Rare Books and Special Collections at Northern Illinois University where she is responsible for popular culture special collections, including papers of science fiction authors, dime novels, and popular historical children’s literature. She co-authored Special Collections 2.0, a book about web 2.0 technologies and special collections in libraries with Beth Whittaker of the University of Kansas (Libraries Unlimited, 2009). She was also part of a sub-committee that generated CARLI and Digital Preservation: A White Paper.

 

 

Drew VandeCreek (Principal Investigator)

 

Drew E. VandeCreek is the Director of Digital Initiatives at Northern Illinois University Libraries and co-Director of that institution’s Digital Convergence Lab. He has served as Principal Investigator or co-Principal Investigator on grant projects totally over $3 Million including, Building Capacity for the Digitization,Dissemination, and Preservation of Southeast Asian Resources, Mark Twain’s Mississippi Project, and the American Archives Digitization Project. He is a graduate of the College of Wooster and hold a Ph.D. in American History from the University of Virginia.

Jaime Schumacher (Project Director)

 

 

Jaime Schumacher is the Director for the Digital POWRR Project funded by a grant from the IMLS at Northern Illinois University. She recently earned her M.S. in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and holds a B.S. in Computer Technology from Purdue University. Previously, Jaime was an Information Systems Consultant for Deloitte Consulting in Chicago, IL.

Stacey Erdman (Technical Coordinator)

 

Stacey N. Erdman is the Digital Collections Curator at Northern Illinois University. She manages the library’s growing digital collections, as well as the day-to-day operations of the Huskie Commons digital repository. Her areas of expertise include the investigation of best practices/standards for digitization, metadata schemas, digital preservation, digital curation, and the development of online repositories using technologies such as Fedora and DSpace. She also served on the Digital Institutional Repository Taskforce (2009-present), Strategic Planning Technology Taskforce (2009-2010), and co-authored a white paper for the Digital Institutional Repository.

Joseph Thomas (Systems Administrator)

Joseph Thomas is the LAN Administrator in the Technology Initiatives and Support Services Department at the Northern Illinois University Library.

Sarah Fraser (Graduate Assistant)

 

 

Sarah Fraser is a graduate student at Northern Illinois University working towards her M.S.Ed in Instructional Technology. She completed her undergraduate degree in Communication with a minor in Computer Science at Hope College in Holland, MI. Along with working on the various tasks for this IMLS grant, she also occasionally teaches classes on basic computing at the DeKalb Public Library.

Partner Institutions & Project Leaders

Chicago State UniversityChicago State University opened its doors as a teacher training school in a leaky railroad freight car in Blue Island, Illinois on September 2, 1867. Today, in contrast, the university is a fully accredited public, urban institution located on 161-picturesque acres in a residential community on the Southside of Chicago. During the first year of its founding, CSU enrolled 62 students. The current student enrollment is nearly 7,200. The path from then until now has been marked by change. During more than 140 years, CSU has changed its name, focus, governance and location. But with each transition, the university has kept sight of its educational mission and enhanced its services to Chicago and its surrounding communities.
CSU Project Lead: Aaisha Haykal (Director of Archives and Special Collections)
Aaisha Nafeesah Haykal matriculated from Syracuse University in Syracuse, New York, in 2009, with Bachelor of Arts degrees in English and Textual Studies and African-American Studies. At Syracuse, Haykal wrote two theses, one on books by Black authors being banned in schools and the other on the political activism seen in the writings of Toni Morrison. In 2011, she received her Master of Science in Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Haykal was awarded the American Library Association’s Spectrum Scholarship and at Syracuse she was a Ronald E. McNair Scholar. Haykal worked at the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture in Charleston, SC before she accepted the University Archivist position at Chicago State University. She is a member of the Society of American Archivists and the American Library Association.

Illinois State University


Illinois State University (ISU), founded in 1857, is the oldest public university in Illinois, United States; it is located in the town ofNormal. ISU is considered a “national university” that grants a variety of doctoral degrees and strongly emphasizes research; it is also recognized as one of the top ten largest producers of teachers in the US according to the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education. The ISU athletic teams are members of the Missouri Valley Conference and the Missouri Valley Football Conference and are known as the “Redbirds,” in reference to the state bird, the cardinal.
ISU Project Lead: Patrice-Andre Prud’homme (Head of Digital Collections)
Patrice-Andre Prud’homme is the Head of Digital Collections Unit at Illinois State University. He is responsible for several of the project management processes in the unit, including copyrights, metadata, design, and supervision.

Illinois Wesleyan University


Founded in 1850, Illinois Wesleyan has grown to become one of the nation’s leading liberal arts institutions. The University enrolls just over 2,000 undergraduates from across the nation and around the globe and our graduates can be found in all 50 states and 52 countries. Illinois Wesleyan’s distinctive liberal arts curriculum is at the core of our 50 majors and programs. Courses of study range from the traditional liberal arts to programs in business, the fine arts, nursing and eight pre-professional programs. The curriculum is enhanced by a superb faculty, enriching interdisciplinary programs, a tradition of student research, a wealth of study abroad options and our unique 4-4-1 calendar that includes a May Term. Our 2,000 students benefit from an average class size of 17 and an 11 to 1 student-faculty ratio, giving them the kind of personal attention from faculty that is often missing at large universities. Student satisfaction and success are reflected in a 93 percent first-year retention rate and the fact that better than 9 in 10 graduating seniors complete their degree in four years. The University’s residential campus covers 80 tree-filled acres and has 53 buildings, including 24 living options. Co-curricular programming is diverse, with 165 student organizations and groups and 18 Titan varsity teams for men and women.
IWU Project Lead: Meg Miner (University Archivist & Special Collections Librarian)University Archivist and Special Collections Librarian Meg Miner works with a variety of campus constituencies to collect, preserve and make accessible the records that document the academic and organizational activities of IWU. As a member of the Ames Library’s Digital Initiatives team since 2006, Miner helps develop policies, conduct campus outreach and collect content for the library’s digital assets and the IWU institutional repository Digital Commons . Assistant Professor Miner is active in faculty governance positions and professional organizations. She is also the library’s liaison to the History Department and the School of Nursing, providing collection development assistance for those areas and the Health Minor, conducting group and individual instruction sessions and offering research assistance to members of the IWU community.

Western Illinois University

Western Illinois University, accredited by the Higher Learning Commission and a member of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, serves more than 12,000 students at its traditional, residential four-year campus in Macomb, IL and its metropolitan, non-residential campus in Moline, IL. Recognized as a “Best Midwestern College” by the Princeton Review and as a top tier Regional University (Midwest) by U.S. News and World Report, WIU offers 64 undergraduates programs, 36 graduate programs, 10 pre-professional degree programs, 17 post-baccalaureate certificate programs, two post-master’s certificates and one doctoral program to students from 93 counties in Illinois, 43 states and 63 countries. Western’s campuses are dedicated to providing quality, accessible and affordable education. The WIU-Macomb and Quad Cities campuses are comprised of accomplished faculty, state-of-the-art technology and facilities, and a wide range of academic and extracurricular opportunities. The four core values at the heart of WIU are academic excellence, educational opportunity, personal growth and social responsibility. WIU’s Cost Guarantee program ensures that students pay a fixed rate for tuition, fees, plus room and board. WIU remains the only university in Illinois to guarantee the cost for tuition, fees and room and board over a four-year period at both the undergraduate and graduate level.
WIU Project Lead: Dr. Jeff Hancks (Associate Professor & Archives Librarian)
Jeff Hancks is the Baxter-Snyder Professor of Regional and Icarian Studies at Western Illinois University. Based in the university archives and special collections department, he is responsible for managing the department, collecting, preserving, and making available materials documenting west central Illinois life and culture, and promoting regional history and culture to the general public. He is interested in the role of rural libraries in community sustainability, Midwestern utopian communities, and the Scandinavian folk school movement.

Past Team Members

Katharine White (Regional History Center Liaison)

 

Katharine White is the Curator of Manuscripts for the Regional History Center at Northern Illinois University. She oversees 325+ collections from the 18 northern-most counties of Illinois (excluding Cook) and works in tandem with the university archives. Katharine uses social media (facebook andflickr) to promote the collections, as well as LibGuides, Omeka, and Archon, in attempt to make archives more accessible and fun. She holds a B.S. in Media Studies from the University of Illinois and a M.L.I.S. from Dominican University.