Lakeisha Robinson and Frederick Rodriguez: Engineers in Library Information Technology

Lakeisha Robinson is manager of the engineering operations team in Yale Library’s Information Technology (IT) department. She arrived at the library 13 years ago in the role of software developer. Lakeisha has been a member of the Yale African American Affinity Group (YAAA) since 2019. She is now serving in the second year of her two-fiscal-year term as co-chair of YAAA.

Lakeisha manages a team of software engineers that are responsible for programming the custom applications that facilitate discovery in the library’s extensive databases. Among those applications are Digital Collections, a growing database that allows users online access to millions of digitized works and images from Yale Library’s collections.

The team is also responsible for work on the Quicksearch application, the library’s primary catalog search engine, which is undergoing constant improvements in anticipation of the library’s upgrade from the library service platform Voyager to the cloud-based Ex Libris Alma platform.

Lakeisha would like her team in IT to continue to support and participate in the New Haven Promise Intern Program. She would also like the team to establish a stronger presence in other organizations, such as the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), which is a society founded at Purdue University in 1975 to support students and professionals in achieving excellence in their field. One of Lakeisha’s team members was a New Haven Promise intern who came to Yale after the completion of their degree.

“I would like us to focus more attention on the NSBE program and other job-recruiting boards and events that we are missing out on due to lack of awareness about what’s out there,” she said. “This lack of awareness limits the kind of new talent we could bring in to help elevate everything we do in our department.

“Ensuring that Yale Library IT is better represented at various job hiring and recruiting events around the area would help promote what we have to offer. It would also allow the library to take someone from a program like New Haven Promise under our wing and develop them for future success.”

Frederick Rodriguez has been a member of Lakeisha’s engineering operations team for three years. He also plays an important role in the upgrade of the library services platform that is currently underway.

He joined Yale University almost 20 years ago and has worked at Yale Library since 2010. For the past year, Frederick has also served as one of the inaugural advisors for the Yale Latino Networking Group, helping to institute a pipeline for leadership by providing funding to attend conferences.