Anja Smit, currently Librarian of Utrecht University, will be the new director of DANS, national expertise centre and repository for research data. She will be succeeding Henk Wals in mid-July, who is retiring.
Henk Wals: I welcome the appointment of Anja Smit. She is one of the most prominent Dutch library directors and also enjoys great international prestige, for example in her role as Secretary General of LIBER, the European organisation for research libraries. Under her leadership, the Utrecht University Library played an important role in the development of Open Science and FAIR Data. Services such as DataverseNL and Yoda were developed there. I am convinced that Anja, with her knowledge and experience, can contribute a lot not only to DANS, but also to the formation of our national ecosystem for research data.
Anja Smit (61) has been Librarian of Utrecht University and Director of the University Library since 2010. She brings more than 30 years of national and international experience in the field of sustainable access to scientific information. She was previously director of the university libraries at Maastricht University and Radboud University in Nijmegen, and Executive Consultant for academic libraries in the New England region of the US. Together with Frank Miedema, she also led the Open Science programme at Utrecht University between 2018 and 2019. Anja Smit is internationally active in networks such as LERU, OCLC and LIBER, of which she is secretary-general. She therefore brings with her a large international network relevant to DANS. Smit received her MA in Dutch Literature from Utrecht University.
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