The Palace Project - New Features and New Content

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of this class, students will be able to:

1. What new features and functionality has released on the app or platform.
2. What is currently on the roadmap.
3. What new publishers or lending models are now available.
4. New integrations being considered or complete.
5. What new training, marketing or promotion material is available.

Instructors

David Wilcox is the Product Manager for The Palace Project. He has more than ten years’ experience managing open source projects, teams, and communities. David manages the Palace platform and apps throughout their lifecycle, gathering and prioritizing product and customer needs, and defining the future vision and product roadmap. He works closely with engineering, outreach, marketing, and the leadership team to ensure the long-term success of The Palace Project. Previously, David served as the Program Leader for Fedora at Lyrasis, where he worked together with the Technical Lead to oversee key project processes, and led international engagement through public speaking, developing and delivering workshops, facilitating user group meetings, and pursuing partnerships and grant funding. David holds a Master’s degree in Library and Information Studies from Dalhousie University and a Bachelor’s degree in philosophy from St. Thomas University.

Valérie "KAV" Kavanagh has been hired to become The Palace Project Senior Account Executive with a primary role and responsibility around creating awareness, promoting the brand, selling public libraries the Palace Project service, and creating a new and impactful conversation around how Lyrasis leading the Palace Project service creates huge impacts for libraries desiring a patron digital experience that meets the patron where they are in their information and cultural discovery.

Valérie’s professional experiences in enterprise sales and marketing are vast: in addition to her legal background and legal software sales experiences, she has been very successful selling and marketing Library software and solutions and is naturally mission-aligned in her aspirations, as she desires, through her direct efforts, to impact and affect others through creating access to knowledge and resources.

Michelle Kimpton
The Palace Project is led by Michele Kimpton, a globally recognized leader in building communities and products in libraries who has played a pivotal role in some of the most significant advances in Internet-related digital content development and preservation. Michele previously served as Director of Business Development and Senior Strategist at DPLA, where she was instrumental in building the DPLA ebooks program and the DPLA Exchange and was a leader in the Library Simplified community. Previously, Michele worked as chief strategist for Lyrasis and CEO of DuraSpace, where she developed several new cloud-based managed services for the digital library community and developed new sustainability and governance models for multiple open source projects. Michele is a founding member of both the National Digital Strategic Alliance and the International Internet Preservation Consortium. In 2013, she was named a digital preservation pioneer by the Library of Congress. Michele holds an M.B.A. from Santa Clara University and a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Lehigh University.

Jill Scarson is the Partner Success Leader with the Palace Project, serving as liaison to our library partners and aiding in the successful adoption and usage of the Palace platform and app. In this role she aims to assist library partners as they navigate post-implementation, focusing on developing long-lasting relationships. She believes that libraries serve as beacons of democracy by providing equitable access to information, and that Palace is uniquely poised to assist them in navigating the changing, and sometimes challenging, e-publishing ecosystem.

Prior to joining Palace, Jill worked for healthcare non-profits, as a freelance artist, within academic and public libraries, and spent much of the last decade in high education program support. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration and Master’s of Library & Information Science from Syracuse University, where she focused her studies on information literacy instruction, disinformation, and the policies that impact libraries and their users. Currently based in Baltimore, Jill enjoys exploring the city’s over 250 neighborhoods and their arts and cultural offerings. She spends her free time reading, embroidering, watching cozy British murder mysteries, and chasing after her two precocious cats.

Micah May is our director of ebook services, driving the DPLA Exchange and related ebook work. He previously served as director of technology for Library For All, creating open children’s books and free reading apps for the developing world. Before joining DPLA, Micah was director of strategy and then senior director of business development and innovation at the New York Public Library, where he built capacity for innovation and led the creation of the NYPL Labs, Open Ebooks, the MyLibraryNYC partnership with NYC schools, and the open source SimplyE reading app, among others. Micah started his career as a consultant at McKinsey & Co. and has a B.A. from the University of Colorado, Boulder and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.