Roy Tennant
Currently the Senior Program Officer in the Research division of OCLC in San Mateo, California, Roy Tennant has been working, speaking, and writing on issues involving digitization and libraries for over twenty years as the digital climate has continued to shift and change. Tennant began his career after completing his MLS and quickly fell into work involving the Internet and the changing landscape of the library world. His work at UC Berkeley included creating and managing the Berkeley Digital Library SunSITE. This project resulted in both a digital library as well as providing support for other developing digital libraries at that time.
Many other projects stemmed from this digital library initiative, including The Librarian’s Index to the Internet, which is a browsable website of Internet resources that are both identified and evaluated by librarians according to their usefulness. The project has since grown into the ipl2, which is a website dedicated to providing reliable answers to reference questions. Tennant also worked on KidsClick!, Swish-e, and LibWeb. As a manager at CDL (California Digital Library), Tennant also developed eScholarship, the eScholarship Repository, and eScholarship Editions, all of which stem from digital publishing initiatives. He also worked as a User Services Architect for CDL designing interfaces that would lead to end-user services.
Tennant has published numerous resources regarding digital libraries and collections as well as how to manage them effectively. His “Digital Libraries” column in Library Journal provided an excellent sounding board for current issues for a decade, producing articles such as “MARC Must Die.” Other publications include Managing the Digital Library and Technology in Libraries. Tennant is the author of five books to date as well as numerous articles and presentations. He is an internationally known speaker on issues relevant to the library and information field. He has spoken at Access conferences, the China Digital Library Conference, and is a member of the OCLC User’s Council.
Links:
OCLC Research
Roy Tennant Website
Berkeley Digital Library SunSITE
Swish-e
eScholarship
July 2012
