About Kate
Kate Thornhill (she/her/hers) has worked at the University of Oregon Libraries in the Digital Scholarship Services Department since 2018. Prior to becoming a professional librarian, she received her master's degree in library and information science from Simmons University in 2013. Her career has been devoted to developing and sustaining digital services as a hybrid librarian, archivist, and web technologist specializing in digital stewardship, digital repository community management, and the construction of digital humanities projects.
Kate previously worked at Oregon Health and Science University as the Interim Director of Curatorial Services and Repository Librarian, where she directed digital assets management services and community management and oversaw special collections and archives. As of 2022, her work has appeared in the Journal of Web Librarianship, Digital Humanities Quarterly, and ACRL book publications, and has presented at national and international conferences and events hosted by the Digital Library Federation, Society of American Archivists, and Digital Humanities Summer Institute. Kate also periodically teaches digital libraries and digitization as an adjunct professor at the University of Denver.
How does Kate work with UO Faculty, Students, and Staff?
At the UO, Kate regularly works with disciplinary experts and students who want to advance their open research and classroom practices. So if you need a consultation about open digital humanities project design and sustainability or choosing digital tools and methodologies that advance scholarly communications through storytelling, then Kate can help. She is especially good at curating and preserving visual resources and sound recordings, user research methodologies, web design and development, and teaching people how to build digital collections and exhibits with various types of data and information resources. When Kate is at the UO Eugene Campus, you can usually find her in the Digital Research, Education, and Media Lab.
Setup a Consultation with Kate through the DREAM Lab.
Forthcoming Publications
"Afro-Indigenous Women Healers in the Caribbean and Its Diasporas: A Decolonial Digital Humanities Project" by Franny Gaede, Ana-Maurine Lara, Alai Reyes Santos, and Kate Thornhill. Digital Humanities Quarterly Article (2022)
"Teaching Copyright through Pop Culture for Public Scholarship-Based Instruction." by Franny Gaede and Kate Thornhill. Integrating Pop Culture into the Academic Library, edited by Melissa E. Johnson, Thomas C. Weeks, and Jennifer Putnam Davis. Rowman & Littlefield. (2022)
"Union Stewardship: A Space for Mid-Career Librarian Leadership" by Kate Thornhill, Elizabeth Peterson, and Ann Shaffer. Thriving as a Mid-Career Librarian: Identity, Advocacy, and Pathways, edited by Brandon West and Elizabeth Galoozis. Association of College and Research Libraries. (2022)
"Making File Names for Digital Exhibits" by Kate Thornhill and Gabriele Hayden. ACRL Data Literacy Cookbook, edited by Meryl Brodsky and Kelly Getz, American College and Research Libraries. (2022)
Research Grants & Awards
Digital Stewardship on the Oregon Coast: Curation and Preservation Capacities and Infrastructures at Small Cultural Heritage Organizations, funded by the University of Oregon Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation. Between July 2022-June 2023, several small public libraries, museums, and archives based on the Oregon Coast will be interviewed to learn more about how organizations archive primary source materials and make them openly available online and digitally preserved. Using the National Digital Stewardship Alliance's Levels of Digital Preservation and the Digital Curation Center Lifecycle Model, this research helps us better understand how under-funded, under-resourced, and under-staffed cultural organizations operate for our local and collective longevities. (Principal Investigator)
PNW Just Futures Institute for Racial and Climate Justice: Afroindigenous Healing, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This grant supports the creation of a Pacific Northwest Just Futures Institute based in the Center for Environmental Futures at the UO. The new Institute will serve as a regional platform for racial and climate justice. The Just Futures Institute’s research clusters mobilize environmental humanities scholarship, teaching, and community connections to work toward anti-racist, climate resilient futures in the Pacific Northwest, mostly in rural areas but also in urban communities beset by gentrification, displacement, and seismic demographic change. (Afroindigenous Healing team member and digital project build lead. Digital Scholarship Librarian at UO, 2021-2024).
Powering Digital Humanities Teaching and Learning with Static Web Approaches, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. This grant was one of twenty awarded through the competitive Digital Humanities Advancement Grants program and supports the creation of curricular modules to help teach data and digital literacy skills and the CollectionBuilder web tool in humanities classes. (Sub-award. Co-Principal Investigator at UO, 2021-2022)
PlacePress: A new WordPress plugin for publishing location-based tours and stories, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. A collaboration with Cleveland State University Public History and Digital Humanities Center (Sub-award. User Experience Lead at UO, 2020-2021)
Leveraging GLAM Assets in Research, Teaching, and Learning: Mellon Faculty Fellowships to Advance Library-Museum Collaboration, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The project provided incentives and direct support for UO faculty members who want to collaborate with the JSMA and the UO Libraries to incorporate library/museum assets into their teaching and research. (Team member. Digital Projects Librarian, 2018-2019; Mellon GLAM Graduate Fellow Supervisor, 2021)
Public Health in Oregon: Accessing Historical Data for Scientific Discovery, funded by the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA). The project provides public access to digitized rare and unique materials related to public health in Oregon, as well as open access to the structured datasets they contain. The library is presenting the results in a digital collection of 351 items, as well as a narrative exhibit of original research on the history of public health in Oregon. (Interim Digital Project Manager at Oregon Health and Science University, 2016)
Highlighted Professional & University Service
United Academics of the University of Oregon, Library Union Steward, 2020-Present
University of Oregon Senate, Libraries Senator, 2021-2023
National Endowment for the Humanities, Grant Panelist, 2022
Institute of Museum and Library Services, Grant Panelist, 2018
Orbis Cascase Alliance Unique and Local Content Program, Team chair and chair-elect, 2019-2021
Highlighted Presentations
"Learn-STATIC: Building Fundamental Digital Skills in the Humanities Classroom, Digital Humanities 2022 Conference. Tokyo, Japan, July 2022. (Online with Olivia Wikle, Evan Williamson and Devin Becker, University of Idaho, and Gabriele Hayden, University of Oregon)
"Open as a High Impact Practice: Centering Open Pedagogy and Public Scholarship", Creative Commons Global Summit 2021, September 2021. (Online with: Franny Gaede, Univeristy of Oregon)
“Ancient Teachings, Modern Methods: Using Open Pedagogy to Disseminate Traditional Ecological Knowledge”, Open/Social/Digital Humanities Pedagogy Training and Mentorship,” a Virtual Conference of the ADHO Special Interest Group for Digital Humanities Pedagogy and Training at the Digital Humanities Summer Institute, June 2021 (Online with: Michelle Scalise Sugiyama, University of Oregon)
“Subject and Functional Specialist Collaboration in the Remote Classroom”, ILAGO 15th Annual Oregon Information Literacy Summit, June 2021. (Online with: Andrew Wang, University of Oregon)
"A New and Improved Oregon Digital”, Northwest Archivist Annual Meeting, May 2021 (Online: with Chris Petersen, Oregon State University “Oregon Digital: Reimagined for Reuse”, Texas Digital Library Conference 2021, May 2021. (Online with Chris Petersen, Oregon State University)
"The Role of Service Managers in Redeveloping Oregon Digital", Upper Midwest Digital Collections Conference, November 6, 2020. (Online: with Chris Petersen, Oregon State University)
"Power & Respect: Giving Intellectual Property Rights Back to Vulnerable Communities", Visual Resources Association 2021, March 2021. (Online with: April Hathcock (NYU), Sriba Kwadjovie Quintana (SFMOMA), and Meredith Hale (University of Tennessee))
