[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 approaches to digital asset curation, including leveraging available APIs and vendor contracted system development. Learn how team members approached technological work by centering each other’s well-being and intentionally making visible the often-invisible human labor invested in developing and maintaining digital infrastructure. We will share how the DIWG challenged organizational silos, established cross-departmental communication and workflows, and cultivated a climate of professional support and human-centered care in a pandemic and post-pandemic workplace. Key takeaways include recommendations made to library administration for digital infrastructure curation moving forward.