Grace (Duke) Costantino

Outreach and Communication Manager

Grace Costantino began her career at the Smithsonian Libraries in 2008 as a Digital Services Intern, working to help develop the Smithsonian Research Online Repository. From August 2008-January 2012, she served as a BHL Librarian at the Smithsonian Libraries, after which she acted as the BHL Program Manager from 2012-2013. In 2014, Ms. Costantino rejoined the BHL project as the Outreach and Communication Manager. 

During her tenure with BHL, Ms. Costantino has helped shape the program's digitization workflow, assisted in the implementation and administration of the user feedback system, facilitated strategic planning efforts, organized evaluation and reporting policies, spearheaded marketing and promotional activities, performed financial administration, developed and managed BHL's outreach and communication strategy, expanded social media initiatives, and engaged with the public to excite audiences about the wealth of biodiversity heritage and knowledge available in BHL.

Ms. Costantino received a BA in Studio Art, Graphic Design, and Art History, as well as a Master's degree in Information Systems and Management, from the University of Maryland, College Park. Her professional interests include graphic design, data visualization, data augmentation via crowd-sourcing, journalism, and new media. She is the co-author of the De Gruyter Saur / IFLA Research Paper 2011 Award-winning article, “Heeding the Call: User Feedback Management and the Digital Library," and a recipient of the 2012 National Museum of Natural History Peer Recognition Award for her work with social media.

Publications

Publications: 

Kalfatovic, Martin R., Costantino, Grace, and Rinaldo, Constance A. 2019. "The Biodiversity Heritage Library: Unveiling a World of Knowledge About Life on Earth." in Digital Libraries for Open Knowledge, edited by Doucet, Antoine, Isaac, Antoine, Golub, Koraljka, Aalberg, Trond, and Jatowt, Adam., 352– 355. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-30760-8_32

Kalfatovic, Martin R. and Costantino, Grace. 2018. "The Biodiversity Heritage Library: Empowering Discovery through Free Access to Biodiversity Knowledge." KULA 10 (10):https://doi.org/10.5334/kula.41

Costantino, Grace, Crowley, Bianca, Morin, Rebecca, and Thomas, Erin Jean. 2011. "Heeding the Call: User Feedback Management and the Digital Library." In , 1– 15. IFLA.

Sheffield, Carolyn A., Costantino, Grace, and Cox, Robert. 2011. "Testing the waters: Blogging for user needs analysis, information access, and building a community of practitioners." Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 48 (1): 1– 3. https://doi.org/10.1002/meet.2011.14504801112