Bree Ann Midavaine

I consider myself a data librarian specializing in taxonomies and ontologies, with a passion for cataloging and metadata, especially as it relates to increased access to materials.

When I’m not teaching INFO653 Knowledge Organization I am working at my day job for the Philadelphia Museum of Art as their Taxonomist. The Museum was given a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to “support a first-of-its-kind pilot effort to examine data-integration potential across the museum’s various digital information resources—library and archives, curatorial and registrar files, collections and image databases, conservation records, and time-based acquisitions.”[1] The Art Information Commons Initiative aims to create a sustainable, institution-wide information culture that will benefit data creation, access, and preservation, and ultimately make our data more accessible to the public. I am very excited to be working on this state of the art project and using my skills to promote access to information, encourage new connections, and new ways of understanding the art objects at the Museum.

I have previously worked as the Taxonomist and Lead Data Librarian for NBC News Group doing much of the same thing in a fast paced environment on a larger scale and as a digital processing archivist at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Pratt Institute

• Masters Library and Information Science
• Masters Art History
  Thesis: Hilma af Klint: Medium of Abstraction