Welcome, Chad Nelson!

Please join CDL in welcoming Chad Nelson as the new Technical Team Manager for the Publishing, Archives, and Digitization (PAD) team. 

Chad will lead the development team responsible for the technical architecture, operations, and continued evolution of PAD systems and services including but not limited to: eScholarship, UC’s open access publishing and institutional repository platform; Calisphere, an open gateway of digitized primary source materials from cultural heritage institutions at UC and throughout California; and technical processes supporting CDL’s coordination of UC’s participation in HathiTrust.  

Chad brings more than 10 years of knowledge and experience from working in a variety of library technology contexts – as a developer, manager, and community leader – to this position. 

As Lead Technology Developer at Temple University Libraries for 5 years, Chad managed a team of 6 software developers responsible for the architecture, development, and maintenance of dozens of library services, from publishing open access journals to managing data pipelines aggregating statewide digital collections for the DPLA. While employed at the Library of Congress as a Software Developer with the Digital Library Services group, Chad worked extensively on distributed data workflows processing millions of records and terabytes of data, including web archives and digitized books, using AWS services. And in his most recent role as a Software Engineer at the Internet Archive, Chad collaborated with a globally distributed team to build a scalable, testable front-end for a digital preservation storage system and helped shape product direction based on his experience creating digital preservation solutions at multiple libraries.

Chad’s passion for and deep engagement with digital libraries is also manifest in his leadership within the larger library technology community: he led the planning of a Code4lib annual conference and helped overhaul its Code of Conduct; established and led Code4lib’s initial Community Support Squad, which provides support to any community members who feel harassed in one of the organization’s spaces; and has helped organize Library Devops conferences, served on the DPLA Technical Advisory Group, and planned numerous local library technology meetups and events.

Chad’s hobbies include taking photos of urban landscapes, playing board games, creating digital text art, reading fiction, and watching soccer. He has a 16-pound Flemish Giant rabbit named St Oswald the Magnificent, though he is usually just called Ozzie.

Chad will be moving from Philadelphia to the West LA / Culver City area in mid-May. Make sure to include him in any planned SoCal CDL summer gatherings!