Jody DeRidder

13610 Christian Drive, Northport, Alabama 35475
Phone (205) 339-8901
Email: jody at jodyderidder.com

Education:
M.S. in Computer Science, University of Tennessee, Knoxville: December, 2002
M.S. in Information Science, University of Tennessee, Knoxville: May, 2008

Skills :

• Metadata crosswalking and transformation: MARC21, MODS, DC, TEI, EAD, FGDC, METS, and local schemas
• Database development and access: MS Access, MySQL, Oracle (limited);
• Formatting: HTML, XHTML, CSS, XML, XSLT
• Working knowledge of GIS, including development and support
• Experience in both research and grant writing;
• Software design and development, including client-server interactions and distributed application design;
• Unix network programming, computer and network security;
• Programming languages: Perl, C, C++, Java, PHP, Javascript
• Protocols: CGI, MPI, TCP/IP, Open Archives Initiative
• Configuration support in Windows, Linux, and Unix (Solaris) systems
• Several years of management and supervisory experience in a variety of venues
• Infrastructure design, development, and support

Employment:

• 6/08 to present: Head of Digital Services at the University of Alabama Libraries.
• 12/02 to 6/08: Information Technology Administrator II at the University of Tennessee Libraries Digital Library Center.
  • Confer with clients to determine scope and needs of projects, to design delivery systems, guide metadata creation and quality control, and to assess results.
  • Developed or modified crosswalks and created scripts to extract, translate and modify metadata for consistency, completeness, and interoperability: TEI, EAD, MODS, DC, MARC21, METS, and locally-defined versions
  • Modified DLXS (object-oriented Perl digital library software) to support:
    • MODS both for display and full text searching across collections
      regardless of digital format or class
    • METS hierarchical image displays with hidden OCR text for searchability
    • delivery of various multimedia formats
    • foreign and scientific character translation for browsers, and hexadecimal encoding for OAI
    • a locally-defined profile of MODS for OAI delivery
    • restricted collection access, both by locally-defined logins and LDAP
    • session maintenance across collections and classes
  • Created support systems, configurations and workflows to enable the use of ExLibris Digitool
    for institutional repository and digital library development.
  • Developed an integrated and diverse digital library consisting of various images and documents. Examples:
    • Special Collections Finding Aids and their constituent digitized items
    • Volunteer Voices Statewide digitization project
    • From Pi Beta Phi to Arrowmont
    • Albert "Dutch" Roth Digital Photograph Collection
    • Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    • Works Progress Administration / Tennessee Valley Authority Photograph Archive
    • UT Library Bibliographic Collections
  • Developed statistics-gathering software, with dynamic web display, to track usage of our digital collections
  • Developed a secure, dynamic web interface for entering metadata and uploading resources via the web, in order to be developed into digital libraries
• Fall 2000 to 12/02: Programmer , UTK Office for Research and Information Technology
  in the division of Customer Technology Support, on SunSITE.
  • Researched, designed and tested implementation and deployment methods for a secure distributed Java web application between a Sun server with Apache/Tomcat configuration and Macintosh clients in the UTK Music Department labs, using JSP, Servlets, SSL, MySQL database, and signed applets creating an AWT GUI, and accessing/writing backend files.
  • Designed, developed, upgraded and maintained a MySQL database-supported Digital Library repository (Perl/CGI) per the requirements and specifications of the alpha and beta stages of the Open Archives Initiative, in support of the Metascholar American South project. Developed database loaders, crosswalks and Perl translation scripts for various forms of text and SGML (including EAD and FGDC) to XML Unqualified Dublin Core, file search and correction scripts, command-line file entry and file correction programs, and a relational database search. An early version of this project was presented at the ViDe Conference (2001), as it provides web access to metadata and its attendant repository data in various formats, including streaming video.
  • Designed and implemented a Microsoft Access database supportive of Open Archives Initiative (OAI) requirements for Unqualified Dublin Core metadata descriptions, for use by the Special Collections Department of UT, in order to track documents and metadata for various grant projects.
  • Configured Webglimpse search engine with document support, and developed an appropriate CSS graphical web interface translation, for the ViDe Development Initiative.
• Spring 2000: Head Graduate Teaching Assistant, CS140 Data Structures, UTK
  
• Fall 1999: Graduate Teaching Assistant, CS102 Introduction to Computer Science, UTK
  
• 1987 - 1999: United States Postal Service: Positions included Distribution Clerk, City Carrier, Supervisor of Building Services, Supervisor of Mail Distribution, Supervisor of Customer and Delivery Services.
• 1984 - 1987: B Dalton Booksellers: Assistant Manager.
• 1983 -1984: Book Peddler: Manager.

Research, Presentations and Publications:

• "Googlizing a Digital Library" An exploration of effectively and efficiently providing full-text web search capabilities to a dynamically-generated set of digitized materials, in order to leverage the power of web search to enhance access. Code4Lib Journal Issue 2, 2008-03-24. Available from http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/43
• "Choosing Delivery Software for a Digital Library".Library Hi Tech News, 24:9/10, 2007, pp. 19-21. Related PowerPoint with exercises for students comparing Fedora and DSpace. Presented to University of Tennessee School of Information Sciences Digital Libraries classes in 2007 & 2008.
• "The Immediate Prospects for the Application of Ontologies in Digital Libraries." Knowledge Organization, Vol. 34, No. 4, December 2007 (preprints available), and the PowerPoint presentation, (oriented more toward explaining ontologies), presented to an IS class in 2007.
• A (2007) short report and PowerPoint presentation on Dublin Core metadata terms and uses.
• "Metadata in Digital Libraries", an overview (2006) which won the School of Information Sciences Best Technical Project award in 2007.
• "Choosing Software for an Institutional Repository." Developed for internal use by the University of Tennessee Digital Library Center.
• A PowerPoint presentation for the Metascholar American South meeting (2002), about implementing a digital library repository for the Open Archives Initiative.

References and preprints of articles available upon request.