Accepted Conference Talks

You Got Your DEI in my Accessibility! Writing Inclusive and Equitable Alt Text for Diverse Communities

When it comes to web accessibility, providing quality alt text for images is paramount especially regarding photos of people. This naturally raises questions about whether aspects of person’s diversity and identity should be included in the alt description. Do we mention race? Gender? Visible disability? Do these aspects matter? This... more information about the talk You Got Your DEI in my Accessibility! Writing Inclusive and Equitable Alt Text for Diverse Communities

Wikidata vs. custom Wikibases: Community history case studies

The Boston Research Center (BRC) is a digital community history and archives lab based in the Northeastern University Library. Our current projects include initiatives to document public art in several Boston neighborhoods and take inventory of historical materials related to Boston’s Chinatown. We have identified Wikibase, the software behind Wikidata,... more information about the talk Wikidata vs. custom Wikibases: Community history case studies

Web archives in digital repositories: Simple integration and reducing software maintenance footprint

Digital repositories can store many different types of content: images, PDFs, videos, even 3D models, but generally not other web sites. Typically, web archives have required custom server-side software (a ‘wayback machine’) and introduced additional complexities and maintenance requirements. But what if there was a media type for the web... more information about the talk Web archives in digital repositories: Simple integration and reducing software maintenance footprint

Using Metadata as Data for Enhanced Discovery and Access of Digital Archival Collections

Archivists and librarians dedicate a significant amount of time and exercise a large deal of personal judgement when creating metadata. As a result, the metadata we create and the standards that we choose to use not only tells us about our collections, but also about ourselves and our inherent biases... more information about the talk Using Metadata as Data for Enhanced Discovery and Access of Digital Archival Collections

Unlikely Allies of Textbook Affordability: Python, Bookstore Data, and a Discovery API

Textbooks cost too much, so our library decided to publish a webpage listing all available course books in our entire collection (not only course reserves). Our systems are old and could not parse an ISBN passed through a URL. Manually reviewing bookstore data with thousands of manual searches in our... more information about the talk Unlikely Allies of Textbook Affordability: Python, Bookstore Data, and a Discovery API

The subjects of linked data: Facilitating informed decisions and securing permissions to implement linked open data for Oklahoma Native artists

This presentation features Oklahoma State University (OSU) Library’s ongoing efforts toward Linked Open Data (LOD), using Wikidata to establish Oklahoma Native artists’ notability within the Wiki-community. The Oklahoma Native Artists (ONA) collection features first-person accounts from self-identified Native artists that document the complex history of Indian Territory, the passage of... more information about the talk The subjects of linked data: Facilitating informed decisions and securing permissions to implement linked open data for Oklahoma Native artists

The Fickle, the Federated, the Frustrating: Library Search Experiences

Discovery layers promised a more seamless search experience than our old, clunky federated search or bento box experiences (though many of those are still chugging along). But what if a more seamless experience is a fool’s errand? After a decade of trying to understand and fix search experiences, we want... more information about the talk The Fickle, the Federated, the Frustrating: Library Search Experiences

The FAST and the FRDR: A story of automated metadata reconciliation

One challenge with metadata aggregation is implementing controlled vocabularies for subject terms. When metadata sources use uncontrolled keywords, how can a metadata aggregator implement a controlled vocabulary on top of this harvested metadata? The Federated Research Data Repository (FRDR) Discovery Service is a metadata aggregation service with a focus on... more information about the talk The FAST and the FRDR: A story of automated metadata reconciliation

Spreadsheets, Templates, Generators, and NO Database: Static Web Methods for Agile Library Infrastructure

Do you really need all those databases and PHP? Is implementing that big complicated web platform really necessary for your next project? Maybe not–and you might not miss them at all. Many library and digital humanities practitioners are pursuing viable alternatives powered by modern static web development. This presentation offers... more information about the talk Spreadsheets, Templates, Generators, and NO Database: Static Web Methods for Agile Library Infrastructure

Small Team Taking on Large Library Technology Project: some reflection on the quest for open source library management platform at Lehigh

Lehigh University is one of the Open Library Environment (OLE) Initiative founding partners and was one of the first implementers of the OLE library management system in the summer of 2014. Lehigh has been actively involved in the FOLIO Collaboration since the project’s inception in 2016 and implemented FOLIO in... more information about the talk Small Team Taking on Large Library Technology Project: some reflection on the quest for open source library management platform at Lehigh

Replacing traditional storage of structured information with GitHub and Jekyll

This presentation will talk about how we were able to build a web application that uses stored data without a built in database. At the beginning of 2020, we were looking for a low barrier of entry way to allow users to create W3 Web Annotations. Annotations are stored in... more information about the talk Replacing traditional storage of structured information with GitHub and Jekyll

Opportunities and constraints using artificial intelligence in metadata creation: A case study

Artificial intelligence and machine learning can assist in creating metadata for image descriptions through keyword generation and object detection. Project Sheeko is one such AI in the form of an open-source machine learning implementation package deployed on a local computer and designed to produce metadata for historical images. This presentation... more information about the talk Opportunities and constraints using artificial intelligence in metadata creation: A case study

One Decision at a Time: Reimagining Decision-Making for Democratized Technology Projects

Embarking on a large, shared systems project, which was four years in the making and the first of its kind at our public land-grant research university system, the largest and oldest in the state, led us to reimagine and implement a new set of shared principles and philosophies around decision... more information about the talk One Decision at a Time: Reimagining Decision-Making for Democratized Technology Projects

NightShift: Automating Copy Cataloging

When cataloging departments are faced with backlogs they often outsource the problem to a vendor. However, there is a better way to keep the process in-house and under full control of the library. The updated OCLC WorldCat MetadataAPI opens up possibilities to adopt a fully automated process to search the... more information about the talk NightShift: Automating Copy Cataloging

Living the UX: When a Web Developer develops a disability

I had been designing and developing websites for over twenty years when I learned that I had been developing a slow-growing brain tumor most of my life. After my surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, I slowly got back to the computer, learning to use assistive technology. I quickly realized there is... more information about the talk Living the UX: When a Web Developer develops a disability

Lib4Code: Keeping Archives Useful with Software Preservation

Our libraries increasingly run on code, but what about adding code to our collections and providing the usual library services of preservation, access, discovery, and contextualization? This talk will explore how GNU Guix, a software project conceived and developed largely outside of libraries, can be applied to our own problems.... more information about the talk Lib4Code: Keeping Archives Useful with Software Preservation

It Takes a Village (ITAV) – Developing Practical Tools for OSS Program Sustainability

What does it take to make sure open-source software (OSS) programs are sustainable? In 2017, the It Takes a Village (ITAV) project produced a Guidebook that serves as a reference source to help OSS programs serving cultural and scientific heritage organizations plan for long-term sustainability, ensuring that commitment and resources... more information about the talk It Takes a Village (ITAV) – Developing Practical Tools for OSS Program Sustainability

How we keep a small open-source community afloat: reflections on GeoBlacklight

GeoBlacklight is an open-source software project based on Blacklight and optimized for geospatial resource discovery. Participants in the GeoBlacklight community come from various professional and intellectual backgrounds (including map librarians, GIS analysts, software developers, metadata specialists, applied researchers, and others), but we share a common interest in making geospatial data... more information about the talk How we keep a small open-source community afloat: reflections on GeoBlacklight

How Do You Solve a Problem Like 375,000 Non-Standard Metadata Records?

It has been 26 years since DublinCore was released, and 23 years since EAD 1.0. What happens when your collection metadata is even older than that? As part of a digital library system migration, we needed to normalize over 375,000 metadata records that did not follow any coherent metadata standard,... more information about the talk How Do You Solve a Problem Like 375,000 Non-Standard Metadata Records?

Handprint: A program to explore and compare major cloud-based services for handwritten text recognition

Several companies have developed machine learning-based methods for handwritten text recognition (HTR), and offer them as on-demand services. These network-based services can be applied to images of document pages without the need for training on samples of handwriting. The results are remarkably good overall, but there are differences in quality... more information about the talk Handprint: A program to explore and compare major cloud-based services for handwritten text recognition

From Raw Data to Leaflet Maps

The Digital Scholarship Group at Northeastern University Library has engaged in a number of projects that involve taking raw data from different kinds of sources, e.g. TEI or spreadsheets that might or might not contain explicit latitude and longitude values, and creating maps for the web using Leaflet and plugins... more information about the talk From Raw Data to Leaflet Maps

Finding Aids Redesign: How we improved thousands of legacy finding aids and upgraded a 20 year old web publishing process

Our digital library team is designing a new finding aids publishing tool for archivists at NYU Libraries and five partner sites. The project is driven by three main objectives: to replace an outdated XSLT stylesheet publishing method; to improve usability for patrons; and to address shortcomings for displaying digital archival... more information about the talk Finding Aids Redesign: How we improved thousands of legacy finding aids and upgraded a 20 year old web publishing process

Ebooks and Accessibility

With the availability of eBooks in the EPUB 3.0 format, we can deliver more accessible texts to our patrons. In this talk, I’ll crack open an EPUB 3.0 and show how lessons learned from web accessibility can be applied to eBooks: offering better semantics with HTML5, for example, and ARIA... more information about the talk Ebooks and Accessibility

Cracking the Communication Code: Tools and Strategies for Savvy Project Management

From system administrator to web developer, and from management of electronic resources to the curation of hoards of metadata, the names and nature of coding librarians takes many forms. And with those many different titles and tasks come an equally diverse array of projects we find ourselves involved in: regular... more information about the talk Cracking the Communication Code: Tools and Strategies for Savvy Project Management

Converting Excel Files into XML: Two ways explained

In this session, presenters will explain two ways to convert excel files into XML files. My university is going through Esploro implementation for institutional repository where a lot of information is required to import using XML format (including title, department, education, etc). We usually gather data in excel format, so... more information about the talk Converting Excel Files into XML: Two ways explained

Confident and Ready: Developing a Code of Conduct Incident Response Plan

The Samvera Community is over 1,000 strong, and creating a safe space for discourse and mutual support has been key to the success of what is truly a “community.” Samvera has had a Code of Conduct for many years. When the Code was revised in 2019, participants recognized that the... more information about the talk Confident and Ready: Developing a Code of Conduct Incident Response Plan

Building a Portable Environment for Working with Restricted Library Collections

This presentation will describe a secure virtual environment for providing access to restricted library collections and demonstrate how this environment can support digital humanities, using the example of Temple University Libraries’ Loretta C. Duckworth Scholars Studio’s development and implementation efforts. Supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, we... more information about the talk Building a Portable Environment for Working with Restricted Library Collections

[Cancelled] - Building a Central Knowledge Graph for Digital Humanities Research Data

The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science is developing a digital research platform to preserve and to integrate digital humanities research data and with library and archival systems used by the institute. The platform supports digitization of archival research materials into the library system (using Goobi) which is... more information about the talk [Cancelled] - Building a Central Knowledge Graph for Digital Humanities Research Data

Avoiding Unconscious Bias: A Defined Hiring Process

Hiring decisions are some of the most important decisions to be made in an organization. We present on a approach for hiring that utilizes your choice of hiring criteria in a streamlined, structured way to evaluate candidates — from receipt of applications to selections for short interviews (formerly known as... more information about the talk Avoiding Unconscious Bias: A Defined Hiring Process

Automation as a pathway toward slow librarianship

Automation is generally touted as a means to increase efficiency, but can it also be a tool for slowing down? This talk will explore how automating tedious and time-consuming tasks can create space for more meaningful work and how writing code can be a contemplative practice that can lead to... more information about the talk Automation as a pathway toward slow librarianship

Algorithm Bias: Instruction, Reflection, and Advocacy

In this presentation, we discuss our ongoing library instruction on algorithm bias to computer science students. We have instructed students about algorithm bias at three universities, with varying demographics, two public and one private. Algorithm bias is a persistent problem in the technology industry and negatively impacts people based on... more information about the talk Algorithm Bias: Instruction, Reflection, and Advocacy

Actually Accessible Data: A Call To Action

In 2015, Walker and Keenan highlighted the importance of providing “truly accessible research data”: research data that are not merely available, but accessible to all users, including those with disabilities. In the 6 years since, the conversation about accessible research data that Walker and Keenan hoped to start has, mostly,... more information about the talk Actually Accessible Data: A Call To Action