Photo courtesy of Kate Thornhill

Our next presenter in the ‘Meet the CC Summit Presenter’ series, Kate Thornhill, believes that information should be available for all, and with its availability, we should know how it is made by being good digital stewards. Kate has worked at the University of Oregon Libraries in the Digital Scholarship Services Department since 2018. At the University of Denver Library and Information Science, she teaches digital libraries and digitization for the online master’s degree program. Before becoming a professional digital scholarship librarian, she received her master’s degree in library and information science from Simmons University in 2013. She has been devoted to developing and sustaining digital services as a hybrid between a librarian, archivist, and web technologist throughout her career. Her specializations are digital library services, emphasizing digital special collections and archives, and digital humanities project development, maintenance, and pedagogy. At UO Libraries, she regularly works with humanists and social scientists to advance their research and classroom practices by working through intellectual property rights, digital assets management, web development, and computational thinking issues and challenges. Before UO Libraries Digital Scholarship Services, she worked at Oregon Health and Science University as the Interim Director of Curatorial Services and Repository Librarian. She was also the Digital Scholarship Librarian at Lesley University’s College of Art and Design Library.

Based in?: Eugene, Oregon, United States

Summit Session: Open as a High Impact Practice: Centering Open Pedagogy and Public Scholarship

Why are you an advocate for Open?

Information should be available for all, and with its availability, we should know how it is made by being good digital stewards.

What is your proudest achievement?

Graduating from college!

What is the best part of what you do? What is the most difficult part of what you do?

Best part is getting to learn new technologies and how to use them for social good. The most difficult part of my job is not being integrated more into my university’s degree program designs.

What is your favorite GIF?

via GIPHY

What tool/platform/app are you loving right now?

CollectionBuilder. It’s a static website development app that allows you to build digital exhibits using GitHub pages.

“Information should be available for all, and with its availability, we should know how it is made by being good digital stewards.”

What’s one new trend that you think the CC community should look out for?

When building open digital humanities projects in a classroom, think about maintenance for the technologies and what does it really mean to use “free and easy tools” before starting an initiative.

If you could only leave people with one message from your summit presentation, what would it be?

Plan your classroom digital projects with digital librarians.

What would you like to say to Creative Commons on our 20th anniversary?

Keep up the good work!

What does ‘Better Sharing, Brighter Future’ mean to you?

Think critically about cultural sensitivities before you share openly. It can make futures brighter, but also bring stronger partnerships and collaborations.

Only 2 days to go until the 2021 CC Global Summit on September 20-24. Join us from wherever you are as we explore the latest developments in the Open Movement, celebrate 20 years of Creative Commons, and consider what the future of Open holds. Register here >>