Candidate Statement - Robert Cartolano

Good afternoon,

I would like to join the Readium Board of Directors. At Columbia University Libraries I serve as Associate Vice President for Technology and Preservation. We are currently working on an initiative to “imagine a better academic ebook experience” by leveraging open standards, interoperability and community-based open source, and by partnering with many in the library and scholarly ecosystem. I have presented at many conferences, and would like share with you my keynote presentation at ElPub 2019, “Sustaining an Open Scholarly Ecosystem with Community-Based Open Source”, at:

https://doi.org/10.7916/d8-kjrc-cj71

I graduated from Columbia University’s Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, and have been a member of Columbia’s staff since 1986. I have held several roles in University IT, and since joining the Libraries in 2007, I have supervised the development and implementation of digital preservation storage, multiple digital centers, Blacklight-based unified discovery, shared collection services, digital library collections, copyright advisory services, and digital project management. I have served as Treasurer of the DuraSpace Board of Directors, am a member of the Lyrasis Leader’s Circle, and serve in leadership roles for the Fedora and VIVO community-based open source platforms.

I fully support the Readium Foundation’s mission to develop an open source foundation to accelerate adoption of open standards by the digital publishing industry in order to better serve our reader community. If elected I will work to advance this mission especially within the higher education library community.

Thank you for giving me this opportunity.

Sincerely,

Robert Cartolano

Assoc. VP, Technology and Preservation

Columbia University Libraries