Emily Lin - Director, Strategic Initiatives, Archives & Special Collections

Contact Information

UC Merced Library
University of California, Merced
5200 North Lake Road
Merced, CA 95343
209-658-7146
elin@ucmerced.edu

Pronouns: she/her/hers

A native of Philadelphia, Emily Lin joined UC Merced in 2003 as one of the founding librarians building a 21st-century research library, and to manage an IMLS National Leadership Grant to digitize art collections from the Clark Center for Japanese Art and Culture in Hanford, CA. That project, “Opening the Cultural Corridor,” laid the groundwork for the library’s collaborations with other partners to digitize significant research collections for broader access.

Partnerships under her direction have included digitizing medical archives and special collections from UCSF; digitizing historical materials from Yosemite and Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks; and a National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) Major Initiatives grant to archive and digitize the records of UC Cooperative Extension. She has worked with UC Merced faculty, students, as well as colleagues at the California Digital Library to ensure the intellectual output of the university is archived and accessible well into the future. She is Co-PI for an NEH Challenge Grant to establish the Sierra Nevada-Central Valley Archives at UC Merced.

Master of Library & Information Science (MLIS)

Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA
Concentration in Management of Digital Information

Artium Baccalaureus (AB), Comparative Literature 

Princeton University, Princeton, NJ
Certificate in East Asian Studies; Teacher Preparation Program

Professional Development

• UCLA Senior Fellows, 2014
• Harvard Leadership Institute for Academic Librarians, 2012
• ARL/CLIR/DLF/Duraspace E-Science Institute, 2012
• IMLS Summer Institute for Humanities Data Curation, 2009

• Co-Principal Investigator, $750,000 grant, National Endowment for the Humanities, “Establishing a Sierra Nevada-Central Valley Archive,” 2022-2026.

• DEFCon Teaching Fellowship, Digital Ethnic Futures Consortium, 2022.

• Principal Investigator, $200,000 grant, National Endowment for the Humanities, “Regional Archives for California’s Central Valley,” 2021-2022.

• Technical lead, $149,814 grant, NHPRC Access to Historical Records, “Pioneering Child Studies: Digitizing and Providing Access to Collections of Women Physicians who Spearheaded Behavioral and Developmental Pediatrics” (UCSF Library, Principal Investigator: Polina Ilieva), 2021-2023.

• Technical lead, $95,000 grant, Network of National Library of Medicine, “Digitizing and Providing Universal Access to Historical AIDS Records,” (UCSF Library, Principal Investigator: Polina Ilieva), 2020-2021.

• US Agricultural Information Network Research Award, $2,000, “Agricultural State and Local Literature: Where are the Gaps in Preservation and Access?” 2019.

• Principal Investigator, $308,900 NHPRC Major Initiatives grant, “A Century of Impact: Documenting the Work of the Cooperative Extension in California’s Counties,” 2018-2021.

• Technical lead, $315,000 NEH Preservation and Access grant, “The San Francisco Bay Area’s Response to the AIDS Epidemic: Digitizing, Reuniting, and Providing Universal Access to Historical AIDS Records” (UCSF Library, Principal Investigator: Polina Ilieva), 2017-2019.

• Co-Principal Investigator, data allocation grant from San Diego Supercomputer Center, 2005-2008.

• "Advancing Regional Knowledge: The Sierra Nevada-Central Valley Research Archive at UC Merced," presented to University Friends Circle, January 9, 2024.
• "A Century of Impact: Documenting the Work of the Cooperative Extension in California,” paper co-presented with Rebecca Gourevitch, USAIN 2022 Virtual Conference.
• “Head, Heart, Hands, Health: Partnering with 4-H Youth to Map Community Histories,” poster co-presented with Rebecca Gourevitch, Society of American Archivists ARCHIVES * RECORDS 2021.
• “Tracing Agricultural History in the Archives,” Merced County Farm News, February 12, 2021.
• “How Curators Transferred Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks’ Archives to Escape Wildfires,” The Conversation, December 23, 2020.
• “The San Francisco Model of Documenting an Epidemic: Democratizing AIDS History through Digitization,” co-authored with Polina Ilieva, Archival Outlook, Nov/Dec 2020.
• “Saving the Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks Archives,” The Federalist Society for History in the Federal Government Newsletter, Spring 2021.
• “Agricultural State and Local Literature: Where are the Gaps in Preservation and Access?,” presented at USAIN 2020 Virtual Conference.
• “Making the case for Open Agriculture: Releasing Your Institution's Publications to ‘Full View’ in HathiTrust,” webinar sponsored by US Agricultural Information Network (USAIN) and the Agriculture Network Information Collaborative (AgNIC), July 10, 2019.
• “Golden State Digital Network,” invited talk, 2^nd Annual Conference of Merced County Historical Societies, October 23, 2018.
• “When Opportunity Doesn’t Knock, Build a Door,” co-presented with Jerrold Shiroma, Pacific Rim Research Libraries Alliance Annual Meeting, September 2018, UC Berkeley.
• “Digital Curation and Scholarship,” Merced Sunrise Rotary Club, April 26, 2018.
• “From Communication to Collaboration: Developing the Spectrum of Activities for Effective Shared Services at the University of California.” In Eden, Bradford Lee, ed. Partnerships and New Roles in the 21^st-Century Academic Library. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015.
• “Three Dimensions of Strategic Planning and Development of Library Services,” invited talk, May 21, 2014, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Lee Shau Kee Library.
• “Top Dogs Campaign: Raising Faculty Awareness of Library Services,” 2014 LAUC Assembly, April 23, 2014, UC Davis.
• “University of California Libraries Provide Open Access and Preservation of ETDs,” co-presented with Martha Hruska and Perry Willett, USETDA 2013 Conference, July 2013, Claremont, CA.
• “New Modes for Organizing and Providing Access to Special Collections, Archives, and Digital Formats,” submitted to the Council of University Librarians, September 10, 2010.
• “Japanese Fine Art: Building a Digital Enterprise While Building a New University,” World Cultures Institute Forum, June 2005, Great Valley Center, Modesto, CA; and the Pacific Rim Digital Library Alliance (PRDLA) Annual Meeting, October 2004, Academia Sinica, Taiwan.

“Beginning with the end in mind,” Luce Initiative workshop, 2024.

“Beyond the Archives,” Luce Initiative Summer Institute 2022.

“History Detectives,” 4-H Summer Academy, 2022.

“Local Archives: Approaches & Methods for Planning Research,” November 11, 2021. Luce Initiative, “Developing Resilient & Integrative Humanities Research with San Joaquin Valley Communities.” 

“Digital Tools & Archiving,” Luce Initiative Summer Institute 2021.

“Digging into Local Archives: Approaches and Methods for Planning Research.” October 19, 2020. Luce Initiative, “Developing Resilient & Integrative Humanities Research with San Joaquin Valley Communities.” 

“(De-)Constructing Digital Collections and Archives,” November 19, 2019. Luce Foundation workshop for Interdisciplinary Humanities 206 graduate seminar.

“An Inside Look: Institutional Archives and How to Approach Archival Research,” October 29, 2019. Luce Foundation workshop for Interdisciplinary Humanities 206 graduate seminar. 

“Research Data Management: From Plan to Publication,” September 18, 2019. Research Data Management Series co-sponsored by Office of Research Development.