2023 Community Council Election

Owned by Marko Knepper
Last updated: Jun 06, 2023
4 min read

We are conducting the election for the FOLIO Community Council. We are seeking individuals who have experience with one or more of:

  • Leadership experience with non-profit organizations
  • Strong collaborative skills who are able to drive decisions that champion the interests of the community and project
  • Participating in and/or managing open community governance
  • Library management systems and library workflows
  • Planning software development projects
  • Agile software development methodologies, including Epic, Feature and Story creation
  • Knowledge of recent library operations and future needs
  • Experience with defining functional requirements and understanding of technical requirements

See also FOLIO Governance Model Election Process and previous elections.

The current members are:

There are thus 8 seats open for 2-year terms starting July 2023. CC members currently serving a term that ends June 2023 may stand for re-election.

Dates

Nominations will be collected from April 12 through April 19, 2023 via the nomination form here - extended to May 1.

Successful candidates will join the council on July 1, 2023

Nominees

THANK YOU to all of the nominees for their interest in helping FOLIO become its best.

The following individuals have been nominated:

NameInstitutionCandidate Statement
Kirstin Kemner-HeekGBV / VZG Göttingen

Help FOLIO being the next LMS and beyond in libraries, Head of LMS Dept., VZG Goettingen = GBV FOLIO non-profit service provider, Long-standing experience in LMS related strategy, resourcing, platform hosting, services, implementation, requirements in FOLIO from the beginning. Development projects / project lead: FOLIO ERM apps + api’s: coop. develop. w. software companies, member of resourcing group, onboarding group, GBV project lead, cooperation with OLF project "GOKb", German FOLIO Days, WOLFCon, FOLIO secretary SMLLC, former Product Council chair, vision + strategy group

Simeon WarnerCornell University LibraryI am a current member and co-chair of the Community Council, and would like continue my service. In July 2021 Cornell was the first large research library to go live on FOLIO. The FOLIO LSP is already a great product but we have more work to do to create a sustainable community with an understood roadmap and broad community participation. I bring a passion for community development (ORCID, IIIF, LD4), for open-source (Samvera, Blacklight, DSpace), and for open-standards (IIIF, OCFL, ResourceSync, OAI-PMH). I am committed to working with the councils, institutions and vendors so that FOLIO governance supports fruitful evolution of FOLIO to meet library needs.
Mike GorrellIndex Data

I would be honored to be able to serve another term in the Community Council. I was Chair of the Community Council 2 years ago, and Co-Chair of it this past year. Prior to that I've been involved in many FOLIO efforts - on the Governance team, Goals and Objectives team, Security team, Chair of the Tech Council for 2+ years as well as involved in WOLFcon Planning and many other FOLIO efforts.

As Index Data's Managing Director I have the privilege of helping libraries adopt and run FOLIO. It seems I can't get enough of it!

Edwin PretzBVB - Bibliotheksverbund Bayern (Bavarian Library Network)The BavarianLibraryNetwork, Network-Center is located in Munich and we are a departm. of the BavarianStateLibrary. I´m an engineer and librarian and worked for more than 20 years in IT departm. in libraries. I´m familiar with team leading, IT and software development projects in libraries. We plan to migrate our systems to FOLIO in the coming years. We corporate with the Leibniz Supercomp. Center, they operate and maintain all the technical infrastructure, we need to run the FOLIO-tenants. Actual there are more than 10 lib. involved in testing FOLIO. I have come to really appreciate this great FOLIO-community. I would like to  get involved in the community council to support the development of FOLIO as a sustainable open source project.
Boaz Nadav Manes Lehigh University LibraryAs an active member of the Community Council, I would like to continue my service. Lehigh was among the first to go live with FOLIO after years of co-development in the OLE framework. We contributed multitude hours on SMEs, development, and on governance committees. As the inaugural FOLIO SMLLC Manager, and one of the originators of the FOLIO governance model, I bring experience and energy for open source development (SC member of ReShare and a co-PI on the IMLS-funded CCLP Project), and for library engagement with value-driven networks (EAST Treasurer, PALCI President). If elected to serve another term, I hope to enable a better focus on marketing and smoother cross-council collaboration around innovation and the onboarding of new members.
Maike Ostershbz, CologneHead of LMS Group at hbz (Cologne), Project Lead FOLIO and GOKb (another OLF project). hbz is a non-profit service provider with a lot of expertise in supporting libraries, implementation projects and hosting. Member of the FOLIO Community since the beginning. Our first hbz library is live since Dec 2021.I have lots of experience in LMS services and requirements, LMS implementation projects and consortia perspectives. FOLIO Community Council, WOLFcon, German FOLIO Days. As equally responsible for the OLF projects GOKb and FOLIO in hbz, especially for development and customer communication of both services, I act as a facilitator between both systems. My goal is to ensure OS project sustainability and to foster a strong and healthy Community
Christopher SpaldingEBSCO Information ServicesI specialize in library systems and communities, having worked on building and maintaining them for academic research libraries and vendors. At EBSCO, I'm a liaison to open source and open standard communities, with a focus on FOLIO. I helped found the Open Library Foundation and remain its secretary. My expertise includes open ILS systems, open standards, and community growth. I'm passionate about open-source software, open access, and open data. Currently, I lead EBSCO's linked data effort and explore how it can extend to open services. I'd be honored to serve on the FOLIO Community Council and collaborate with partners, institutions, and other development organizations.

Announced until May 2

Results

The Community Council seats were uncontested and the following will serve 2 year terms July 2023 through June 2025: