Rachel Appel

Rachel provides leadership in crafting the Libraries' overall vision for the preservation of digital collections, a key focus of our strategic plan. In this position, she develops, documents, implements and oversees preservation workflows, procedures and policies for the Penn Libraries' digital collections and assets, both digitized and born-digital. She also collaborates with stakeholders across the Libraries and the University to develop programmatic and sustainable policies and workflows to address digital curation and long-term digital preservation needs for the Libraries and related campus assets.

Rachel has experience in digital preservation, digital librarianship, and project and grant management to this new position. She came to Penn Libraries from Temple University where she was the Digital Projects and Services Librarian, coordinating digital collections, implementing metadata projects related to cultural heritage and scholarly communication, and managing ongoing services. Before that, Rachel was the Digital Collections Librarian at Bryn Mawr College and the Digital Asset Manager at UT Austin.

Rachel holds a Bachelor of Arts in Film Studies from Smith College and a Master of Science in Information Studies with a specialization in Digital Archives and Preservation from the University of Texas at Austin.