Nicole Saylor Email & Phone Number

Washington, District Of Columbia, United States

Leads the Library’s innovation with digital collections. Oversees a team of digital innovation specialists who experiment with new ways of applying technology to collections and services. Supports the Library’s digital transformation as member of the Digital Strategy Directorate leadership team in the Office of the Chief Information Officer. Plans, directs and coordinates strategic, operational, technical, and workforce aspects of the division. Manages the division’s workload and sets priorities. Directs the division’s evaluation of goals, plans, programs and business processes. Division initiatives include an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded initiative to test a cloud-based approach for interacting with digital collections as data.

Washington D.C. Metro Area

Supervises a 10-member team that acquires, preserves, arranges, describes, and makes accessible the world’s largest collection of folklife, ethnomusicology, and documentary media. Leads the ongoing transformation of the archives into the digital age by greatly scaling digitization and online access efforts, expanding one of the Library’s largest born-digital collections, and building a collection of folk expression on the web. Spearheads a multi-year effort to assess the archives’ audiovisual holdings and develop a strategic plan for comprehensive preservation digitization by 2028. Coordinates the collaboration with StoryCorps. Made the AFS Ethnographic Thesaurus available as linked data. Serves as division, directorate and service unit representative on several Library committees on digital preservation and access. Directs archives administration for the division. Helps establish division staffing priorities, recruits, and hires archives staff, communicates performance expectations and conducts performance appraisals. Helps determine budgetary and staffing resources to support day-to-day archives operations and serves as a Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR). Co-leading effort to pilot a new approach for ethically responsible digital access to Native American materials.

Iowa City, Iowa Area

Led the Digital Research & Publishing department at the University of Iowa Libraries: rapidly grew the digital library, launched successful e-publishing and institutional repository services, and oversaw the creation a crowdsourcing initiative that enabled public transcription of more than 15,000 pages of Civil War letters and diaries in its first year – one of the first of its kind in the United States. Oversaw strategic and operational planning, staffing, and day-to-day operations. Served as a senior advisor to library management on digital collections and e-publishing issues. Directly supervised librarians and merit staff members, conducted performance appraisals and managed division workload. Tripled division staffing levels. Wrote project plans, budget request documentation, contributed to the Library’s annual report. Collaborated with researchers to develop digital humanities projects and online scholarly publications. Partnered with special collections archivists, subject liaisons, and other library staff on donor relations, acquisitions, processing and preservation of digital artifacts. Planned and coordinated semester-long “rotations” in the division for 18 IMLS 21st Century Librarian digital librarianship fellows.

Davenport, Iowa Area

Provided reference services at downtown and branch locations. Selected books in the areas of philosophy, religion, foreign language, languages/grammar, and large print. Coordinated the homebound delivery program. Used research tools to provide information to a broad public. Led and assisted with drop-in software trainings.

Madison, Wisconsin Area

Coordinated a National Historic Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC)-funded project to survey regional ethnographic collections in the Upper Midwest. Inspected records held at regional archives, public agencies, and in private hands, producing an extensive report that guided folklife collection preservation priorities in the region. Implemented a project to create online finding aids for regional ethnographic collections. Wrote, edited, and encoded archival finding aids using Encoded Archival Description (EAD) and assigned subject terms using standard controlled vocabularies, including the AFS Ethnographic Thesaurus maintained by the Library of Congress. Served as production lead at the UW-Madison Digital Collection Center to create an online collection of field recordings and photographs documenting Wisconsin folksong in the 1930s. Digitized and processed field recordings in various formats. Consulted with folk arts programs and others on managing multimedia collections. From 2002-2004, served as a project assistant at the Center while pursuing a master’s degree in Library Science.

Madison, Wisconsin Area

Assisted in the development of finding aids for fieldwork projects in the Upper Midwest as a graduate student. Taught myself Encoded Archival Description and identified and installed the appropriate xml editing software to generate finding aids. Created CSUMC’s first online newsletter; redesigned and edited the Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies newsletter. Performed production duties on a range of documentary reissues on CD of fieldwork documenting German-Americans and Norwegian-American music.

Madison, Wisconsin Area

Served as a key newsroom leader in three assistant city editor positions: leader of night breaking news coverage, dayside editor of local beat reporting, and assignment editor directing the local and state news report of the state’s second largest news operation. Responsibilities included: setting coverage priorities, ensuring deadline performance and compliance with professional standards, directly supervising three to five reporters and overseeing and editing daily and in-depth contributions from the 100-staff newsroom to local and state coverage, collaborated with visual editors on story display. Helped lead local coverage of 9/11. Fielded story tips, inquiries, and complaints from the public.

Supervised two reporters, edited stories from all staff reporters for front page and Metro. Helped direct the night operation, including breaking news coverage. From 1994-1996, managed the Olathe Star, a twice-weekly section zoned to Olathe, Kan., supervising reporting staff and edited and designing the section. Wrote a column. From 1993-1994, covered the Olathe, KS education beat, writing daily and long-term stories.

Ma, Library And Information Studies, Certificate In Folklore

Ba, Mass Communication, Minor In English

Activities and Societies: Iowa State Daily, co-editor-in-chief, 1992