The purpose of Ada Lovelace Day - 24 March 2009 - is to draw attention to women excelling in technology. To do that thousands of people today are blogging about a woman in technology whom they admire. I have a very long list of women working in technology that I admire, but today, on this first Ada Lovelace Day, I have chosen to write about Bess Sadler, Chief Architect for the Online Library Environment at the University of Virginia.

I first met Bess in October 2006 in Italy at a meeting at Eremo organised by eIFL.net. Both Bess and eIFL.net were new to me as was the surprisingly full extent of FOSS in libraries. At this meeting we were mapping out what might be involved in setting up a FOSS program for eIFL.net. Bess may have been new to me, but she was already well-known in the FOSS for libraries scene both as a developer and a keen code4libber. Her enthusiasm and knowledge of free and open source software were infectious. What's not to admire?

These days I spend my time shepherding the eIFL-FOSS program and when I look back and ask myself what led me here the answer is easy: Bess Sadler. She remains an inspiration.

Amongst her many activities these days, you will find Bess actively engaged in FOSS development with Blacklight, an open source OPAC. You can follow here blog here.

What woman in technology do you admire? Why not take up the Ada Lovelace Day challenge and tell someone about her.



Note: the photo of Bess is used under a CC Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share-Alike 2.0 Generic licence and is available here.