Digital Library Systems and Services is pleased to announce that Tommy Ingulfsen has accepted our offer to join SUL as Digital Media Infrastructure Engineer. Tommy's start date is February 2.

Tommy comes to us from CalTech Libraries where he had a diverse portfolio of software development responsibilities touching many dimensions of their digital library program. He maintained their ePrints repository and made code contributions back to the ePrints software, was the technical lead for CalTech's digital preservation initiatives, and notably managed their digital infrastructure in support of an oral histories project.

Tommy's key objectives as Digital Media Infrastructure Engineer will be to support an exciting new digital collection project. SUL is partnering with the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia to digitize, preserve, and make available the museum’s Audiovisual Archive.

Started in 1994, the collection contains 2,200 video interviews -- about 4,000 hours -- recording people who lived in Latvia during the occupations by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, those who witnessed wrongdoings committed by the occupation powers against the Latvian people and who experienced the consequences of the occupations.  Sample videos from the collection are posted on YouTube, but most remain offline and in need of preservation.

Access to this important and unique collection of material documenting the 20th century Latvian experience will stimulate new research activity in the emerging area of Baltic Studies for years to come.

The videos will be digitized by a vendor in Europe, and the files delivered to SUL for discovery/access/preservation via SearchWorks and the Stanford Digital Repository. The Stanford Media Preservation Lab is supporting the digital production work, and the Metadata Unit is providing key input on the collection description. Liisi Esse, Assistant Curator for Estonian and Baltic Studies, is a key stakeholder in the overall effort.

Tommy's work on the MOL project has larger strategic objectives: DLSS will be building and implementing technical infrastructure to help library staff to manage and deliver the many media collections held across SUL. The same media archiving services will be extended and available to support the needs of faculty, students, researchers and departments across Stanford. Media management is a growing concern around campus, and SUL's media infrastructure will be of increasing importance for teaching and learning at Stanford in years to come.