Diane Zorich
I'm a lapsed anthropologist who wanted to work in museums and received a trial by fire when I had to create a Unix system kernel in my first museum job. Having survived that trauma, I was dragged kicking and screaming into consulting. This turned out not to be all that bad a career move as it offers a endless variety of interesting work in the cultural heritage sector. Among other things, I have conducted research on digital culture initiatives and digital humanities centers (for CLIR), explored the mysteries of metadata in projects such as Cataloging Cultural Objects (for VRA), examined issues in digital collaboration (for RLG Programs), and developed intellectual property policies and management strategies (for a variety of cultural organizations). I now am researching digital art history (for the Kress Foundation) and working on various digitization strategy projects (for the Smithsonian). Some day I hope all these strands of activity will converge into some unified grand theory, but until that time I work to keep current and curious. At the end of the day, all my professional efforts are devoted to making cultural heritage more vital and meaningful to our lives.
