Julie Hardesty

As Metadata Analyst/Librarian in Digital Collections Services, Julie Hardesty establishes standards and requirements for discoverability, access, and sharing of digital collections held and managed by the IU Libraries, and works to ensure that these collections are preserved and will remain usable into the future. Her areas of expertise include metadata migration and digital repository management. Her research interests include Linked Data, equity and representation for marginalized communities within library collections, identifying and managing bias in large language models, and fostering and managing open source community development work.

Julie has been heavily involved in the open source Samvera Community, working to shape and improve the repository management software application called Hyrax. Her involvement there has also informed her work on IU's implementation of Hyrax called Digital Collections.

Since 2013 Julie has taught a Z603 workshop in IU's Department of Information and Library Science on the Encoded Archival Description (EAD) XML standard. She is reworking this course with the idea of giving students hands-on experience creating metadata for digital collections using the various digital repository tools in use at IU. EAD is still part of this but it is incorporated alongside describing digitized items associated with an archival or special collection.

A longtime Hoosier, Julie worked for IU for a number of years prior to taking on her current position, serving as User Interface Design Specialist for the Libraries’ Digital Library Program from 2007-2012 and as Systems Analyst/Programmer for Library Information Technology and University Information Technology Services from 2002-2007. She received all of her degrees from IU Bloomington: Master of Information Science, M.A. in Art History, and B.A. in Art History.