Accepted Conference Talks

This list represents the accepted conference talks that you can expect to hear at the conference. Thank you to all who submitted talks this year.

Who Will Keep it Running?

A migration project that does not take into consideration the people and resources necessary to maintain the system post-migration is incomplete. But the people making decisions about migrations are not necessarily the same people that will be responsible for maintenance. How can we best involve, value, and consider the perspective... more information about the talk Who Will Keep it Running?

Visualizing Moving Image Archives

Although there are numerous publicly-available moving image archives, in many cases it would take years of continuous viewing for an individual scratch the surface of a single archive. My goal is not to make sense of the contents of a given archive. Rather, by leveraging computer algorithms that analyze and... more information about the talk Visualizing Moving Image Archives

Visualizing Archival Collections for Fun and (Non)Profit Using Google Data Studio

The vast archival holdings of Columbia University’s special collections provide a rich tableau for data visualization and analysis across several dimensions, with a view toward improving discovery, usability, and management of archival collections. The presentation will show how Google Data Studio’s “data blending” feature can be used to weave multiple... more information about the talk Visualizing Archival Collections for Fun and (Non)Profit Using Google Data Studio

Using Temporal Network Analysis to Uncover Bias in Collections

The Social Network and Archival Context project (SNAC, snaccooperative.org) presents a documentary-social network of over 3.7 million identities described in finding aids and resource descriptions from archives around the globe; that is, a graph in which individuals, corporate bodies, and families as nodes are connected with edges based on their... more information about the talk Using Temporal Network Analysis to Uncover Bias in Collections

The Digital Is Critical: Designing Radical Library Systems

Systems reflect the people and organizations with the privilege to build them. If our libraries and museums are not neutral, then the applications and services we create and maintain cannot be neutral. Our values, our biases, and our histories manifest in our open source projects. Both the individuals with the... more information about the talk The Digital Is Critical: Designing Radical Library Systems

The Agile Librarian or The Library Dev Shop - Using Agile Methodology to Build a Digital Library

At UCLA we are building our digital library using Agile methodologies. We use quick iterative sprints, work towards a minimum viable product and continuously deploy as we build. This is a switch from the waterfall building techniques that resulted in many unfinished projects and long waits for simple changes. I... more information about the talk The Agile Librarian or The Library Dev Shop - Using Agile Methodology to Build a Digital Library

That Time We Fought Off a Russian Bot Army (and you can too)

What do you do when you’re getting DDOSed? I’ll go over how we discovered we had a problem; how we diagnosed it; steps we took to resolve the problem; and all the things we learned along the way. It’s one part adventure story – debugging in prod! possible state actors!... more information about the talk That Time We Fought Off a Russian Bot Army (and you can too)

Plaintext, HTML, PDF, and EPUB3: Who wins the Accessibility Games?

Much of what makes documents accessible to people with disabilities and their assistive technologies boils down to the file format. Every format comes with benefits and drawbacks when it comes to accessibility. Which format or formats should libraries choose to best benefit their patrons and the needs of archives and... more information about the talk Plaintext, HTML, PDF, and EPUB3: Who wins the Accessibility Games?

Picturing the Digitization Ecosystem

Digital Research and Strategy at the New York Public Library would like to present a new project that leverages available statistical information in our various databases to tell a holistic narrative about the digitization lifecycle. Making use of SQL databases, Python, and R, our interface tracks the digitization lifecycle from... more information about the talk Picturing the Digitization Ecosystem

No Catalog? No Queries? No Problem! Building a DIY Discovery Service for the Prelinger Library.

I was between jobs, so I volunteered to help the Prelinger Library with any lengthy projects they’d back-burnered for lack of time. They asked me to “photograph the stacks” — but in the process, I realized that I could build a web interface around the photos.

The Prelingers’ requests for... more information about the talk No Catalog? No Queries? No Problem! Building a DIY Discovery Service for the Prelinger Library.

Migrating Clean Data: Two Stories from Mess to Success

Data cleanup during a migration is more than an opportunity to standardize data practices, it is also a necessary step to ensure the data will be ingested by the new system. This presentation will therefore outline the data cleanup process undertaken during two major system migrations at McGill University, including... more information about the talk Migrating Clean Data: Two Stories from Mess to Success

Let’s Talk Git!: Investigating and Archiving the Scholarly Git Experience

We have a big problem: a lot of scholarship and library-infrastructure relies on Git hosting platforms (e.g. GitHub, Bitbucket, GitLab). Unfortunately, there’s no plan to preserve this material. However, the code isn’t the only asset to worry about; there’s rich contextual information in the scholarly ephemera — code reviews on... more information about the talk Let’s Talk Git!: Investigating and Archiving the Scholarly Git Experience

It’s Gonna Be ME(tadata): Getting Libraries, Archives, and Museums *NSYNC

The presenters will outline efforts to create a unified discovery platform for digital collections from libraries, archives, and museums. They will guide attendees through the process of designing harmonized metadata profiles for these related but very different domains, including solutions for conciliating controlled vocabularies. They will discuss the software stack’s... more information about the talk It’s Gonna Be ME(tadata): Getting Libraries, Archives, and Museums *NSYNC

Is My Library in Good Hands?: Security and Privacy Best Practices Your Service Provider Should Follow

With small or non-existent IT departments, many libraries rely on service providers to install and manage software for their organizations, so that staff can focus their time and energy on patrons and day-to-day activities. But how can a library determine if their service provider is following best practices or if... more information about the talk Is My Library in Good Hands?: Security and Privacy Best Practices Your Service Provider Should Follow

Intellectual Freedom and Technology

Libraries have long positioned themselves as champion of intellectual freedom, but how has technology changed intellectual freedom? While the internet and other communication technologies give the illusion that information is more free than ever before, the logic of capitalism means that knowledge and information that carry market value have become... more information about the talk Intellectual Freedom and Technology

Imposter Syndrome, Vulnerability, and Project Management: Leading an Institutional Repository Migration

Working as a project manager involves vulnerability, emotional risk, and exposure, particularly if one is new to project management and leadership roles. This presentation will briefly review project management strategies for those new to project management and discuss imposter syndrome and vulnerability in the context of technical projects. As a... more information about the talk Imposter Syndrome, Vulnerability, and Project Management: Leading an Institutional Repository Migration

From Supercomputer to Static Site: Boiling Down Big Research Data for Preservation and Usability

“Print & Probability” is an interdisciplinary and inter-institutional project to develop new techniques for visual anomaly detection in the OCR of early printed books. By detecting damaged letterforms that create consistent aberrations, the project aims to allow direct inference of letterpress printers at scale.

This presentation will detail the unique... more information about the talk From Supercomputer to Static Site: Boiling Down Big Research Data for Preservation and Usability

Everything is Broken but by How Much, Exactly?

In 2016, my library purchased the Summon discovery layer and since then it has shown increased usage with each passing year. Yet with more Summon searches came reports of broken connections to full-text sources. As we went about diagnosing and reporting these problems, it became apparent that discovery layer linking... more information about the talk Everything is Broken but by How Much, Exactly?

Evaluating, Repairing and Enhancing Accessible PDF's

Making our websites accessible is a struggle we see everyday, in every corner of the internet. As a community, we have all been working hard to alleviate stress when it comes to navigating the web, but a lot of the time, we forget about making PDFs accessible! Many of the... more information about the talk Evaluating, Repairing and Enhancing Accessible PDF's

Design for Diversity: Towards More Inclusive Information Systems

Most current systems for the acquisition, housing, and care of cultural objects reflect existing structures of oppression. Typically, digital technology further perpetuates these power differentials. Furthermore, as library, archive, and museum practitioners seek to increase digital access to the history of disenfranchised and marginalized communities, they engage with communities that... more information about the talk Design for Diversity: Towards More Inclusive Information Systems

Design Sprints for Democratization

The collective intelligence of teams improves when everyone can contribute. Unfortunately, factors like impostor syndrome, Dunning-Kruger syndrome, and organizational power structures can prevent some voices being heard. Design Sprints provide a decision making framework in which the team can work together toward finding the best solution instead of deferring to... more information about the talk Design Sprints for Democratization

Cupper and Leecher, tinman and Shrimp Fiend: Data Science Tools for Examining Historical Occupation Data

How does one enhance access to historical data through mapping and visualization tools? In this presentation, the experience of working with over 21 thousand historical records from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania’s school admission registers will be discussed. In particular, the normalizing of historical occupational data using hand coding, OpenRefine,... more information about the talk Cupper and Leecher, tinman and Shrimp Fiend: Data Science Tools for Examining Historical Occupation Data

Cohort4Lib

As cultural heritage work becomes increasingly defined by code–code as artifact to be preserved, code as infrastructure for preservation–we need new models for sustaining code that is 4 libraries. In this collaborative talk, representatives with diverse job descriptions from across the IMLS FCoP Software Preservation and Emulation cohort (https://www.softwarepreservationnetwork.org/fcop/)... more information about the talk Cohort4Lib

Brace Yourselves, the Archives are Coming

The J. Paul Getty Trust has been publishing images over the IIIF protocol in its J.P. Getty Museum Collection website, as well as for selected projects of the Getty Research Institute for some time.

During the last year a thorough refactoring of the infrastructure supporting the production and delivery of... more information about the talk Brace Yourselves, the Archives are Coming

Amplifying Productivity & Joy: Lightweight Tools & Techniques to Help Teams Improve Collaboration & Communication

In this presentation, we will share and discuss tools & techniques our team has used and developed over the past year to improve and streamline how we work together, how we communicate, and how we interface with management and stakeholders. Areas of focus include formalizing requests for work estimation; documenting... more information about the talk Amplifying Productivity & Joy: Lightweight Tools & Techniques to Help Teams Improve Collaboration & Communication

AI is Such a Tool: Keeping Your Machine Learning Outputs in Check

The abundance of consumer-grade AI tools and services makes it seem easier than ever to bring machine learning to library production workflows for description. But while the tools have become easy to implement, it’s still very difficult to ensure usable, reliable outputs or to manage the risk of negative social... more information about the talk AI is Such a Tool: Keeping Your Machine Learning Outputs in Check

A Journey, Not a Destination: Towards a More User-Centered Library Discovery Experience

When a user visits the library website, they typically have a specific information need. We offer users a host of tools and resources to resolve that need. However, there’s often a fundamental misalignment between our resource-focused approach to wayfinding on the website (“databases,” “course tools,” “books,” “special collections”) and the... more information about the talk A Journey, Not a Destination: Towards a More User-Centered Library Discovery Experience

A New Approach to Old Metadata

This talk will discuss a year-long project to rebuild our metadata services at our organization – including, in particular, a new MARC processing library.

Parsing MARC effectively begins with understanding how to model it for modern concerns, and, unfortunately, the MARC standard provides little assistance in that regard. In order... more information about the talk A New Approach to Old Metadata