About Digital Scholar

Founded in October 2009, Digital Scholar is a not-for-profit entity that ensures long-term success of free and open-source software supporting scholarly research, publishing, and cultural heritage work, by providing the public with valuable services at reasonable rates. Having secured sustainable models for Zotero and Omeka, we have helped launch a growing family of software projects, including Tropy, PressForward, and Sourcery.

Our Values

We are committed to developing and sustaining free and open source software that provides an infrastructure for scholarly research and digital cultural heritage work.

We are committed to working in a respectful and collaborative way among our project staff and with the community of users and developers who engage with our software.

We are committed to providing responsibly-priced services that meet user community needs and contribute to the sustainability of the software projects.

We are committed to working in productive collaboration with other FOSS projects to pursue sustainability.

Our History

Digital Scholar has a nearly twenty year history of designing, developing, and sustaining open source software that facilitates scholarly research and digital publishing of cultural heritage. The growth of organization over these years has gone hand and hand with project innovation.

Digital Scholar’s first venture was to facilitate Zotero’s syncing services in 2009, making it possible for users to purchase cloud storage, giving them access to their collections from anywhere.

In 2010, the Omeka project launched Omeka.net, a hosted version of their popular open source web publishing platform. With a variety of plans and features, Omeka.net made it possible for users to publish Omeka Classic sites without having to run their own servers.

By 2012, these services generated enough revenue for Digital Scholar to underwrite Omeka and Zotero developer salaries. Zotero became fully self-supporting in April 2013, and continues to be so.

In 2016, the Omeka Team launched a Services division that provided clients with dedicated support, isolated hosting, training opportunities, and custom design and development services. Revenues from Omeka.net and Omeka Services support the ongoing maintenance and development for the Omeka family of web publishing platforms. The Omeka Team expanded their offerings by releasing a linked open data web publishing platform, Omeka S, in 2017.

Over the last decade, Digital Scholar has played the role of intellectual collaborators, and infrastructural and sustainability partners for Sourcery, Tropy, and PressForward. Each of these projects were developed through initial grant funding and are now pursuing sustainability models that offer their users reasonably priced services to enhance their research and publication experience.

After a major shift in 2021, Digital Scholar began hiring key staff directly to maintain and enhance our core software projects. In years since, the organization has grown to employ over 30 full-time equivalent personnel across all affiliate projects. For the last five years, annual gross revenues have grown by an average of 30% year over year.

Digital Scholar is also dedicated to promoting the use and development of free and open source software and open access resources broadly. In the service of that goal, we made our first charitable contribution to an aligned organization in 2013. Since then, we have supported/invested in the work at a range of organizations, including the Knowledge Commons, American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning, Author’s Alliance, PHP Foundation, Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, Software Freedom Law Center, and Virginia Humanities.

In 2023, we launched the Slipstream initiative to invest resources and share expertise with open source and open access digital scholarship and cultural heritage projects that are working toward sustainability. Consisting of a limited number of partnerships, Slipstream allows Digital Scholar to offer support that ranges from access to business systems to collaborating on governance and business plan development.

Our Team

Sharon M. Leon

Co-Chief Executive Officer

Sharon M. Leon has two decades of experience in digital history and digital project development. Leon manages core Digital Scholar strategy and operations, directs Omeka, PressForward, and identifies new opportunities to support key free and open-source software projects in the humanities through the Slipstream project.
Sean Takats

Co-Chief Executive Officer

Sean Takats has over twenty years of experience developing software to support digital research practices. Takats leads Digital Scholar's efforts to evaluate and integrate emerging technologies, directs Zotero and Tropy, and interfaces with the research community.
Sheila A. Brennan

Director of Institutional Relations

Sheila A. Brennan has deep experience directing digital humanities projects and as a funder. Brennan spearheads Digital Scholars relationships with aligned organizations and interested stakeholders in the digital scholarship and cultural heritage universe.
Debra Demeule

Chief Financial Officer

Debra Demuele has deep experience in providing financial administrative support to non-profits, including to the Digital Public Library of America. Demuele has oversight of Digital Scholar's financial operations.
Khiara Reed

Executive Administrative Assistant

Khiara Reed has a background in administrative coordination and in library and information science. Reed oversees administrative operations for Digital Scholar and supports the leadership team.