With a background both in Social Sciences and Computer Science, Timo feels committed to technology-based solutions for science and society. This implies conceptual approaches, as well as technical details with respect to software solutions for workflow support and interface design. Web-based Content and Document Management was a core focus of his for several years, supporting editorial teams and their publishing workflows in different sectors (industry, government, science). Taking the operational lead in an R&D project for setting up an infrastructure for learning object repositories in 2005, Timo became familiar with the general concepts of ‘scientific infrastructure’ and ‘scholarly publishing’.

Later, he technically launched ZBW’s Open Access repository EconStor. It now has some 140,000 documents — making it one of the biggest subject repositories in Economics. Heading a team of 10 scientific software developers, he is responsible for core components of digital libraries like search portals, repositories, publishing systems and thesauri for organizing and managing knowledge.

I regard LIBER as a very important and also influential initiative to support academic libraries in their strategic goals. The organization’s different activities (Journal, Working Groups, Conference, Leadership Seminar etc.) provide excellent opportunities for getting in touch with colleagues from other European institutions, and for exchanging information and views on latest trends and challenges in Digital Libraries.