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.
The Compassion of DevOps
A strong DevOps culture helps teams deliver high quality products on predictable schedules. But in my experience, the strongest DevOps culture is the one that recognizes suffering and offers compassion to a technology workforce that is often over tasked and under resourced. This talk will discuss DevOps best practices, but... more information about the talk The Compassion of DevOps
One Team, Multiple Initiatives: Project Management and Collaboration Across a Library Team
How does a team balance multiple projects and conflicting priorities? Using the New York Public Library (NYPL)’s eReading team as a case study, this presentation will walk attendees through methods of collaboration and resource sharing from a project management perspective. NYPL has developed multiple eReading apps that are used for... more information about the talk One Team, Multiple Initiatives: Project Management and Collaboration Across a Library Team
Make Time for Design: Integrating Design Ops Creates Big Value for Small Teams
In higher education IT, there are more developers than dedicated designers on a team. Oftentimes, there are no designers allocated to the ongoing work of a digital product. Designers and design work feels siloed and mysterious. In an environment that values continuous improvement and shipping work, how do we advocate... more information about the talk Make Time for Design: Integrating Design Ops Creates Big Value for Small Teams
Lessons learned: How to get traction with AI and start building
Getting a grip on AI takes time, but after iterating through our first AI project, a method of comparing MARC records, we’ve gained enough skills and perspective to begin leveraging AI as a potential tool in our technology stack. There are many paths for incorporating AI, building a model from... more information about the talk Lessons learned: How to get traction with AI and start building
Exploring the Flip Side of Explainable AI: Unexplained Expert Systems and Cultural Acceptance for the Unexplained
Current buzz about artificial intelligence tends to present the excitement as coming from technological advances like speed to allow a real time conversation and better quality responses from chatbots and generative artificial intelligence. This talk explores how cultural expectations, rather than technology, may be what recently reached a tipping point... more information about the talk Exploring the Flip Side of Explainable AI: Unexplained Expert Systems and Cultural Acceptance for the Unexplained
Community Source Software: Complex collaborations as told by two Program Managers
The decision to implement open, community-supported technologies can bring with it complexities and efforts not always experienced by the use of proprietary solutions. “Open Source”, by definition, can also lead to confusion and misunderstanding of the true cost of implementation, as well as underestimation of the importance of collaboration and... more information about the talk Community Source Software: Complex collaborations as told by two Program Managers
Common Pitfalls of Project Management In Academic Libraries
Few libraries have a project management office that can carry out their projects in a systematic matter. Developers, supervisors and technicians are often called upon to conduct their own project management while also doing much of the project work themselves. In this presentation I will cherry-pick the choicest bits of... more information about the talk Common Pitfalls of Project Management In Academic Libraries
Automating Metadata Hygiene to Improve Economic Research Discoverability
Fed in Print is an application indexing papers, publications, and speeches from twelve Federal Reserve Banks and the Board of Governors. By presenting metadata to larger discovery services, including Research Papers in Economics (RePEc), Fed in Print serves as a discoverability driver for Federal Reserve System research. As a service... more information about the talk Automating Metadata Hygiene to Improve Economic Research Discoverability
Aligning Keywords from Long Form Prose to Controlled Vocabulary
HIVE-4-MAT is a linked-data, automatic indexing application for vocabularies related to material science. In the past few months, work has been done to improve the performance of the keyword alignment algorithm so that it is faster, more accurate, and more flexible at the expense of precision. This presentation reports on... more information about the talk Aligning Keywords from Long Form Prose to Controlled Vocabulary
Wrangling the Past: Using Python to Prepare Legacy Digital Collections and ETDs for Preservation
This presentation will explore the ways in which Python scripts, both large and small, are effective tools for normalizing large amounts of data that make up disparate digital collections and preparing them for digital preservation. After setting up a digital preservation program, our institution was faced with a backlog of... more information about the talk Wrangling the Past: Using Python to Prepare Legacy Digital Collections and ETDs for Preservation
We Can Build That: Custom Python Applets for Digital Preservation Processing
When processing digitized and born digital collections many archivists and librarians are faced with two potential pathways 1) using open sources tools, many of which require intermediate to advanced technical skills or 2) using specialized software, most of which are not tailor made to digital preservation use cases. The Digital... more information about the talk We Can Build That: Custom Python Applets for Digital Preservation Processing
Think Big, Act Localhost: using large scale data techniques at smaller scales for ad hoc data analysis
Even the largest libraries generally do not work with data that would qualify as Big Data, such as the log data represented by Google searches or Facebook posts. That puts some libraries in a bit of a bind, what we might call a “Medium Data” problem. The catalog data of... more information about the talk Think Big, Act Localhost: using large scale data techniques at smaller scales for ad hoc data analysis
Secrets and Lies: Exploring and Exploiting APIs That Are Undocumented, Underdocumented, or Misdocumented
Sometimes you find a service or website that serves up information that you want to use, and you want to automate your calls to it, but there’s no documentation, or whatever documentation exists is less than helpful or even wrong. This presentation will discuss and demonstrate some techniques and tools... more information about the talk Secrets and Lies: Exploring and Exploiting APIs That Are Undocumented, Underdocumented, or Misdocumented
OCR and PDFs - the possibilities and limitations for accessibility
In order to serve its patrons, NYPL is constantly finding new ways to make more content easily accessible through digitization. In order to expand on our research catalog and get the most out of digitization, we have started work on using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) on scanned books to not... more information about the talk OCR and PDFs - the possibilities and limitations for accessibility
Move Fast and Fill Things: Using Python for Full-Text Retrieval
In 2022, a growing systematic review service at a 5 -person academic health sciences library prompted staff to seek creative ways to manage workload while still providing comprehensive service. Access Services staff, who were novice but enthusiastic coders, developed a Python script to expedite retrieval of licensed and Open Access... more information about the talk Move Fast and Fill Things: Using Python for Full-Text Retrieval
kwalk: a simple program to crosswalk metadata for repository uploads
Kwalk is a program that lets us write a simple crosswalk that we can apply to each batch of metadata as we receive it and have multiple crosswalks for multiple projects as we work on them in an intermixed fashion. The program allows us to apply special functions to modify... more information about the talk kwalk: a simple program to crosswalk metadata for repository uploads
Integrating Digital Library Platforms: The DIY Approach
What’s more frustrating than setting up a library system? Setting up TWO library systems! Especially when they won’t talk to each other.
When the Video Game History Foundation started building their library, they had trouble getting their archives management platform (ArchivesSpace) to play nicely with their digital repository (Preservica). While... more information about the talk Integrating Digital Library Platforms: The DIY Approach
Encoding Reparative Description: Developing Tools to Analyze Problematic Finding Aids
Over the past few years, more archives and archivists have been working on enhanced description projects that can address past inequities, erasure, or incorrect representations in description. This work has been variously described as reparative description, mindful description, conscious editing, and by other names. Whatever it is called, while this... more information about the talk Encoding Reparative Description: Developing Tools to Analyze Problematic Finding Aids
Creating Accessible Documents As Non-Authors: Tools, Strategies, & The False Idol of AI
Documents are only accessible if all users can examine their contents, yet many of the “openly accessible” articles, books, and documents at libraries are often not compatible with text-to-speech readers, preventing low-vision users from accessing their information. The barrier to uploading accessible material is high, as making these documents accessible... more information about the talk Creating Accessible Documents As Non-Authors: Tools, Strategies, & The False Idol of AI
Cleaning metadata in bulk through batch editing
Collections of any significant size or age often include data that is not consistent across records. Frequently this data can be normalized by applying a large number of small but similar changes across groups of records. Tools that support bulk changes to groups of records can make this kind of... more information about the talk Cleaning metadata in bulk through batch editing
Change is Afoot: What WCAG2.2, WCAG3, ..., WCAG9000? Mean for Libraries
As of October 2023, the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) were officially updated to version 2.2. This new W3C recommendation introduces nine new success criteria (ranging from A to AAA) and a handful edits to existing criteria. This talk will discuss the potential implications of WCAG 2.2 for our library... more information about the talk Change is Afoot: What WCAG2.2, WCAG3, ..., WCAG9000? Mean for Libraries
Beyond Band-Aids: Rethinking Accessibility Widgets
Third-party accessibility widgets are often advertised as a quick fix to make your website accessible. The truth is that no third-party widget can replace a fundamental commitment to designing and maintaining accessible web content… But is there another use case for this kind of tool? We recently launched our twist... more information about the talk Beyond Band-Aids: Rethinking Accessibility Widgets
Automation of Subject Analysis in Collection Evaluations
Every year we analyze an assortment of subject-based collections in order to make recommendations for program accreditation, enhancement purchases, and promotion. We typically start this process with a needs assessment and with analyzing collection-level trends. The final step of the evaluation process is to do a deep dive into each... more information about the talk Automation of Subject Analysis in Collection Evaluations
Are We Donne Yet? The Decade Long Project of Converting an Annotated Bibliography from Print to Database
“Do you think we could create a searchable database?” Do questions like this fill you with dread? Or maybe excitement? They can and should do both! This superficially simple question led an inter-institutional team of librarians and scholars on a decade-long project of various stages to convert the four-volume John... more information about the talk Are We Donne Yet? The Decade Long Project of Converting an Annotated Bibliography from Print to Database
Whispering at any volume: Scalable speech recognition for all
The American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) preserves and hosts over 150k audiovisual resources, with over 100k records available publicly. A collaboration between the Library of Congress and GBH (WGBH Boston), the collection spans over 100 years of media history.
Accurate transcripts remain critical for content discovery and accessibility, especially... more information about the talk Whispering at any volume: Scalable speech recognition for all
The Last Two Women Standing: libtechwomen's CodeClub
Late in the year 2014, a call went out on the libtechwomen mailing list proposing the formation of CodeClubs, with the idea that reading other people’s code is an essential part of learning to be a good developer.
Two CodeClub groups of 4-5 librarian/library workers each had a weekly virtual... more information about the talk The Last Two Women Standing: libtechwomen's CodeClub
Teaching coding online to full-time library workers
My organization developed and ran a free 9-week online class titled “Fundamentals of Health Data Science” aimed at an audience of medical librarians. The course covers an introduction to Python in the context of working with a health-related dataset. The course was mostly asynchronous, with a group of 70 learners... more information about the talk Teaching coding online to full-time library workers
Rethinking Digital Asset Management at University of Texas with OCFL in Fedora 6
We at University of Texas at Austin Libraries are leveraging the standards-based format, OCFL (via Fedora), to create modular and easily maintained digital repositories. To address pain points maintaining, enhancing, and especially migrating our services over the years, we are rethinking how we build them from the ground up. We... more information about the talk Rethinking Digital Asset Management at University of Texas with OCFL in Fedora 6
[Re]Thinking Digital Infrastructure: Centering Humans in Integrated Systems Work
In this talk, librarians and archivists from an academic library will discuss establishing and cultivating a Digital Infrastructure Working Group (DIWG). The DIWG was born out of a need to create interoperability between metadata, preservation, discovery, and access systems for archival materials, and demanded a radical rethinking of prior organizational... more information about the talk [Re]Thinking Digital Infrastructure: Centering Humans in Integrated Systems Work
Multi-Modal Machine Learning to Enhance the Accessibility of Natural History Collections
University libraries and museums hold vast collections of curated image data that document the natural and social world. While these data are, in theory, accessible to professionals and the general public, in practice, searching archival collections requires technical knowledge and relies on precise scientific terminology, which can be a barrier... more information about the talk Multi-Modal Machine Learning to Enhance the Accessibility of Natural History Collections
Leveraging AI Tools for Automating Metadata Extraction
With an increase in the accessibility of Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLM) we now have the ability to apply these tools against a variety of materials, including images, text, and audio.
The UCLA Library is experimenting with applying AI/ML tools against digital materials that would typically require significant... more information about the talk Leveraging AI Tools for Automating Metadata Extraction
Institution repository collection development with web scraping
Many institutions report low rates of self-archiving with their institutional repositories, requiring repository managers to actively seek content to expand collections. This presentation discusses a method for collecting articles and metadata from open repositories using Beautiful Soup and Selenium as web scraping tools. Thousands of articles and corresponding descriptive metadata... more information about the talk Institution repository collection development with web scraping
Everything old is new again : What we could have learned from a book on COBOL from 1976, but didn’t
Tech culture so often focuses on the future, it is easy to forget technology has a past. Yet, the long term history of software development, and the short term history of specific technologies, can provide a context to help us better understand our present situations, and inform our future choices.... more information about the talk Everything old is new again : What we could have learned from a book on COBOL from 1976, but didn’t
Everything could have been different: why computers are like that
There are certain things we take for granted: bytes have eight bits, the internet uses packets. But these are decisions made by humans when other alternatives were on the table. In this talk, I’ll tell stories of some papers that were pivot points in the history of computing. How is... more information about the talk Everything could have been different: why computers are like that
Enhancing Cataloging of Electronic Government Documents with Programming and OpenAI
The advent of AI products like OpenAI ChatGPT has surged into the learning and library scenes, prompting us to contemplate how to harness these advances to enhance our work and envision the future of our endeavors. Especially within the domain of electronic resources and born-digital materials, developers have utilized their... more information about the talk Enhancing Cataloging of Electronic Government Documents with Programming and OpenAI
Building a Walking Tour App to Increase Knowledge and Empathy for Complex Historical Sites
Using a wide range of third party software tools and services we have built a customizable walking tour Android app that integrates Geographic Information Systems and archival content. The first iteration of the app has been demonstrated on the site of District Six in Cape Town, where some 60,000 people... more information about the talk Building a Walking Tour App to Increase Knowledge and Empathy for Complex Historical Sites