The ambassador program deputizes community members to champion IIIF adoption in their communities. Ambassadors focus their efforts around different domains, associations, tools, or regions and meet with IIIF-C staff periodically to provide updates and feedback.
Current ambassadors:
Evelien Hauwaerts,Curator Medieval Manuscripts, Openbare Bibliotheek Brugge
Evelien serves as the curator of manuscripts at the Public Library of Bruges and is a steering member of the IIIF Network Group Flanders & Netherlands. She co-curated the Mmmonk.be project in 2022, which delved into IIIF-driven metadata aggregation and complex IIIF annotations. Drawing from her experience as both a collection manager and researcher, Evelien aims to bridge the gap between IIIF end-users and developers. She developed and hosts a workshop to introduce IIIF to end-users, gathering valuable feedback that is then relayed to developers for enhancing user experience and interface design. Evelien has a Ph.D. in Medieval languages and literature (Université de Poitiers), a master’s degree in Romance languages (KU Leuven), and two research master’s degrees in Medieval History (KU Leuven and Université de Poitiers).
Roger Hyam, Biodiversity Data Systems Developer, Royal Botanical Garden Edinburgh, Scotland
Roger trained as a botanist, completing a PhD in the molecular systematics of the genus Rhododendron in the 1990s, but became increasingly involved in data science and software. He crossed to the commercial software development world for a few years in the early 2000s before returning to the hybrid field of biodiversity informatics and working for the standards organisation TDWG. He is now on staff at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh where he continues his interest in the mechanics of sharing biodiversity data between organisations. Currently he is working on an EU funded project to encourage adoption of IIIF by natural history collections.
Gerda Koch, Project Manager, Applied Information Technology Research, ltd. Gerda Koch is project manager at AIT Applied Information Technology Research ltd. (https://www.ait.co.at) in Graz, Austria. She has been working on cultural heritage projects for more than 25 years. Her research focus is on metadata and digital object standards in the cultural heritage domain, on vocabulary creation and management and on collaborative online learning environments and cultural portal design. She is lecturer for the University course Data Steward at the University of Graz and member of the IIIF coordination group at Europeana. At AIT Graz, Gerda Koch is content manager of two Europeana aggregation facilities, Europeana Local Austria and OpenUp! the natural history aggregator to Europeana (http://openup.ait.co.at/).
Since 2010 Europeana Local Austria has on a regular basis been organising a 2-days conference called “Digital Library” (conference.ait.co.at/digbib) for the DACH-Area. The conference offers workshops and a one-day lecture programme on current topics for digital libraries. Additionally, individual training workshops are organized upon request.
Gerda Koch received a Master of Arts in English with a combination of studies in Economics and Law at the University of Graz, holds an academic degree as media specialist from the University of Graz and holds an MBA in Human Resource Management, specialised in modern learning environments.
Brittny Lapierre, Senior User Experience Developer, Canadian Research Knowledge Network
Brittny Lapierre, Senior UX Developer at the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN), earned her BCS from Carleton University and a certificate in User Experience from the University of Toronto. With dedication to advancing open access, accessibility standards, and human-centered design principles, Brittny is eager to champion the benefits of IIIF, especially within the Canadian landscape.
Martim Passos, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Martim is a researcher and software developer at Instituto Moreira Salles. He worked on different Digital Humanities projects such as imagineRio, the first IIIF collection of Brazilian cultural heritage, and conducts workshops and trainings introducing the framework to researchers and institutions in the country. As a partner of Arka, he has developed open source solutions such as Tropiiify and is actively engaged in the community, fostering the adoption of IIIF in public and private organizations from the Global South.
Andrija Sagic, Head of Digitization Department, Library Milutin Bojic, Belgrade, Serbia
Andrija is Coordinator of the Digital Transformation of Libraries Section for the Serbian Library Association, which helps libraries in the digitization process. He is also an Associate member of IFLA’s Audiovisual and Multimedia Section. Andrija has implemented the first IIIF-supported digital repository in Serbia and has helped in implementations for two other repositories.
Joe Song, IntelliJourney, Shanghai, China
Joe is a Digital Humanities enthusiast, independent software vendor, and Fudan University alumnus. Inspired by the vision of IIIF, he aims to introduce Chinese ancient scripts, paintings, and calligraphies to the whole world. As a nation that is proud of its continuous culture of 5000 years, China has a huge amount of cultural heritage waiting to be transformed into an interoperable form. With that goal in mind, Joe is especially interested in implementing IIIF in large scale scenarios, such as writing a cloud-native image server or enabling editing millions of images and publishing them in one click. Joe hopes more and more universities, colleges, and institutions in China will become part of the IIIF family and enjoy the fruits of unprecedented academic freedom.
Frederick Zarndt, Coronado, CA
Frederick has been a member of the IFLA Governing Board as well as Chair of its Division II and former secretary and chair of the IFLA News Media Section. For 8 years, he was the administrative chair of the ALTO XML Editorial Board. Frederick has 25+ years experience in software development and is a member of ACM and IEEE and a Certified Software Development Professional (CSDP). He is a member of ALA and IFLA. Frederick has Master’s Degrees in Computer Science and Physics.