Two New Librarians

The NCSU Libraries has appointed Matthew S. Sumner as Geospatial Data Services Librarian effective November 1, 2007, and Jason Casden as Digital Technologies Development Librarian, effective December 17 2007.

As Geospatial Data Services Librarian, Matt Sumner will develop and manage spatial and numeric data resources and services, including GIS services, which support teaching, research, and extension/engagement. He will consult with faculty and students to analyze data needs and to develop instructional modules, including classroom presentations, Web-based tutorials, data documentation, and research resources. He will participate in the selection, organization, delivery, and management of data collections. In addition he will establish configurations for the Libraries' public GIS workstations and offers guidance in their use.

During graduate school, Sumner developed a strong background in environmental and urban GIS technologies: he worked as a GIS Technician in the Robert K. Godfrey Herbarium geo-referencing herbarium plant specimens according to written sampling locality descriptions and attributing each specimen point with its latitude, longitude, and maximum error radius; and served as GIS Support Analyst at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, where he contributed to the creation of spatially accurate habitat distribution maps of freshwater species in Florida and edited a DEM-modeled stream segment layer to extend coverage of the National Hydrography Dataset (NHD).

Matt Sumner is a member of Sigma Gamma Epsilon National Honorary Society in the Earth Sciences and is a recipient of the Philip J. and Nancy LaPorte Meek Community Leadership and Service Grant and the Kraus Wilderness Preserve Research Fellowship. He holds the Master of Science in Geographical Information Science from Florida State University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Geology from Ohio Wesleyan University.

As Digital Technologies Development Librarian, Jason Casden will provide leadership and hands on programming expertise for digital library projects. He will identify emerging technologies that have potential for new and improved library services; and develop functional prototypes of new digital library services through an iterative process that emphasizes performance, sustainability, and usability. Collaborating closely with Information Technology staff to develop and maintain supporting technology infrastructure, Casden will maintain and provide enhancements to existing digital library applications.

Jason Casden brings to the Libraries exceptional leadership and expertise in digital librarianship from his previous position as Digital Projects Librarian at the New York University School of Medicine's Ehrman Library. There he developed a MySQL database-driven system for managing and searching card-based archives inventories. He represented the medical library on the Repository Services Planning Committee at NYU?s main library, led Perl script customization and solved server issues for a library-wide trouble ticket project. During library school, Casden was a Carolina Academic Library Associate (CALA) in the Library Systems department, installing, configuring, and administering twelve Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers. He has served as a research assistant in the UNC Southern Folklife Collection and the Theatre Research Institute at The Ohio State University.

He is a member of several professional associations, including the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA) division of the American Library Association. This summer he co-moderated a session on Lucene and Solr at Library Camp NYC. Currently, he is converting the EAD finding aid date normalization script he wrote into Java to be included in the Society of American Archivists? Archivists? Toolkit. Casden holds the Master of Science in Library Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He earned the Bachelor of Arts in English and the Bachelor of Arts in Linguistics, with a minor in Computer and Information Science, from The Ohio State University.