Accepted Conference Talks

The challenges and opportunities of interdisciplinary collaboration to build custom software tools at a growing archive

Archives are confronted with an increasing number of data processing challenges for which there are not often user-friendly or affordable software solutions. In addition, traditional education and training in the field of galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM) have left practicing professionals with a growing gap in the skills required... more information about the talk The challenges and opportunities of interdisciplinary collaboration to build custom software tools at a growing archive

Managing systems with care: What about the maintenance phase?

How do we manage software with care? We live in a world where resources are scarce and new resource-intensive projects have the potential to take over a team’s workload. Balancing new projects alongside the day-to-day business of migrations, upgrades, and security fixes becomes a Herculean task. The dedication and energy... more information about the talk Managing systems with care: What about the maintenance phase?

Building a community of practice around library data

Data systems are used throughout libraries to support a variety of needs, including external reporting, decision making for resource allocation and library service design, discovery and access, and traffic monitoring. As libraries increasingly rely on data systems for everyday work across divisions and departments, an increasingly broad group of library... more information about the talk Building a community of practice around library data

There’s going to be some changes: Developing support, supporting developers, and supporting development.

When faced with a wide range of upgrade-related changes to our digital preservation system, the library’s Digital Preservation Unit was charged with supporting stakeholders with varying needs through the transition. What from the outset seemed to be a straight-forward task of creating documentation and informing users, quickly expanded to include... more information about the talk There’s going to be some changes: Developing support, supporting developers, and supporting development.

Responsible AI: Building Tools and Frameworks for Transparent and Ethical AI Implementations

Artificial intelligence (AI) can be used in libraries and archives as a powerful tool for enhancing metadata, improving search and discovery, recommending resources, powering library chatbots, and more. However, AI systems may incorporate surveillance technologies that threaten user privacy, and AI often reflects the biases of our society due to... more information about the talk Responsible AI: Building Tools and Frameworks for Transparent and Ethical AI Implementations

Our Path to Development: Creating an Organizational Safety Net to Tackle Imposter Syndrome Among Developers

Many library organizations lack clearly defined paths to enable staff to become developers. Even when already working in library technology departments, this lack of transparent process makes it particularly difficult for new librarians/staff to feel confident in risk-taking during their learning journey, resulting in discomfort when reaching out to more... more information about the talk Our Path to Development: Creating an Organizational Safety Net to Tackle Imposter Syndrome Among Developers

Open Access Ebooks: Proliferation and duplication across too many platforms

As the number of Open Access Ebooks grows, libraries see a proliferation of the same titles in dozens of platforms. This duplication of titles creates challenges including presentation of too many links to users, inability to gather wholistic user statistics for funders and internal analysis (COUNTER and proprietary stats), lack... more information about the talk Open Access Ebooks: Proliferation and duplication across too many platforms

{key: value} : algorithmic debiasing in practice

Algorithmic bias is familiar to many of us by now. Like, probably, you, I’ve read papers and watched talks on it for years now. And yet, when I sat down to code an interface that relied on machine learning, I realized I had plenty of questions – but no answers.... more information about the talk {key: value} : algorithmic debiasing in practice

Documenting Movements: Mukurtu as a platform for contemporary video archive

Mukurtu was designed for Indigenous communities to determine and enact cultural protocols in a digital space by managing the access and use of cultural materials and knowledge. What about for political action that Indigenous communities are engaged in and documenting right now? This presentation will showcase a partnership between an... more information about the talk Documenting Movements: Mukurtu as a platform for contemporary video archive

DLAS: UX/UI design considerations for enslavement websites

The Digital Library on American Slavery (DLAS) is an expanding resource consisting of over 35 thousand public records on race and enslavement in the American South. The presentation will begin with a brief introduction to the DLAS website. The presentation then highlights the different UX/UI design considerations made throughout... more information about the talk DLAS: UX/UI design considerations for enslavement websites

Developing Scripts to Scale Out Open Access E-book Acquisitions at the Library of Congress

The Digital Content Management section (DCM) of the Library of Congress (LC) has incrementally improved upon piloted workflows to identify, describe, process, preserve, and make accessible open access e-books to Library users. In 2018 and 2019, DCM staff led several pilot projects to test technical methods for obtaining e-books from various... more information about the talk Developing Scripts to Scale Out Open Access E-book Acquisitions at the Library of Congress

Controlled Digital Lending...What's the Fuss?

Controlled Digital Lending, or CDL, is the replication of the physical act of checking out a book brought to the digital space. One book, one lend—no matter if the book is a physical one or a digital one. Using digital rights management to enforce the one-book/one-lend policy, CDL extends the... more information about the talk Controlled Digital Lending...What's the Fuss?

Caught between Clarity and Flexibility: How to Better Plan Development and IT Work

If your IT team constantly receives more work than what it can complete given available resources, how do you plan and execute the work? Many IT teams face this challenge and find it difficult to come up with a satisfactory solution and processes. If a team plans more work than... more information about the talk Caught between Clarity and Flexibility: How to Better Plan Development and IT Work

Breaking into Prison: Bringing Library Resources to Incarcerated Learners

More than one hundred thousand college students in the US are currently incarcerated, and that number could more than double by the end of next year. Some of these students have never visited a library, and some will never be able to. Can technology help get these students access to... more information about the talk Breaking into Prison: Bringing Library Resources to Incarcerated Learners

Beyond descriptive metadata: Using OPDS and ODL open standards to develop the Palace App, a e-reader mobile app.

In building library-developed e-reader mobile apps (SimplyE and Palace App) it became clear that old standards for metadata exchange such as MARC and KBART were not enough. We needed to expand and use new standards such as OPDS and ODL to share information about how to acquire an ebook file... more information about the talk Beyond descriptive metadata: Using OPDS and ODL open standards to develop the Palace App, a e-reader mobile app.

Artificial Intelligence for matching MARC records

Can AI be used for matching MARC records? We match bibliographic records from different institutions for deduplication. Most of the records we process have OCLC numbers, but records lacking them can’t be deduplicated. We have no automated process for auditing whether OCLC numbers were correctly assigned when cataloged. After years... more information about the talk Artificial Intelligence for matching MARC records

AMPlifying AV: leveraging artificial intelligence to create metadata for audiovisual collections

In 2015, Indiana University (IU) undertook a massive project to digitize audio, video, and film assets that resulted in over 350,000 digitized items, including collections from the Moving Image Archive, the Black Film Center & Archive, the Archives of Traditional Music, and many other campus units. Significant portions of this... more information about the talk AMPlifying AV: leveraging artificial intelligence to create metadata for audiovisual collections

A Dashboard Might Help Maintenance for Your Backend Service

We have a complex backend API service with a team responsible for maintenance. Different errors occur in this service and even though there is documentation, the team struggles to address the problems due to service complexity. This is an organizational vulnerability smell. With some team brainstorming, the idea of a... more information about the talk A Dashboard Might Help Maintenance for Your Backend Service

Worst Case Scenario Turns Out Better Than Expected - The National Library of Wales’ Fedora Migration Story

As with many institutions using older versions of Fedora, the National Library of Wales has long been plagued with the challenge of upgrading an outdated and unsupported Fedora 3 repository. After unsuccessfully attempting to migrate to Fedora 4, the need for securing a long-term preservation strategy to protect the 5.5... more information about the talk Worst Case Scenario Turns Out Better Than Expected - The National Library of Wales’ Fedora Migration Story

Thor: For the Love of Metadata

Are you tired of building one-off scripts to process your data? Does copying and pasting snippets of code to patch together yet another script make you want to scream? Well, have I got news for you! Introducing: Thor. No, not the Hemsworth with the hammer; the gem worth its weight... more information about the talk Thor: For the Love of Metadata

The Oxford Common File Layout - Understanding the specification, institutional use cases and implementations

The Oxford Common File Layout (OCFL) is an emerging data standard that describes an application-independent approach to the storage of digital information in a structured, transparent and predictable manner. With the most recent release, v1.1, OCFL implementations are becoming increasingly popular within institutions looking for long-term preservation solutions that are... more information about the talk The Oxford Common File Layout - Understanding the specification, institutional use cases and implementations

Test-Driven Data Migration

At Princeton University Library, we are migrating research data collections from a legacy DSpace instance to our newly constructed Princeton Data Commons suite of applications. This includes migrating metadata from modified Dublin Core to DataCite. Our goal is to improve the discovery and reuse of our open research data. We... more information about the talk Test-Driven Data Migration

Programmatically Assisted Approaches to Improving Digital Collections Metadata

Our homegrown digital collections infrastructure and changing practices have made it difficult to keep our metadata up-to-date in a systematic way, especially for older collections. We’ve been piloting workflows for two of our collections from the early 2000s, to use programmatic methods to help identify areas for additional human intervention.... more information about the talk Programmatically Assisted Approaches to Improving Digital Collections Metadata

Metadata for everyone: Identifying metadata quality issues across cultures

Metadata is crucial to the dissemination and communication of research. Well-formed metadata facilitates discovery and access and provides contextual, technical, and administrative information in a standard form. Yet metadata are also sites of tension between sociocultural representations, resource constraints, and standardized systems. Formal and informal interventions in metadata spaces may... more information about the talk Metadata for everyone: Identifying metadata quality issues across cultures

International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) infrastructure redesign at Harvard Library

The Library Technology Services (LTS) team at Harvard University has completed designing, building, and implementing the next-generation image delivery infrastructure for the Harvard Library. This infrastructure is largely based on standards and technologies compatible with the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF). LTS maintains the IIIF infrastructure for delivering images and... more information about the talk International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) infrastructure redesign at Harvard Library

How to Survive a Disaster [Recovery]

What would happen if the primary storage for your archives crashed and burned today? You’re a good digital preservation practitioner; undoubtedly you have copies safely stored in other locations. You’d be fine, right? But have you ever imagined the actual time and effort it would take to recover your data,... more information about the talk How to Survive a Disaster [Recovery]

How to Rebuild a Jumbo Jet at 30,000 Feet: Strategies for Digital Library Migration

In support of research, teaching and learning, the Stanford Digital Repository (SDR) is a network of systems and services that house the digital collections of Stanford University Libraries (SUL). Collections in SDR include Google-scanned books, student dissertations and theses, University Archives, Allen Ginsberg’s papers, Parker Library, and the Fugitive U.S.... more information about the talk How to Rebuild a Jumbo Jet at 30,000 Feet: Strategies for Digital Library Migration

Going Beyond Better Than Nothing: Accessibility and Archives

Several truths exist. Humanity has written down a lot. Libraries archive much of it. Said archives tend not to be accessible. When you work in library accessibility, how to address disability access in archives is a common source for plenty of questions. What file formats best support screen readers and... more information about the talk Going Beyond Better Than Nothing: Accessibility and Archives

Days of Future Past: Examing Race through Comics Metadata

This panel uses the Comics as Data North America (CaDNA) dataset at Michigan State University to discuss patterns of racial depiction in North American comics from 1890-2018. After three brief case studies, we demonstrate how CaDNA visualizations highlight representations of race in North American comics, alongside how metadata can be... more information about the talk Days of Future Past: Examing Race through Comics Metadata

Building Effective Library Dashboards in Tableau

The Collection Strategies Division of Columbia University Libraries is using Tableau to develop a series of dashboards and tools in order to more efficiently and effectively track important data across collections. These dashboards will provide deeper insight into how library collections are being utilized and allow staff to make data-informed... more information about the talk Building Effective Library Dashboards in Tableau

Brachio: how library websites transform through time

How have library websites changed over time? What distinguishes them from their peers, and from their past? What data might guide webmasters for maintenance decisions? In this project, historical web code is collected and examined to highlight features and trends in library websites, back to the early days of the... more information about the talk Brachio: how library websites transform through time

Automating FAST Subject Heading Maintenance in Digital Repositories

Digital repository metadata requires ongoing maintenance beyond the initial creation phase to ensure its quality in the long run. This is particularly true for subject headings because they change over time due to evolving usage and, more recently, to address diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) issues. Since most repositories use... more information about the talk Automating FAST Subject Heading Maintenance in Digital Repositories