Iryna Kuchma
Iryna Kuchma is the recipient of the 2024 NDLTD Leadership Award. Her Award was announced at ETD 2024 in Livingstone, Zambia.
Iryna has served on the NDLTD Board of Directors since 2011.
She has connected NDLTD with EIFL (Electronic Information for Libraries), which “works with libraries to enable access to knowledge for education, learning, research, and sustainable community development. Our vision is a world in which all people have the knowledge they need to achieve their full potential.” (https://www.eifl.net/).
From this perspective she has shared a unique viewpoint on the international scene, giving wise advice and guiding us to the best ways to plan conferences in places around the globe, as well as how to collaborate with a growing number of partner international organizations.
Iryna has been continuously and highly involved in all the NDLTD activities, serving as “essential glue” connecting those activities together. For example, she currently is co-chair of the Communications Committee, and serves on the Nominating Committee, Membership Committee, Conference Committee, and Web Content Review Sub-Committee. Iryna Kuchma is the EIFL Open Access programme manager. Working in collaboration with libraries and library consortia in more than 50 countries in Africa, Asia, and Europe, she advocates for open access to research results, facilitates the development and implementation of open science policies and infrastructures, and provides support and training. Her work at EIFL includes raising awareness about OA and OS, advocacy and giving advice for setting up OA journals and repositories, OA and OS skills building, and advocacy for OA/OS policies. National and institutional OA/OS policies adopted in EIFL partner countries mandate depositing research outputs in OA in repositories – and ETDs are the major content type in the repositories that EIFL has supported. She also supported the establishment of national OA ETD repositories, for example in Serbia and in Armenia.