Title

Gina Costello

Associate Dean, Technology Initiatives / Special Collections
225-578-3686
gcoste1@lsu.edu
LSU Library, 2nd Floor Administrative Suite

Responsibilities

Gina Costello is responsible for technology initiatives and services in the LSU Libraries. This includes strategic direction and oversight of the website, application/software development, systems and desktop support, digitization, and the Digital Scholarship Lab. She was previously head of the Digital Services Department where she was responsible for the digitization of materials found in the Libraries and for collaborative digitization efforts within and outside the Libraries. She serves as the LSU Libraries contact for the Louisiana Digital Library (LDL). From 2009-2015, she was Project Director or co-director of the Digitizing Louisiana Newspapers Project, a National Endowment for the Humanities funded project through the Library of Congress.

Experience

  • Co-Principal Investigator, Project Ceres grant, “Louisiana Digital BibliAGraphy: 100 Years of LSU Agricultural Experiment Station Publications, 1888-1898.” August 2014-July 2015, $3,400.
  • Co-Author and Technical Partner, Mississippi Department of Archives and History National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) National Digital Newspaper Program grant. September 2013 - August 2015, $95,470 (LSU sub-award).
  • Project Director, NEH National Digital Newspaper Program grant. September 2013 - August 2015, $210,000.
  • Co-Project Director, NEH-funded “Free People of Color in Louisiana: Revealing an Unknown Past.” May 2013-April 2015, $194,152.
  • Co-Principal investigator, Louisiana Agricultural Center Sugar Research Station-funded digitization of The Sugar Bulletin and other resources. Funded 2012-2014, $6,240.
  • Project Manager, Louisiana Board of Regents-funded “Building Digital Resources for Research: Creating a Digitized Collection of United States Army Corps of Engineers Publications and Related Historical Materials for Access and Preservation.” 2012-2013, $86,800.
  • Project Director, NEH National Digital Newspaper Program grant. Funded September 2011 - August 2013, $285,000.
  • Project Manager, Louisiana Sea Grant sponsored project to develop image and map collections in the Louisiana Digital Library. March - December 2010, $9,000.
  • Co-Principal Investigator, Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries-funded project to digitizeLouisiana Conservationist and associated titles. July 2010 - July 2011, $3,120.
  • Co-Project Director, NEH National Digital Newspaper Program grant. July 2009 -June 2011, $351,380.
  • Project Manager, Louisiana Board of Regents-funded "Louisiana Historical Newspapers: Preservation and Access." 2006-2008, $400,000.
  • Co-Principal Investigator and Project Manager, Louisiana Sea Grant College-funded project to digitize the Percy Viosca historic photograph collection.  April-December 2007; $9,898.
  • Co-Author and Project Manager, Baton Rouge Area Foundation-funded project to digitize Margaret Stones watercolors collection.  August 2006-January 2007, $8,900.

Education

  • MLIS, University of Tennessee, Knoxville (2004)
  • BA, English Literature, Mississippi College (1997)

Presentations

  • “A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned: Ways to Maximize your Learning Potential in Tough Economic Times” with Kelly Blessinger at ACRL/LLAMA Spring Virtual Institute - “Doing Well by Doing Good”: Entrepreneurial Leadership for Librarians, April 21-22, 2010.
  • “Oral Histories from ‘Analog’ to Louisiana ‘Digital’ Library at LOUIS User’s Conference, Baton Rouge, LA, October 21-22, 2010.
  • "Digital Archiving and Digital Project Management” at Association for Conservation Information Annual Conference, Baton Rouge, LA, July 16, 2009.
  • “Creating and Managing Online Exhibits” Pre-Conference workshop (half day) at Rice University, Society of Southwest Archivists Annual Conference, Houston, TX, May 21, 2008.

Publications

  • Blessinger, Kelly and Gina Costello “The Effect of Economic Recession on Institutional Support for Tenure-Track Librarians in ARL Institutions.” The Journal of Academic Librarianship 37:4 (2011): 307-311. Costello, Gina R. “Digitization and Access of Louisiana Oral Histories: One Oral History Center’s Experience in the Digital Realm” In K. Ng and J. Kucsma (Eds.)
  • Digitization in the Real World: Lessons Learned from Small and Medium-sized Digitization Projects (2010) New York, NY: Metropolitian New York Library Council.
  • Costello, Gina R. and Alice Daugherty “Analysis of Job Responsibilities of Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Human Resource Professionals” In E. Pankl, D. Theiss-White and M. Bushing (Eds.), Recruitment, Development, and Retention of Information Professionals: Trends in Human Resources and Knowledge Management (2010) Hershey, PA: IGI Publishing.
  • Costello, Gina R. “Louisiana Coastal Wetlands and Louisiana Coastal Grey Literature: Vanishing Treasures.” Publishing Research Quarterly 23:1 (2007): 19-29. Reprinted from The Grey Journal.

Service

  • American Library Association (ALA)
  • Library & Information Technology Association (LITA)
  • Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) Community Representative
  • National Endowment for the Humanities grant review panelist, 2007 and 2015
  • National Historical Publications and Records Commission grant reviewer, 2015