Join Allison Rivera, Director of Digital Heritage Services at Ovation Data; Dr Brian Donovan, Strategic Growth Lead at DC Thomson History and Professor Elena Simperl, Director of Research at the ODI as they discuss what the National Data Library could mean for archives and collection. The event is chaired by Emma Thwaites, Director of Global Policy and Corporate Affairs at the ODI.
Who is the webinar for
Our webinars are open to everyone, but this will be of particular interest to archivists, academics, registrars, collection managers, art historians and social historians.
Main themes
- The benefits of collections being part of the National Data Library
- The barriers to collections being part of the NDL
- What collections should be included and who decides?
- What precedents are there and what can we learn from them?
Speakers
Allison Rivera, Director of Digital Heritage Services at OvationData
Allison leads strategic consulting for archives and cultural institutions navigating digital transformation. With more than 25 years of experience spanning digital strategy, technology, and product development, she works closely with heritage organizations to build sustainable, standards-based solutions that ensure long-term preservation, access, and use of digital collections.
Her work includes assessing digital maturity, developing digitization and preservation policies and plans, ensuring clean, interoperable metadata, and aligning cultural data with aggregators such as the Digital Public Library of America. She is particularly passionate about improving discoverability, enabling responsible data re-use and re-purpose, and building digital infrastructure that supports institutional missions.
Allison holds an MBA, a BA in Art History, and a Graduate Certificate in Digital Curation and Museum Studies from Johns Hopkins University. She is a Certified Digital Archives Specialist (Society of American Archivists) and Certified Scrum Product Owner, with additional credentials in SEO, website architecture, and digital marketing. Her interdisciplinary approach bridges the gap between curatorial priorities and technical delivery.
Dr Brian Donovan, Strategic Growth Lead at DC Thomson History
A leader in digital heritage for over 25 years, transitioning from academia to entrepreneurship in 1998, when he founded his first start-up at Trinity College Dublin digitising historic archives. Working in partnership with local and national cultural institutions, those initiatives led to the mass digitisation of Irish records and newspapers.
At DC Thomson History, he's their Strategic Growth Lead, helping develop their existing portfolio of well-known brands (including Findmypast, The Social History Archive, and the British Newspaper Archive) and identify new opportunities in the global heritage space. He holds a PhD in History and is passionate about creating user-focused historical products that drive engagement and revenue.
Professor Elena Simperl, Director of Research, ODI
Elena Simperl is the ODI’s Director of Research and a Professor of Computer Science at King’s College London. She is also a Fellow of the British Computer Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a senior member of the Society for the Study of AI and Simulation of Behaviour, and a Hans Fischer Senior Fellow.
Elena’s research is in human-centric AI, exploring socio-technical questions around the management, use, and governance of data in AI applications. According to AMiner, she is in the top 100 most influential scholars in knowledge engineering of the last decade. She also features in the Women in AI 2000 ranking.
In her 15-year career, she has led 14 national and international research projects, contributing to another 26. She leads the ODI’s programme of research on data-centric AI, which studies and designs the socio-technical data infrastructure of AI models and applications. Elena chaired several conferences in artificial intelligence, social computing, and data innovation. She is the president of the Semantic Web Science Association.
Elena is passionate about ensuring that AI technologies and applications allow everyone to take advantage of their opportunities, whether that is by making AI more participatory by design, investing in novel AI literacy interventions, or paying more attention to the stewardship and governance of data in AI.
Emma Thwaites, Director of Global Policy and Corporate Affairs, ODI
Emma’s portfolio at the ODI encompasses public policy, events and engagement, Data as Culture, communications and marketing, product and innovation, and ODI Membership. Emma has over 30 years of strategic business experience, gained in senior roles at the BBC and UK Cabinet Office, and founding – and running – a successful consultancy practice. A former journalist and editor, Emma is a member of the ODI’s Executive Leadership team and advises the board. She is a board director of OpenUk and Executive Chair of Allegory
Event details
This event is held on Zoom, the Zoom link is on the registration page, and you will be emailed reminders with the link.
Please ensure that you can access Zoom on the device you’ll be using for the event.