As announced in November 2023, Nathan Tallman became Executive Director of APTrust in January 2024, taking over from Bradley Daigle who retired in 2023.

Biography

Nathan became involved with APTrust in 2014 when he was a Digital Content Strategist at the University of Cincinnati and made the first production deposit to APTrust in December 2014. While at Cincinnati, Nathan started the APTrust Bagging Interest group which held webinar demonstrations of member workflows. Upon becoming the first Digital Preservation Librarian at Penn State University, Nathan continued to be active in APTrust, becoming Co-Chair of the Advisory Committee and Advisory Liaison to the Governing Board. He served as Chair of the Coordinating Committee for the National Digital Stewardship Alliance in 2022.

Nathan's philosophy on digital preservation is two-fold. First, good stewardship is fiduciarily responsible, regardless of an organization's resources. Second, successful digital preservation is an embedded culture across an organization. His research interests include appraisal and selection for digital preservation; sustainable, cloud-native infrastructure for digital preservation; and documentation strategies. You can find more about Nathan's professional history, including his CV and publications at nathantallman.com.

Looking Ahead

In his first two months as Executive Director, Nathan spent many hours with Bradley Daigle conducting knowledge transfers and met with various stakeholders at the University of Virginia. He is planning a listening tour to visit all APTrust member organizations over the next two years. His goals for 2024 include:

• launching more website content,
• creating an Associate Member toolkit,
• revamping onboarding and offboarding practices for APTrust members and their employees,
• establishing a regularly offered training program,
• overhauling APTrust groups,
• refining the APTrust strategic plan,
• creating a documentation strategy, and
• establish an APTrust research agenda.

Nathan works remotely in central Pennsylvania where he lives with his husband, six dogs, and two cats. In his free time, he enjoys cooking, singing, and gardening.

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