In addition to our platform and the articles it distributes, Érudit is a digital infrastructure whose wide range of services helps support open scholarly publishing in Canada. But what does that mean, exactly?
This blog post launches our “The Team Behind Érudit” campaign, which aims to showcase a handful of our team members and the work they carry out on a daily basis. Today, we’re shining the spotlight on Cathy Robichaud, Digital Information Technician!
What’s a Digital Information Technician ?
At Érudit, the production team is responsible for adding all the necessary content to our platform. It is made up of several Digital Information Technicians, a position I myself have held for 18 years! In my work, I need to be comfortable with different types of digital formats so that I can process and classify them according to best practices. In short, this involves processing Word, InDesign, or PDF files sent by journals to create HTML pages and documents that can be viewed on the Érudit website.
What does a typical day at Érudit look like ?
A typical day at Érudit for me consists of receiving files submitted by journals via file deposit and ensuring that they comply with our standards. If they don’t, I have to contact the journal to request new files. I then copy the files to our servers to make them available to the entire production team. Once the file is complete, I add these issues to our production calendar, which my colleagues and I consult daily to select the next issue to be produced in order of priority.
Which project that you recently contributed to makes you particularly proud?
As I am the most senior member of the team, I have been given responsibility for training the newest employees. Most recently, I prepared and delivered training on our tools to a group of three people, and we took the opportunity to create video clips that we still use today for new training sessions! I also had to adjust our documentation, which is used by the entire current team. It was a different challenge, but a rewarding one.
What was your career path before joining Érudit?
I joined Érudit in 2007. I had just completed a college diploma in Administrative studies — Micro-publishing and Hypermedia at Cégep de Maisonneuve. Despite all these years of experience at Érudit, there have been so many technological advances in the tools created/used since I arrived that I am constantly learning.