With digital content increasing at a rapid rate, searching for, sorting through, and managing millions of digital documents is a serious challenge for libraries today. The MIT Libraries, the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL), and the World Wide Web Consortium are collaborating on a project to create next-generation search technology using Semantic Web standards including RDF and OWL in an overarching project called SIMILE (http://simile.mit.edu). This project is creating tools and technologies to help digital data creators, consumers, and intermediaries (e.g. librarians) to manage, search, navigate, and display metadata from widely varying sources to support large-scale interoperability for the digital library of tomorrow.

MacKenzie Smith is the Associate Director for Technology at MIT Libraries. MacKenzie oversees the MIT Libraries' use of technology and manages its digital library research program. Her research agenda focuses on Semantic Web applications to digital libraries, Grid applications in digital libraries, and developing open source communities in the digital library domain.

She is currently acting as the project director at MIT for DSpace, MIT's collaboration with HP Labs to develop an open source digital repository for scholarly research material in digital formats. She was formerly the Digital Library Program Manager in the Harvard University Library's Office for Information Systems, where she managed the design and implementation of the Library Digital Initiative there. She also held positions in the library IT departments at Harvard and the University of Chicago. She holds a BA from the University of Washington and an MA in Library Science from the University of Chicago. Her research interests are in applied technology for libraries and academia, and digital libraries and archives in particular.