Alexandra Provo

Alexandra Provo is Research Curation Librarian at New York University’s Division of Libraries. Previously, she was Metadata Librarian for Arts & Cultural Heritage Resources at NYU Libraries. She has an MA in interdisciplinary studies from NYU, an MSLIS from Pratt Institute, and a BA in art history from Wesleyan University.

Alex’s research interests include collaborative and inclusive metadata, spreadsheet software, linked data for cultural heritage, and images as information in 19th century connoisseurship and the art market. With the Linked Data for Libraries (LD4) Ethics Affinity Group, she co-edited a book on ethics in linked data (Litwin Books, 2023). She is a co-convener of the Digital Library Federation’s Inclusive Metadata Task Force and is Access & Preservation Advisor to the art history e-journal Nineteenth Century Art Worldwide.

Alex was previously Project Manager and Digital Production Editor for the Enhanced Networked Monographs project at NYU Libraries. In 2015-2016 she was the Kress Fellow in Art Librarianship at Yale University. She has been the project manager for two linked open data projects: Drawings of the Florentine Painters and the Linked Jazz Project (now the Semantic Lab at Pratt). She has also worked as a Remote Contributor for Artsy’s Art Genome Project, and as a photograph cataloger at Harvard University’s Villa I Tatti.

MSLIS, Pratt Institute

MA, Interdisciplinary Studies, NYU

BA, Art History, Wesleyan University

Recent publications include “Semantic Encyclopedias and Boolean Dreams” in KULA: Knowledge Creation, Dissemination, and Preservation Studies 6, no. 3 (July 27, 2022): 1–15. https://doi.org/10.18357/kula.155 (peer reviewed); “From index to network: Topic maps in the Enhanced Networked Monographs project” in The Indexer: The International Journal of Indexing, 37(1), 13–35. https://doi.org/10.3828/indexer.2019.3 (peer-reviewed);  and “Florentine Renaissance Drawings: A Linked Catalog for the Semantic Web” in Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, 37(1), 33–43. https://doi.org/10.1086/697276 (co-authored, peer-reviewed)