Donald J. Waters is a cultural anthropologist, an independent scholar, and a specialist in the uses of digital technologies by academic researchers and libraries. He has a BA (1973) from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a PhD (1982) from Yale University. From 1982-1997, he served in a variety of library and information technology positions at Yale, including Associate University Librarian. He was founding director of the Digital Library Federation (1997-1999) before he joined the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, where served as the Senior Program Officer for Scholarly Communications (1999-2019). He is currently the inaugural Senior Scholar at the Coalition for Networked Information as well as the Vice President of the Engineering Information Foundation. He is also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Waters is the editor of a volume of folklore and the author of dozens of published articles and conference presentations.