About Kate

Kate Thornhill (she/her/hers) is a key figure in the University's commitment to advancing open knowledge, emphasizing public engagement and informed discourse. She actively contributes to this mission through sponsored project research initiatives and classrooms engaged in digital service learning. Those interested in collaborating and partnering with her through the UO Libraries will find that her goals involve working with UO community members to break down academia's ivory tower barriers. Kate aims to establish sustainable bridges in online information communication and knowledge sharing that are participatory and community focused. She cares deeply about ethical open public access and helping people learn digital, data, information, and archival literacies using do-it-yourself approaches.

Kate’s worked with scientists, artists, writers, designers, community activists, and policy thinkers throughout her tenure as an academic librarian. Most of her work takes shape in developing publicly available online research and learning resources that were created in partnership with researchers and community partners who want to communicate their work and outreach through websites, social media, virtual conferences and webinars, and other technology and people facilitated platforms. 

Before joining the University of Oregon, Kate Thornhill held notable positions at the Oregon Health and Sciences Library. She served as the Interim Director of Historical Collections and Archives and Digital Repository Librarian. Additionally, she contributed her expertise as a Digital Scholarship Librarian, specializing in arts and humanities digital initiatives at Lesley University’s College of Art and Design Library (formerly the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University). In addition to working at the UO, she is an adjunct library and information science professor at the University of Denver and a community arts youth ceramics educator in Eugene.

Research Agenda

Kate's research revolves around community informatics, with a particular dedication to advancing the sustainability of digital collections within small, locally-oriented galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM) communities. She is committed to harnessing information and communication technologies to ensure the long-term viability, accessibility, and meaningful engagement with these digital collections. Through exploring innovative strategies and community-driven approaches, her work aims to contribute to sustainable frameworks for preserving and sharing cultural knowledge through digital means. Situated at the intersection of community informatics and GLAM studies, her research places a specific emphasis on fostering the longevity and impact of digital collections within cultural institutions.

Featured Partnerships & Collaborations

• UO Just Future's Institute: The Healer’s Project sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
• Mount Hood Stories:  University of Oregon graduate seminar ENG 660: Racial Ecologies in collaboration with Bark
• The Hurricane María Project – English / Spanish
• Memory Work for Black Lives: A Collaboration between Don't Shoot Portland and the University of Oregon Libraries
• Leveraging GLAM Assets in Research, Teaching, and Learning: Mellon Faculty Fellowships to Advance Library-Museum Collaboration
• Talking Stories: Encyclopedia of Traditional Ecological Knowledge

Featured Publications

Thornhill, K. (2023, November 2). Nineteen Years Since the Last Revolution and the Next: More Connectivity, More Technology, and Now Generative Artificial Intelligence. The American Archivist Reviews Portal (blog). 

Thornhill, K. (2023, April). Review of Metadata for Digital Collections: A How-To-Do-It Manual, Second Edition. Cartographic Perspectives. doi.

Thornhill, K., & Sugiyama, M. S. (2023). Ancient Teachings, Modern Methods: Using Open Pedagogy to Raise Awareness of Traditional Ecological Knowledge. IDEAH, 3(4). doi.

Gaede, F., Lara, A.-M., Reyes-Santos, A., & Thornhill, K. (2022). Afro-Indigenous Women Healers in the Caribbean and Its Diasporas: A Decolonial Digital Humanities Project. Digital Humanities Quarterly, 016(3). 

Gaede, F., & Thornhill, K. (2022). Teaching Copyright through Pop Culture for Public Scholarship-Based Instruction. In M. E. Johnson, T. C. Weeks, & J. P. Davis (Eds.), Integrating Pop Culture into the Academic Library. Rowman & Littlefield.

Thornhill, K., Peterson, E., & Shaffer, A. (2022). Union Stewardship: A Space for Mid-Career Librarian Leadership. In B. West & E. Galoozis (Eds.), Thriving as a Mid-Career Librarian: Identity, Advocacy, and Pathways. Association of College and Research Libraries.

Thornhill, K., & Hayden, G. (2022). Making File Names for Digital Exhibits. In M. Brodsky & K. Getz (Eds.), ACRL Data Literacy Cookbook. American College and Research Libraries.

Featured Sponsored Research

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)

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)

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 and open access to structured datasets. The library presents the results in a digital collection of 351 items and 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) 

"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) 

"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)