Ed Summers

Silver Spring, Maryland, USA   📨   🏠   💾

I am a software developer and research designer with two decades of experience bridging the worlds of data management and the Web. I have worked in academia, startups, corporations and government. I thrive while working in agile, highly collaborative teams that focus on knowledge sharing and a commitment to sustainability.

Skills

• web technology: APIs, REST, linked data, web archiving
• languages: Python, JavaScript, Ruby, PHP, Perl, Go, Java, C, Scheme
• data analysis: Pandas, SciPy, Spark, Presto
• infrastructure: Linux, AWS, Docker, Ansible, Terraform
• databases: PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Redis, ElasticSearch, Solr, MongoDB
• visualization: D3, Plotly, vis.js, Gephi
• practice: agile, automated testing, continuous integration, standards, documentation

Work History

Senior Software Developer
Digital Library Systems and Services
Stanford University
01/2022 -

• Full stack software development (Ruby, Python, JavaScript)
• Web archive creation, preservation and access
• Digital repositories, data preservation
• Web services (REST) / Service design

Design Researcher
Webrecorder
10/2021 - 02/2023

• Requirements and use case gathering
• Technical writing for data specifications
• Software development (Python, JavaScript)

Research Faculty
Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities
University of Maryland
08/2014 - 12/2021

• Full stack software development (JavaScript, React, Python, PostgreSQL, ElasticSearch)
• Social media data analysis and visualization (Python, JavaScript, D3, VisJS)
• Linked Data publishing (Python, NodeJS)
• Sustainable data preservation workflows (AWS)
• Automated testing and continuous integration (GitHub)
• Configuration management (Git, Docker, Ansible)
• Agile requirements gathering & project management
• Instructor & Mentor: software development (Python, JavaScript), data science (Python, Pandas, Spark)

Consultant
The Brookings Institution
Washington, DC
June 2021 - September 2021

• Social media data collection and ETL (Twitter, Reddit, Python)
• Network analysis and visualization (Python, React, vis.js)
• Report writing and research data publishing

Visiting Researcher
National Institute of Standards and Technology
Gaithersburg, Maryland
August 2018 - August 2021

• Conducted a multi-year field study to analyze data acquisition methods used in building the world’s largest public archive of computer software (NSRL).
• Software development and research design for data data preservation packaging formats (Python, Git, Jupyter, PostgreSQL, BagIt, DFXML, OCFL)

Information Technology Specialist
Library of Congress
Washington, DC
03/2006 - 08/2014

• Digital preservation and repository software design and development (Python, Java, MySQL)
• Lead software developer on the National Digital Newspaper Project (Django, MySQL)
• Created a web based quality assurance tool for handling high volume image digitization projects
• Social media archiving (Twitter)
• Designed and implemented the Library of Congress Linked Data Service
• Specification writing and testing W3C

Consultant
George Washington University
Washington, DC
10/2013 - 12/2014

• Django Web Development
• Voyager ILS integration (Oracle)
• Serial Solutions Summon API integration

Consultant
Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies
Madison, WI
09/2013 - 06/2014

• Web data harvesting (Python)
• Data packaging and publishing (Git, AWS)

Consultant
Hypothes.is
San Francisco, CA
01/2013 - 10/2013

• JavaScript and Python development
• Development of the open source Annotator and Annotator Store projects
• Design and implementation of [cross format annotation] annotation support
• Functional/unit testing (Selenium, Pytest, Travis-CI, SauceLabs)

Consultant
GlueJar
Montclair, NJ 11/2011 - 04/2012

• Django software development
• AWS (EC2, RDS, Route 53)
• Google Books API harvesting
• Google, Facebook, Twitter social media integration
• Automated testing and continuous integration (Jenkins)

Consultant
Yale School of Medicine
New Haven, CT
07/2005 - 12/2005

• Python object oriented design
• Automated testing
• Implemented a reporting framework
• Quixote, Pylucene, MySQL, Red Hat administration

Senior Software Engineer
Follett Corporation
McHenry IL
07/2002 - 03/2006

• Web service design and implementation
• Java, PHP and Perl software development
• Automated testing and performance tuning
• Database administration (Oracle, SQL Server)
• XML metadata harvesting and ingest
• Requirements gathering and project planning

Consultant
Performix Chicago IL
02/2004 - 04/2005

• Object oriented design
• Refactored large Perl codebase
• Perl, Apache, mod_perl, DB2

Consultant
Queens Borough Public Library
New York, NY
06/2004 - 05/2005

• Character encoding conversion
• Controlled vocabulary mining
• Perl data processing training

Consultant
Notre Dame University
South Bend IN
06/2004 - 12/2004

• Training in object oriented programming and unit testing
• High volume metadata harvesting
• Guidance and implementation search technologies
• Ported Java Common Query Language parser to Perl

Senior Software Engineer
CheetahMail
New York NY
02/2000 - 07/2002

• Team lead in a group of 8 programmers
• Developed data processing infrastructure for Fortune 500 clients
• Designed/developed real time reporting system
• Creation and maintenance of web service API
• Expertise in SMTP and HTTP protocols
• Web services development
• Technical representative for partners and sales
• Networking and systems administration as required

Metadata Specialist
Old Dominion University
Norfolk, VA
04/1998 - 02/2000

• SGML and XML data processing for the VIVA Consortium
• Created current awareness system to alert students/faculty to new items in their field of interest.
• ILS and OCLC metadata workflow management

Visiting Assistant Professor University of Illinois
Champaign-Urbana, IL
08/1996 - 03/1998

• Web development (ASP, SQL Server)
• Collection development and cataloging in Sociology and Political Science
• Preservation of 19th century criminology pamphlet collection
• Managed reference services in the Social Science Library

Selected Projects

These are some projects and experiments where I’ve been directly involved in the technical development.

• Stanford Web Archive Program - On site crawling, preservation and replay of web archives using Webrecorder tools.
• Unlocking the Airwaves - NEH funded virtual reunification and minimal computing project
• Documenting the Now - Mellon funded social media archiving practices and tools
• Chronicling America - Library of Congress access to historical newspapers.
• Linked Data Service - Publishing controlled vocabularies at the Library of Congress using Linked Data
• Hypothesis - An annotation tool for the web
• Wikistream - visualize realtime edits to all major language Wikipedias
• Anon - track anonymous Wikipedia edits using Twitter
• Pymarc - a python library for MARC processing
• jobs.code4lib.org - a jobs board for the code4lib community
• Linkypedia - view how websites are used on Wikipedia
• Fondz - generate an archival description for describing born digital content
• Microdata - a python library for parsing HTML 5 microdata
• rdflib - a Python library for processing RDF

Selected Publications

• Modeling Sustainable Futures: Proposing a Risk Assessment and Harm Reduction Model for Community-Based Archives Using Decentralized Digital Storage. Shift Collective. 2023.
• Know(ing) Infrastructure: The Wayback Machine as object and instrument of digital research. Convergence. March, 2023.
• Demagoguery, Democracy, and Digitality. In Teaching Demagoguery and Democracy: Rhetorical Pedagogy in Polarized Times. November, 2021.
• Bystander intervention on social media: Examining cyberbullying and reactions to systemic racism. The Brookings Institution. October, 2021.
• Legibility Machines: Archival Appraisal and the Genealogies of Use. PhD Dissertation. University of Maryland. December, 2020.
• Appraisal Talk in Web Archives. Archivaria. May, 2020.
• What We Talk about When We Talk about Archiving the Web. American Archivist. March, 2020.
• Archival Circulation on the Web: The Vine-Tweets Dataset. Cultural Analytics. June, 2019.
• Algorithms and Agenda-Setting in Wikileaks’ #PodestaEmails Release. Information, Communication & Society. 2019
• Appraisal Practices in Web Archives. SocArXiv Papers, 2018.
• Ethical Considerations for Archiving Social Media Content Generated by Contemporary Social Movements. Documenting the Now White Paper. 2018.
• Twitter and Tear Gas: Book Review. Internet Histories, 2017.
• Ferguson and the death of Michael Brown on Twitter: #BlackLivesMatter, #TCOT, and the evolution of collective identities. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40(10).
• #sayhername: a case study of intersectional social media activism. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 40(10).
• Bots, Seeds and People: Web Archives as Infrastructure. Proceedings of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, CSCW 17.
• Automating Transparency. The Source. April, 2015.
• MJ no more: Using Concurrent Wikipedia Edit Spikes with Social Network Plausibility Checks for Breaking News Detection. 2013.
• Linking Things on the Web: A Pragmatic Examination of Linked Data, 2013.
• Key Choices in the Design of Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS), 2013.
• Library Linked Data Final Report, W3C Incubator Group Report, October 2011.
• SKOS Simple Knowledge Organization System Primer, W3C Working Group Note, August 18th, 2008. http://www.w3.org/TR/skos-primer/
• LCSH, SKOS and Linked Data, Proceedings of the International Conference on DublinCore and Metadata Applications, 2008.
• Following Your Nose to the Web of Data, Information Standards Quarterly, 2008
• Building OAI-PMH Harvesters With Net::OAI::Harvester Ariadne, no. 38, Jan 2004.
• Cyril: Expanding the Horizons of MARC21, Library Hi Tech, v. 22, no. 1, 2004.
• A Consortial Approach to Cooperative Cataloging and Authority Control: The Virtual Library of Virginia Experience, Resource Sharing and Information Networks, v. 16, no. 1, 2003, p. 33-53.
• Paying Homage to Perl (PHP), The Perl Review, January, 2003.
• MARC it your way: MARC.pm, Information Technology and Libraries, March, 2002.
• Comprehensive Access to Periodicals: A Database Solution, Library Collections Acquisitions and Technical Services, v. 24, no. 2, 2000, p. 33-44.
• Chaos–Show Me the Metadata, Against the Grain, v.11, no.1, 1998.
• Gateways to Social Work/Welfare on the Net, C&RL News, v.59, no. 3, 1998, p.163-167.

Education

• PhD, College of Information Studies, University of Maryland, 2015-2020.
• MLS, School of Communications, Information and Library Science, Rutgers University, 1995-1996.
• BA English and American Literature, Rutgers University, 1987-1991.

Awards

• 2018 Community Capacity Award. Digital Library Federation.
• 2018 Exemplary Service Award. Society of American Archivists.
• 2015 University of Maryland Scholarship and Research Award
• 2015 Frederick G. Kilgour Award for Research in Library and Information Technology. American Library Association.