Demian Katz
Director Of Library Technology at Villanova University
Villanova, Corsica, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolDemian Katz is a Director of Library Technology with 16+ years building and operating large-scale web applications for academic libraries, combining a master’s in Library and Information Science with a BS in Computer Science. He leads development and open-source work across search (Solr), digital repositories (Fedora Commons), ILS/OCLC integrations, and document/image processing pipelines, while managing day-to-day Linux-based web operations. A hands-on back-end developer, he has contributed refactors and test-driven fixes to widely used projects like VuFind and Zend Framework, improving citation rendering and database components. Comfortable translating between technical and non-technical stakeholders, he balances strategic technical leadership with active coding and QA. Outside his technical remit he is a published scholar and bibliographer of early popular printed culture and print-based interactive fiction, a niche interest that informs his work with digital collections. Colocated in Villanova, Corsica, he thrives on learning new technologies and optimizing legacy systems for modern discovery.
16 years of coding experience
4 years of employment as a software developer
Associate's degree, General Studies, Associate's degree, General Studies at Community College of PhiladelphiaBachelor of Science - BS, Computer Science, Bachelor of Science - BS, Computer Science at West Chester University of PennsylvaniaMaster's degree, Library and Information Science, Master's degree, Library and Information Science at University of Pittsburgh
Stackoverflow
36reputation
567reached
1answer
0questions
Github Skills (19)
unit-testing10
git10
javascript10
viewer10
css10
zend-framework10
iiif10
php10
version-control10
image9
ui-design9
databases9
sql-database9
database9
relational-databases9
Programming languages (11)
Github contributions (5)
vufind-org/vufind
Jun 2013 - Jan 2023
A library resource discovery portal designed and developed for libraries by libraries
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:34 releases, 4733 reviews, 4247 commits in 9 years 8 months
Contributions summary:Demian primarily focused on improvements to the `Citation` view helper, merging changes from the 'release-7.1' branch to the development branch. The changes involved refactoring code to optimize processing. A new class was added, along with adjustments to accommodate features for the current project.
portalresource-discoverydiscoveryresource-librarydiscovery-portal
zendframework/zendframework
Jul 2012 - Mar 2013
Official Zend Framework repository
Role in this project:Back-end Developer & QA Engineer
Back-end Developer & QA EngineerContributions:11 commits, 1 comment in 8 months
Contributions summary:Demian primarily focused on improving the Zend Framework's database component, specifically addressing inconsistencies in `RowGateway` and adding support for expressions in the `Select` order. Their contributions included implementing unit tests to ensure proper functionality and fixing existing bugs. They also refactored the code, removing underscores from protected properties and methods. Furthermore, the user addressed issues with primary key handling during database insertions.
zendzend-frameworkphpframeworkmodular
Find and Hire Top DevelopersWe’ve analyzed the programming source code of over 60 million software developers on GitHub and scored them by 50,000 skills. Sign-up on Prog,AI to search for software developers.