Lazarus Gallant Matizirofa, is currently a Deputy Director, Department of Library Services at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Among his other executive duties, is responsible for overseeing the following sub-directorate units of the UP Libraries: Open Scholarship, Digital Scholarship, Information Technologies, Research Data Management, Digitisation, Makerspace, Library Website Management, Libby, the first Robot Librarian in Africa, and Special Collections.
Lazarus holds a Master’s and Honours degrees in Library and Information Studies from the University of Cape Town, a Higher Diploma in Library and Information Science, a Diploma in Information Science, and a Diploma in Public Relations from the Harare Polytechnic, Zimbabwe. He is currently studying for a Doctor of Philosophy in Information Science at the University of South Africa. His research interests include Open Science, Digital Curation, Research Visibility, and Impact among others.
Lazarus was a member of the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) Next Generation Repositories Working Group, 2015-2019. He was on the Technical Advisory Board for the African Open Science Platform (AOSP), 2017-2019, and a member of the Steering Committee for the SA –EU Open Science Dialogue (2018-2019). He was also part of a group of fellow Open repository librarians who steered the formation of the Institutional Repository Managers’ Forum in South Africa in 2011, which led to the IRTALK.
Before joining the University of Pretoria, Lazarus was an Acting Executive Director of the Knowledge Management Directorate at the South African National Research Foundation (2017-2018), Team Leader: Digital Curation and Content Management, NRF (2014-2019), Senior E-Research and Institutional Repository Manager, UJ libraries, University of Johannesburg, South Africa; Knowledge Management Coordinator at the South African Institute of Advancement (2007-2009); Technical Services Librarian, Bindura University of Science Education Library, Zimbabwe (1997-2001); Senior Navigator, UCT Libraries/Centre for Information Literacy, UCT (2001-2005); Research Librarian, African Economic Research Consortium Library (Dept of Economics), University of Zimbabwe (1994-1997).
