Open Interview has featured the interviews of the following experts. Please click on their names to access the full-text interview transcripts.
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Sonali Patankar
Sonali Patankar is the Founder of ‘Responsible Netism’- an initiative aimed at promoting cyber wellness and responsible online behaviour among children and adults. She holds a degree in Social Work from Nirmala Niketan College of Social Work, Mumbai and a Diploma in School Counselling from SNDT Women’s University, Mumbai. She took lead in in launching India’s 1st Cyber Wellness Centre in Goa to provide preventive and curative healing services on online distress. Having successfully educated over 1.7 million children and adults since inception, her initiative aspires to collectively make India cyber safe.
She currently serves as a virtual reference librarian at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR) which is the oldest and main public university system in the U.S. Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Previously she served as head of the reference collection at the UPR Law Library. She’s the Chair of IFLA Latin America and the Caribbean Regional Division (IFLA LAC). She was President of Association of Caribbean University, Research, and Institutional Libraries (ACURIL) in 2021-22 and ACURIL Puerto Rico Chapter during 2012-2021.
She is Kenyan historian and digital humanities scholar. She is working at the intersection of culture and technology. She is the Founder-Director of African Digital Heritage and has co-founded the Museum of British Colonialism and Open Restitution Africa as well. Her work primarily focuses on the application of technology in the preservation, engagement and dissemination of African heritage. Her research work explores the possibilities of embedding intangible histories in 3D digital environments. She is the recipient of the Dan David Prize, and Google Anita Borg scholarship for women in technology.
R David Lankes
Lankes is the Virginia and Charles Bowden Professor of Librarianship at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Information. He is the recipient of ALA’s Reference and User Services Association 2021 Isadore Gilbert Mudge Award for distinguished contribution to reference librarianship. His book, The Atlas of New Librarianship won the 2012 ABC-CLIO/Greenwood Award for the Best Book in Library Literature. Lankes is a passionate advocate for librarians and their essential role in today’s society.
He heads the recently launched Archives at NCBS that speaks volumes about his work. He serves on the review board for archives at IIT Madras, ISI Kolkata, and NID Ahmedabad and on the board of IUHPST‘s Commission on Bibliographic and Archival Records. He served in an executive role in OHAI between 2020 and 2022 and is a founding member of Milli, a collective of individuals and communities committed to the nurturing of archives. Prior to this, he was a research engineer at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University. In addition, he is an independent science writer, with work in The Atlantic and Scientific American online, Nautilus, Aeon, Wired, and the Caravan.
Katharine Dunn
She is Scholarly Communications Librarian at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the premiere educational institute in the world. She works with Scholarly Communications and Collections Strategy department (SCCS) that aims to transform scholarly communications for the digital age with innovative and sustainable stewardship of the MIT Libraries’ collections. She supportsfaculty and researchers working with the MIT Faculty Open Access (OA) policy and research funder requirements.
She is one of the leading international open access advocators. She is heading Open Access Scholarly Publishing Association (OASPA) as its Executive Director. Prior to this, she was a Membership and Communications Manager at OASPA and worked for over two decades in academic publishing. With such a rich experience, her leadership role in the growing open access movement has been acknowledged as key to the rapid growth and expansion of open access throughout the global scholarly community.
He is one of the esteemed library professionals known widely for his innovative library services for the user community. Having rich experience of working with the premier organizations such as American Center, The Times of India, British Council Libraries, QMed Knowledge Foundation, Welingkar Institute of Management Development and Research, BITS Pilani, Kunkur carved niche for himself and the organizations he served. Presently he is heading the Library of LNM Institute of Information Technology (LNMIIT), Jaipur.
She is a celebrated international library consultant. She was the President of American Library Association (ALA 2018-19), Chair of ALA 2030 Sustainable Development Goals Task Force, Chair of ALA Committee on the Status of Women in Librarianship, and she has also worked for IFLA in different capacities. She is the founder of New Librarians Global Connections and actively engaged in many professional assignments of global importance.
She practiced innovative services in the Canadian academic libraries much before the advent of technology. With over fifty years’ dedicated service in the library profession in Canada, she has worked in different segments of academic librarianship from college to universities, advocating and practicing information literacy programmes for the effective utilisation of resources. She has equally marked her contributions as an educator, researcher, institutional builder, and volunteer. She has been awarded many prestigious global awards including Queen Elizabeth Golden Jubilee Award for her outstanding contributions.
He is a long-time crusader for open access (OA) to scholarly literature in India. He has been promoting OA through interoperable institutional repositories – the green route for OA. He has spoken about the importance of OA in different forums, and written articles in popular journals. At present, he is working as Librarian of Azim Premji University.
He is an Ex-Chief Economic Adviser, Ministry of Rural Development and Principal Labour and Employment Adviser, Ministry of Labour and Employment, Government of India. With rich experience in the socio-economic issues and policies concerning the rural development, labour and employment sectors, he has held many significant positions and contributed immensely in the said fileds.
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He is one of the leading scholars in open, distance and online learning domains. He is an Education Specialist at Commonwealth of Learning (COL) in Canada. He has served Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), UNESCO, Paris and IGNOU’s Regional Centres in prominent capacities. He is promoting the use of educational multimedia, eLearning, open educational resources (OER) and open access to scientific information around the world.
He is one of the globally renowned library and information professionals with nearly three decades of experience. Having served in prestigious organisations such as Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, CRRI-CSIR, RISDC, Management Development Institute, and IMT Ghaziabad, Prof. Gaur has rich experience in librarianship and archival science of different verticals. He is presently Dean, Professor and Head of Kala Nidhi Division at Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts (IGNCA), New Delhi.
He is a Wikipedian, blogger, entrepreneur, writer, speaker and an institution builder. He is the founder of The Wikipedia Library of Wikimedia Foundation which provides library and reference services to the editors and readers of Wikipedia. He recently left the Wikimedia Foundation and currently is heading his own consulting company called Blueprint Advising. He works with a variety of open knowledge organisations like archives, open access publishers and digital repositories. He is passionate about projects that offer novel benefits to people in a way that is simple, clever, and effective.
She is a celebrated academician, information scientist, institution builder and a sought after speaker. She has served as a faculty of the University of Mysore for 42 years. A Fulbright scholar and a visiting professor at Virginia Tech, USA and the Indian Statistical Institute, Bengaluru, she pioneered the Vidyanidhi Digital Library project, an internationally known Indian open access repository. She has served on the Board of Directors of the NDLTD and also the INFLIBNET and has been a consultant for UNESCO on several occasions and commissioned many studies. Shalini conceptualized and founded ISiM —the first Information School in India at the University of Mysore with the global funding and collaboration.
He is the Assistant General Manager and head of Information Resource Centre (IRC) of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Bengaluru. He is managing TCS libraries at Bengaluru branch and in addition, he is passionately contributing to the TCS’s CSR initiatives on education, health and environment. His untiring field work has inspired countless students studying in the villages and towns.
He is the Digital Brand Ambassador and Chairman of Vision Digital India. Maram has served many statutory, corporate, social and educational organisations on various capacities. His work in management education for over two decades has been recognized by Government of India and intuitions of high repute on numerous occasions. Maram has travelled over forty countries to get a global perspective on management. He is a research guide and faculty at leading Indian and international universities respectively.
She is a librarian by training with excellent exposure to medical librarianship in her stint as Librarian at Hinduja Hospital and HELP. She is now CEO of QMed Knowledge Foundation, a successful entrepreneurial venture established by Vasumathi in 2007. Her passion for training medical professionals especially for searching the literature for evidence based medicine has not only brought her a name but also made QMed as one of the model entrepreneurial initiatives by an Indian library professional. Medical professionals have been highly benefitted from her 400+ training programmes conducted at prestigious medical organizations across the country.
She is an assistant professor at the School of Development Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Her primary areas of interest are the sociology and social history of labour. She is currently interested in contractualisation and labour process with the Indian public sector and its impact on labour mobilization. She also teaches and works on themes of gender, public policy and inequality.
He is an internationally acclaimed expert on open access to knowledge. He is specialised in the history of western philosophy and philosophy of law and also a non-practicing lawyer. He works for the growth of open access to research, within Harvard University and beyond, using a combination of consultation, collaboration, research, tool-building, and direct assistance. He is the Director of the Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication in the Harvard University Library, Director of the Harvard Open Access Project in the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, and a Senior Researcher at Berkman Klein. His ideas, books, articles and speeches on open access have immensely influenced the open access movement worldwide.
He is one of the distinguished library and information professionals known for his contributions to the open access movement. A Scientific Assistant at J. R. D. Tata Memorial Library, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru, Jayakanth has been credited for setting up of India’s first institutional repository, thus making the century-old IISc’s research far more globally visible than before. He has trained several students through erstwhile National Centre for Science Information (NCSI), Bengaluru and library professionals in many workshops for setting up their institutional repositories.
He is Library Analytics Manager and Research Librarian at Singapore Management University. He has keen interest and curiosity in many areas of academic librarianship. His thoughts on librarianship are constantly evolving and shared on his award winning blog – Musings about Librarianship. As library analytics manager, he leverages his diverse experience in various areas of academic librarianship to provide a holistic view of library strategy and operations in newly emerging areas like analytics, discovery of research data and more.
She is a distinguished academician, social thinker, researcher and speaker from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. She is known for her extensive research and expertise in the issues concerned with women. She has delivered several talks in conferences in India and abroad on gender studies. She is a post-doctoral fellow of London School of Economics and has authored many books, monographs, research papers, commentaries and reviews. Some of her works are included for policy making as well. She is on editorial board of many learned journals. She has bagged many awards including the awards from Mayor of Mumbai and The Times Foundation.
His a President candidate (2020-21) of American Library Association (ALA), the oldest and prestigious library association in the world. Presently, he is serving as Director of Kent District Library, U.S.A. He successfully fought for libraries for almost two decades on a local and state level and now he is eager to be a mentor and champion for library systems nationwide. Werner is a strong advocator of building better libraries and stronger communities through kindness, empathy and love.
He is the original developer of Koha, the first free library automation software. He worked for Katipo Communications Ltd. during the construction of the original release of Koha. He also played a commendable role in the Koha community, holding many key elected positions over the years and often speaking and training at various conferences and workshops globally. As a Technical Lead of Koha (Wellington and Wairarapa, New Zealand), Chris is undoubtedly responsible for making Koha one of the leading library automation software in the world.
He is known for reviving the reading habit through book summaries. Every week he reads a bestselling book and prepares a twenty minute book summary of it. He also records the summaries in his own voice and shares through Booklet, a free app, developed by him. More than five lakh Indians are now part of his initiative. He is determined to achieve the mission ‘Make India Read’ and revolutionise reading in India.
She is a Mumbai based storyteller, full-time writer, voice-over artist, performer, mentor, blogger, scriptwriter and social enthusiast. She creates fictional stories in multiple languages. She also runs an online story telling school, ‘Jhumritaliaya’. She has a huge fan following both online and offline. Her TEDx talk, “How Story Telling Saved Me,” is a true account of her life experiences. It has been highly appreciated online. Many of her stories are widely accessed on YouTube.
He is one of the celebrated American library professionals known worldwide. He is an independent consultant, speaker, author, blogger and tech-expert. His books and articles are widely read and he has got a strong reader base globally.
He is best known globally for his fight against predatory open access journals and dubious publishers. His crusading efforts have brought him appreciation worldwide. At the same time, he has faced criticism and fought legal cases for being acutely vocal about potential predatory journals listed in his blog- Scholarly Open Access. Nothing has deterred his mission even after he shut down his blog last year. His splendid work and strong concern for ethical publishing has inspired many professionals globally and made them his avid fans.
