Van de Sompel (1957) studied mathematics and computer science at the University of Ghent. He graduated in 2000 with a thesis on context-sensitive and dynamic linking of scientific information. Before that he was head of automation at the university library in that city. He then worked as an e-strategy director at the British Library (London, UK) and as a visiting professor at Cornell University (Ithaca, New York). In 2002 he became leader of the research team ‘Digital Library Research and Prototyping’ at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (New Mexico, USA). He has played a major role in creating widely used information standards (including OAI-PMH, OpenURL, OAI-ORE, Memento, NISO / OAI ResourceSync and Web Annotation) and participated in influential research into alternative metrics for scientific publications (MESUR project) and ‘reference rot’ in scientific communication (Hiberlink project). In 2017 he received the prestigious Paul Evan Peters Award for his contributions to sustainable digital infrastructure in support of education and research.
Van de Sompel has been a visiting professor at DANS twice. DANS employees describe him as someone who has the potential to make things that are seen as desirable on the internet and archival community happen, and often on a very large scale.
Van de Sompel: “My recent sabbatical at DANS was most enjoyable and as such I eagerly accepted the opportunity to take on a position with them. I am really looking forward to contributing to the many national and international projects in which DANS is involved. I also hope to be able to further develop a number of my recent initiatives at DANS, for example Memento Tracer, an innovative approach for web archiving.”
More information
For more information, visit the personal website of Herbert van de Sompel, or contact him via herbert.van.de.sompel [at] dans.knaw.nl.
