David Schober

David Schober serves as the Digital Initiatives Product Manager/Team Lead at the Northwestern University Libraries where he oversees the Libraries’s Digital Products and Data Curation development team in efforts ranging from internal applications to large community-based initiatives with an emphasis on open source development and standards.  He has worked at the intersections of Internet technology, cultural heritage, and higher education for more than 20 years. 

David has led efforts to develop tools and services designed to improve access to library resources to students, faculty and researchers.  With an eye toward expanding access to University’s rich collections and ensuring open access, the team develops a suite of opensource tools that underlie the flagship Digital Collections site based on the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF), which makes it simple for researchers to examine, compare, share, and cite images and audio/visual files across libraries, the site offers users hundreds of thousands of works ranging from 19th century Arabic manuscripts to photos from the Berkeley Folk Music Festival. Recently he and his team’s efforts have focused on using Large Language Models and semantic search to improve discoverability of distinctive collections through a simple chat-based search interface. 

Prior to joining Northwestern worked as the Digital Solutions Manager for the American Academy of Pediatrics, Web Project Manager for the Poetry Foundation, and Web Department Manager for Rotary International. He started his career as a business and technology editor and writer for UPSTART Magazine and Telephony. 

David earned a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies from Northwestern University and a Bachelor of Arts in in English with minors in History and Philosophy from Winona State University. 

David lives in Evanston with his family and enjoys playing jazz guitar and wilderness canoe camping.