Digital Strategy and Innovation Expert

I help academic libraries and research organizations make practical decisions about technology, digital infrastructure, and AI. Over the past 16 years, my work has moved across digital strategy, research platforms, repositories, metadata, preservation, user research, and the design of new services for the humanities and social sciences. My work encompasses situations where technical possibilities, institutional priorities, and research needs are not yet aligned.

My role is to make those connections clear. I define problems, evaluate options, design workable approaches, coordinate the people involved, and guide projects through implementation and continued use. The work presented below reflects that range, from digital repositories and collaborative research platforms to RAG systems, semantic search, source verification, AI governance, teaching, writing, and institutional leadership.

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Selected digital work

I lead projects that provide new ways of interacting with information.

I oversee digital projects from initial concept through implementation, evaluation, and continued operation. My work includes public digital collections, repository ecosystems, semantic and hybrid search, AI-supported research tools, metadata workflows, and digital preservation.

Legislación Mexicana interface screenshot

Project lead

Legislación Mexicana

A grant-funded RAG research platform for a corpus of nearly 29,000 Mexican legal documents spanning approximately three centuries. The system combines lexical and vector retrieval, source-grounded responses, document-level citations, and evaluation methods designed for legal and historical research.

Project lead

United Nations General Debate Corpus

A grant-funded RAG research platform supporting semantic and hybrid search, source-grounded analysis, and large-scale study of United Nations General Debate speeches from 1946 to 2025. Publication is scheduled for fall 2026.

Repository of Documentation of Disappeared Persons interface screenshot

Local project lead

Repository of Documentation on Disappearances in Mexico

A MacArthur-funded human rights repository developed with the Center for Research Libraries, El Colegio de México, Universidad Iberoamericana, and UNAM. The platform preserves and structures documentation concerning disappearances in Mexico since 2006.

Hyrax Digital Repository interface screenshot

Project lead

Hyrax Digital Repository

An institutional repository supporting digital collections, metadata management, preservation workflows, discovery, and access across scholarly and cultural heritage materials.

Zapata Vive interface screenshot

Project lead

Zapata Vive

A thematic digital collection on the Mexican Revolution connecting Hyrax, Alma, curated research guides, authority data, and geospatial metadata through a dedicated public interface.

Movimientos Armados interface screenshot

Project lead

Movimientos Armados

A post-custodial digital collection for clandestine political publications from Latin America and the Caribbean, designed to support thematic discovery, structured metadata, geographic context, and semantic harvesting.

Leadership

I work across library operations, research support, technology, metadata, digital preservation, user experience, and institutional planning. My responsibilities include coordinating teams, defining workflows, evaluating systems, developing policy, working with vendors, and helping the institution determine how new technologies should be used.

Coordinator of Digital Innovation

Biblioteca Daniel Cosío Villegas, El Colegio de México

2008 - Present

I coordinate digital strategy, library technology, digital scholarship, research infrastructure, and applied AI initiatives. I oversee project planning, digital collections, metadata and preservation workflows, usability research, staff development, systems evaluation, and collaboration with academic and institutional partners.

Project Lead and Supervisor

Hispanic American Historical Review Online, Duke University Press

2013 - 2020

I created and led the journal's digital counterpart. I coordinated online peer review, editorial workflows, blogs, international outreach, and the work of a 30-member team.

Areas of practice

Digital strategyApplied AI Research infrastructureDigital scholarship Qualitative user researchUsability testing Workflow analysisSource verification Metadata modelingDigital preservation Project evaluationTechnology governance

Leadership capabilities

Project and program leadershipTeam supervision Grant and proposal developmentVendor and systems evaluation Policy developmentStakeholder coordination Staff developmentPublic speaking Institutional representation

Education

  • MSIS, Library and Information Studies, University of Texas iSchool, 2008
  • BA, History, minor in Mexican American Studies, University of Houston, 2004
  • Associate Degree, Houston Community College, 1999

Publications

  • Currently coordinating a book on the future of librarianship in the age of AI.
  • “An AI-Enabled Digital Research Assistant for the Legislación Mexicana Corpus,” Information Technology and Libraries, special issue on generative AI in library, archive, and museum research environments, forthcoming fall 2026.
  • “Constructing a Model for Mexican Libraries in the 21st Century,” ALA Editions, 2017.
  • “Consideraciones para la creación de un centro de humanidades digitales,” UNAM, 2015.
  • “Participación de la comunidad de El Colegio de México en el proceso de planeación del Edificio Mario Ojeda Gómez de la Biblioteca Daniel Cosío Villegas,” in Arquitectura y ambientes de bibliotecas, UNAM, 2020, co-authored.
  • “UXLIB y la perspectiva emergente del Bibliotecario de Experiencia de Usuario,” Biblioteca Daniel Cosío Villegas Blog, 2022.

Selected presentations and invited talks

  • Fantastic Futures 2026, Library of Congress: “The Implementation of AI in Research Methodologies: A Case Study of Uses of the Global South in the United Nations General Assembly.”
  • Fantastic Futures 2025, British Library: “Challenges of Building a RAG System for Library Reference.”
  • Digital Library Forum 2024: “Bridging Knowledge and Society: The Role of Libraries in Connecting Academia with Social Impact.”
  • DiSCoLA: Digital Scholarship in Latin America, SALALM 2024, Library of Congress: “Project Management in Digital Scholarship.”
  • Despatriarcalizar a la Inteligencia Artificial, Mexico City, 2024: “AI in the COLMEX Library: Preparándonos para el futuro.”
  • Pandit Deendayal Energy University, 2021: keynote on digital research infrastructure.

Teaching and supervision

  • Adjunct Graduate Professor, Thesis Seminar II, Master's in Library Science, El Colegio de México, 2012.
  • Adjunct Professor, Evolution and Trends in Information Technology, Universidad La Salle, 2010-2011.
  • Instructor, Technology Resource Management in Libraries II and Information Resource Management, El Colegio de México, 2009.
  • Master's thesis advisor for Inocencio Héctor González Araujo, “Usability Studies in Web Interfaces of Academic Libraries in Mexico,” El Colegio de México, 2012.

Methods and technical experience

I work across strategy, research methods, AI systems, and library infrastructure.

I work professionally in English and Spanish.

Methods

Digital strategyResearch infrastructure design User-centered designQualitative user research Usability testingWorkflow analysis Source verificationMetadata modeling Digital preservation planningProject evaluation Policy development

AI and technical systems

Retrieval augmented generationLLM evaluation RAG evaluationSemantic searchHybrid search Vector searchSource-grounded generation Re-rankingElasticsearchPGVector Google GeminiOpenRouterPython FastAPIOCLC APIs

Library and repository platforms

HyraxArchivematicaAccess to Memory Ex Libris AlmaPrimo VEOmeka WordPressOJS

Metadata and standards

RDABIBFRAMEDublin CoreFOAF GeoNamesLCSHFASTLinked data Controlled vocabulariesEntity reconciliation Information architecture

Current research

AI governance, evaluation, and the changing role of academic libraries.

  • Research on how technology, and AI in particular, affects academic library services, professional roles, required competencies, workflows, and institutional decision making.
  • Applied research on RAG systems, semantic and hybrid retrieval, source provenance, retrieval quality, traceability, and the interpretive limits of AI-supported research systems.
  • Development and evaluation of AI-supported research platforms for historical legal documents and United Nations General Debate speeches.
  • Work on governance models, evaluation standards, source verification, and quality assurance for AI use in libraries and research environments.
  • Contributions to international discussions on digitalization, higher education, open access, research cooperation, digital literacy, and sustainable development through DAAD and DIE expert workshops in Bonn and Rio de Janeiro.
  • Publications and presentations on AI in academic libraries, digital scholarship, research infrastructure, and responsible technology adoption.

Collaboration

Contact me about digital strategy, research infrastructure, digital scholarship, or applied AI in libraries.

alberto.s.martinez@gmail.com Connect on LinkedIn View complete CV