Leif Longva is MSc from University of Tromsų and MA Economics from Simon Fraser University. He is working as project manager at the Department of digital resources and services at the University of Tromsų Library. He has been working with projects within the digital library since 1999.

He was the project manager when the University of Tromsų launched its Institutional Repository (Munin) in 2006, based on DSpace, and again when DSpace was used to develop a portal for the submissions of the University's master theses and doctoral theses, thus incorporating the IR into the workflow of all theses submitted for examination.

Working with Open Access projects resulted in the idea of building a thematic overlay service on top of Open Access metadata, yielding a search service within the topic of the high north. Longva was the project manager, and the service was launched in January this year.