New Director of Digital Scholarship, Cecilia Smith

Cecilia Smith became the University of Chicago Library’s new Director of Digital Scholarship on October 18. Smith received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2014 and holds an MS with Distinction in GIS and Spatial Analysis in Archaeology from University College London. She received her undergraduate degree, cum laude, in archaeology from Boston University.

Smith most recently served as the Library’s GIS and Maps Librarian. In this role, she spearheaded the development of the GIS Hub in Crerar Library, developed collaborations with peer institutions within Chicago and across the country, and partnered with faculty and students to incorporate geospatial techniques into their research and teaching. Prior to coming to the University of Chicago, Smith worked as the Geospatial Librarian and Clinical Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University, where in addition to developing geospatial services, she was responsible for providing a wide range of digital scholarship programming. She currently serves on the BTAA Geospatial Data Project Task Force and is co-convener of the ACRL Digital Scholarship Section's Numeric and Geospatial Data Services Discussion Group.

As Director of Digital Scholarship, Smith will work strategically with library units and campus partners to provide an integrated suite of services that support digital scholarship, including the Knowledge@UChicago repository for open access scholarship and open data, and platforms such as the Open Journal System and Omeka that support a variety of digital publishing and collection building.

Smith’s office is in Regenstein Library Room 220. Contact her at ceciliasmith@uchicago.edu or 773-702-8761.