Ruth Kitchin Tillman

Systems Librarian

Penn State University

I work as the Systems Librarian at Penn State Libraries, where I hold the faculty rank of Associate Librarian. My role has spanned traditional and emerging technologies, with growing responsibility for our library’s systems in addition to my longtime work on the library’s catalog, discovery, and bibliographic data. I am currently leading our migration from Sirsi Symphony to ExLibris Alma.

My research agenda has long been driven by concern for the working conditions of colleagues. Sometimes this concern rises to the surface of the research, such as with the Collective Responsibility Forum; other times it directly motivates it, as in interviews with library system maintainers or the essay “Repository Ouroboros”; and even when it is not at the forefront, concern for labor and morale often motivates the underlying question, such as my survey on rates of faculty self-deposit into institutional repositories. Even my creation of EADiva.com, a user-friendly version of the EAD tag library, was driven by a concern that my fellow library school students pass their metadata classes without needing to be technical experts and be able to use EAD at their internships and first jobs.

I am currently writing up my sabbatical research on the longer-term impacts of library systems migration, particularly staff who use these systems daily. I’ve spoken about this as a keynoter at VALA 2024 and Code4Lib 2025. I blog periodically about library topics from reflections on library data and systems to concrete tutorials to thoughts on the field in general.

I’ve been a quilter since I picked up a copy of Quilting for Dummies in 2000 and have begun posting my quilts on this site as well. I’m also the caretaker for a pollinator garden and an anxious pitbull, a game designer/writer, a ham radio operator (KC3AF), a progressive Mennonite, and a GLAM mastodon instance moderator.

Interests

Labor and maintenance
Linked data
Cataloging and metadata ethics
Quilting and texile arts
Ham radio (KC3AF)

Education

Master's Degree in Library Science, 2013

University of Maryland iSchool

Experience

Associate Librarian - Systems Librarian

Penn State University Libraries

Sep 2017 – Present State College, Pennsylvania

Engaging with the Libraries’ discovery, cataloging, and metadata systems to improve access, data, and user experiences. Research interests include: maintenance of cataloging and discovery systems, contingent labor, ethics in practical cataloging, and linked data work.

Responsibilities include:

Leading a project to migrate the Libraries from Sirsi Symphony, which we have used for 25 years, to Ex LIbris Alma.
Improving the Libraries’ discovery through the implementation and maintenance of a Blacklight library catalog. Managing the Libraries’ Summon platform and collaborating on its homepage search.
Leading Penn State’s participation in PCC Wikidata pilot along with wikidata workshops. Exploring opportunities for creation and use of linked data within library data projects.
Solving complex data reuse and reporting projects with data from sources including the library’s catalog, ArchivesSpace, and WorldShare. For example: identified library materials with possible arsenic in bindings, assisted Special Collections with data for planning a space management project, and queried WorldCat holdings across BTAA libraries to support a colleague’s research.

Previous titles:
- Assistant Librarian, September 2017-June 2023
- Sally W. Kalin Early Career Librarian for Technological Innovations, July 2021-June 2024
- Cataloging Systems and Linked Data Strategist, September 2017-June 2026
Awards received: 2024 University Libraries Award, Penn State University Libraries

Assistant Librarian - Digital Collections Librarian

Hesburgh Libraries, University of Notre Dame

Feb 2016 – Aug 2017 South Bend, Indiana

Implemented working digital collections infrastructure in CurateND, the library’s institutional repository.

Accomplishments included:

Consulted with librarians, curators, and external stakeholders to bring collections into the library’s exhibit platform and/or institutional repository.
Set development priorities for the library’s exhibit platform and institutional repository. Exploring integrations between library systems.
Developed and refined metadata for load into the institutional repository.
Developed and maintained pipelines for dissemination of EAD finding aids from Rare Books and Special Collections and Archives units through the institutional repository and into the library’s catalog and special collections sites.
Created documentation for users and processes for the library’s technical platforms.

Metadata Librarian II

Cadence Group at NASA Goddard

Jun 2014 – Jan 2016 Greenbelt, MD

Managed regular harvest and data management for the NASA Goddard Institutional Repository. Led project to create new collection of 488 digitized issues of the Goddard News, allowing researchers to access the first 40 years of Goddard’s history.

Serials and Continuations Specialist

Jacob Burns Law Library

Dec 2008 – Jun 2014 Washington, DC

Oversaw handling of serials, periodicals, and continuing publications from initial receipt through delivery to shelvers. Performed 18 months of original cataloging of law journal colloquia as monograph records.

Projects

Collective Responsibility Labor Forum

IMLS LG-73-18-0236-18

Ruth Tillman, Sandy Rodriguez, Amy Wickner, Emily Drabinski, Stacie Williams

Publications

Hollinger's Edge: The Retrieval Object at the Margins of the Archival Ontology

December 2025 Journal of Archival Organization

Archival resources are frequently described in two parallel representations: as intellectual groupings that facilitate discovery, and as physical inventories that facilitate retrieval and requesting. At the time a researcher requests to use material, it must be possible to map the intellectual grouping to the corresponding retrieval object. In this paper, we analyze three emerging archival linked data standards (BIBFRAME-ARM, Records in Contexts, and Linked.Art) from the perspective of retrieval. We find that only Linked.Art is currently capable of representing retrieval objects natively, and that neither BIBFRAME-ARM nor Records in Contexts are semantically interoperable with archival inventory management or requesting.

Supporting Doctoral Research in Sociology in the BTAA

May 2025 Pennsylvania Libraries: Research & Practice

The purpose of this study is to examine the core journals used by graduate students in doctoral research in sociology at 16 institutions within the Big Ten Academic Alliance (BTAA). Citation studies in dissertations are often limited to exploring core journals based on local or aggregate multi-institutional use and rarely provide metrics for comparing local use within a discipline. Our study explores the nuances of finding core journals based on local priorities and aggregate use in dissertations. It also examines how well each institution supports graduate research by examining the institutional holdings for these core lists.

Crossing Silos: Assessing the Utility of Identity Attributes in Name Reconciliation

April 2025 portal: Libraries and the Academy

Even as librarians have spent the past twenty years documenting the rich world of scholarly communication beyond the catalog, repositories and catalogs too often remain completely siloed from each other. Current practices and tools to unite the two focus entirely on matching names, an imprecise method requiring substantial time spent on review. This article presents results of an experiment incorporating the attribute and citation data present in Library of Congress Name Authority Records and local faculty database records into the process of authority reconciliation. Adding tests for employer affiliation, educational history, and academic department produced improved, highly accurate match results.

See all publications

Selected Presentations

Scaffolding Possibility: Systems, Stress, and Small Acts of Care

What kinds of interventions can library tech workers or those with above-average technical aptitude make to improve their coworker’s morale after a migration? I share some of the results of survey and interview research on morale and migration and the importance of small acts that keep possibility alive.

Keynote Code4Lib 2025

Waiting for Production: Making Use of Long Liminality

Cataloging and metadata workers operate in a space of unrealized promise. For over a decade, we’ve been told “linked data is coming, be ready!” Now we hear “AI is coming, be ready!” Yet in our day-to-day, many of us work with data structures that are older than we are. If you’re not working on the few cutting-edge projects, how can you make use of the time? What is still worth doing even if the promised futures never materialize? This talk will take its grounding from research into the era of library automation and the worker experience of systems migration as well as the past decade of linked data development and experimentation.

Keynote Midwest Collaborative for Library Services Linked Data Users Group

The Interdependent Library System: Revisiting Human Aspects of Library Automation

What does it mean to consider the “human aspects of library automation” when we approach a migration or other technological shift in the workplace? In this talk, I reflect on the contexts and experiences of workers over the history of library technology and share preliminary insights from my research.

Keynote VALA 2024

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Another thing that’s true about me…

XKCD comic 208, everybody stand back, I know regular expressions

Regular expression cartoon under Creative Commons NonCommercial 2.5 Generic license, original image at XKCD.com.