Fesenko named head of Carolina Digital Library at UNC-Chapel Hill
Feb. 8 - The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library has appointed Kirill Fesenko to be the first head of the Carolina Digital Library. His appointment will be effective February 19, 2007. In this newly created position, Fesenko will provide leadership for the library's expanding programs to create, preserve, and manage research materials in digital form.
The Carolina Digital Library is a major new department within the library, said Sarah C. Michalak, university librarian and associate provost for university libraries. Its creation underscores the library's commitment to building vital collections of digital research materials.
"Readers and scholars need to have the same kinds of outstanding experiences in the electronic realm that they have in our library," said Michalak. "They want to be able to consult rare books, unique documents, and complex data in all forms. They want to bring new technologies to bear on their use of primary sources and all of their research. Kirill brings the creativity and experience to realize this vision at UNC."
In addition to building a production center for the creation of new digital collections, Fesenko will develop a departmental home for the library's Documenting the American South digital publishing program, established in 1996, and he will work with librarians and faculty members to build new digital collections.
The Carolina Digital Library will also have primary responsibility for creating UNC's institutional repository to capture and make available the digital intellectual, administrative, and research output of the university. "This is a major undertaking which will result in an important new venue for scholarly communication in and beyond UNC," said Michalak. "We expect that the Carolina Digital Library under Kirill's leadership will make great strides in developing innovative research tools to serve our numerous constituencies."
Fesenko said he is optimistic about the opportunities that digital technologies and the Internet provide to libraries. "I will be promoting natural growth and integration of new digital collections and services with traditional libraries in ways that support our patrons' imagination and quest for knowledge," he said.
From 2000 to 2007, Fesenko was director of online publishing for East View Information Services. The Minneapolis-based company provides information services from Russia and the Newly Independent States. Fesenko was previously East View's director of operations from 1996 to 2000, and chief executive officer of the Moscow office from 1992 to 1996.
Fesenko worked in the marketing department of the Moscow office of Honeywell-Sterch from 1990 to 1992. He also served for four years as a research fellow with the Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow. Fesenko is completing his M.A. in library and information science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His M.A. in economics is from Moscow State University.
