Dana Reijerkerk, M.S.I.

Who is Dana Reijerkerk? And is she any good at data work?

Dana Reijerkerk is a data consultant, digital asset manager, and developer (full-stack) that works with nonprofits, archives, museums, libraries, and creatives to manage their IT systems, databases, websites, and media (working files, animations, A/V, infographics, fonts, licenses, comics).

Guided by creativity and attention to detail, her work centers on IT systems, socio-technical issues, and digital asset management. She's developed the back-end of CMS/DAMS like WordPress, TMS Collections, and DSpace, contributed to grant narratives and tech spec requirements, designed digital museum exhibits on climate change and Japanese artists in NYC, and built point-and-click and turn-based video games.

Her work appears in DAM News, Bloomsbury's History of Emotions Series, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, First Monday, Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, and Journal of Digital Asset Management. Her community work with Indigenous peoples transcends several countries and spans from the east coast of the US to Madagascar and Japan.

She holds a Masters in Information from the University of Michigan and a B.A. in American Indian Studies from the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

Recent Data Projects

A research project on archives, emotions, and GenZers obsession with Billy Joel's song "Vienna" on TikTok
A DNS configuration (custom email domain) consultancy
A database migration consultancy
A research project on Artificial Intelligence data operations in healthcare data
Technical specs and assessment for an online archival literacy training
A digital asset management consultancy for animated sex ed videos
A training for librarians on data migrations

Recent Data Freelance Clients

AMAZE International (Advocates for Youth)

Digital Museum of the History of Japanese in New York

North Carolina Museum of History A Smithsonian Affiliate

Awards

Data Project Awards

Won the 2025 Texas Digital Library Award for Excellence for an Artificial Intelligence chatbot, webcomics, & data science contributions @ the ART | Library Deco Project by The Creative CoLab (data science hivemind of Dana Reijerkerk and kYmberly Keeton)

Horror Adventure Ren'Py Game Hear Me, Hear You officially selected by for the 2024 Hand Eye Society Super FESTival

Immersive Artificial Intelligence (Machine Learning and GenAI), Scalar Website, Twine Video Game Project (The Relational Possibilities Project) won honorable mention for the Library Juice Press' Vattemare Award

Won a 2023 data science fellowship with Drexel University. Produced Relational Possibilities (2023-2024), an original data science community archive project – which won two LEADING Fellowships and an honorable mention for Library Juice Press’ Vattemare Award, several data conference speaking engagements, and over 700 video game playthroughs on itch.io.

Writing Awards

Winning Article: Archivists and Emotional Labor: Preserving Personas and Personal Identities in Archives won the 2025 best Article Award for it's important and thoughtful consideration of the public perception of archival work through time.

The book in which the writing appeared was also selected for the Society of American Archivists’ 2025 Waldo Gifford Leland Award, which recognizes monographs or documentary publications of superior excellence and usefulness in the field of archival history, theory, or practice.

Winning Article: Archives, Decolonization, and the Politics of Tribal Sovereignty: An Examination of Accessibility Barriers to Indigenous Federal Recognition Research in the United States won Society of American Archivist's award for most outstanding essay dealing with some facet of archival administration, history, theory, and/or methodology published in American Archivist.

Won fellowship with the 2020 Museum Computer Network and produced a free to read book chapter on socio-technical issues like open access with managing Indigenous cultural heritage