Karen Estlund, MLIS '05, has been appointed associate dean for technology and digital strategies for the Penn State University Libraries, where she will provide leadership, strategic direction and support for information technology.
Her portfolio will include Library Technology (I-Tech), Media and Technology Support Services (MediaTech), Digitization and Preservation, discovery, Web services and the Libraries’ digital research repository, ScholarSphere.
She will also serve as liaison to Services and Solutions, a unit of Penn State’s Information Technology Services. Estlund will be a key member of the Libraries’ administration providing, along with other associate deans, collective leadership for the University Libraries.
Estlund comes to Penn State from the University of Oregon where she is head of the Digital Scholarship Center and associate librarian/professor. She also serves as project lead for multi-institutional implementation of Hydra and directs the Oregon Digital Newspaper Program.
Previous positions at Oregon include head of Digital Library Services and digital collections coordinator. Estlund also served as interim head of Digital Technologies and technology instruction librarian at the J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, where she also taught Web design as an adjunct professor in the Communication Department. She has consulted for the national archives in Senegal and Oregon.
In addition to her master of library and information science degree from the University of Washington Information School, she has a bachelor of arts degree from Reed College in classics. She is currently completing a doctorate in communication and society/media studies from the University of Oregon.
She has presented and written on a wide range of topics that have focused on digital collections and projects, digital preservation, digital repositories, gender studies, digital scholarship and publishing. In addition, she has an extensive portfolio of grants related to digital collections and scholarship.
Estlund has played a leadership role and contributed to national Hydra groups and major initiatives such as Europeana and the Digital Public Library of America, among others. She has also taught and developed curriculum for digital scholarship topics. Estlund plans to join Penn State in August.