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Dr. H.N. (Hilde) van Wijngaarden is Director of the University Library of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. She holds this position since 2017.
Hilde has studied history and received her PhD for a study of poor families and poor relief in the Seventeenth Century. During her research years, she became interested in automatic processing of historical data and moved on to IT. After working a few years as an IT consultant she started her carreer in libraries at the National Library of the Netherlands.
In a perfect combination of her scientific background and new competencies in IT, she became responsible for KB’s research and development in digital preservation. First as a project lead and later as a manager, she was involved in many European projects and international collaboration on digital preservation and webarchiving (Planets, IIPC).
In 2011 Hilde moved to general management of University libraries, first at the library of the University of Applied Sciences in Amsterdam, then as member of the management team of the library of the University of Amsterdam and then tranferring to the Vrije Universiteit.
Hilde has a strong focus on libraries’ support for Education and Research. She started the Dutch working group of Libraries and Open and Online Education and was one of the initiators of the European Network of Open Education Librarians. Since 2019 Hilde is a member of the Executive Board of Liber and Treasurer.