Accepted Conference Talks

Times of Wintering in Library Technology: How Community Can Help Us Through

Shrinking budgets, increasing authoritarianism, and new expectations around artificial intelligence make current times in library technology harder. In Katherine May’s concept of “wintering”, we can react to inevitable suffering with gentleness, rest, care, and community, trusting that transformation is possible. Using May’s work as a framework and bringing together research... more information about the talk Times of Wintering in Library Technology: How Community Can Help Us Through

Do You Fix It, When No One Knows It's Broken? TL;DR: You'll be sorry if you don't!

In trying to programmatically correct some basic metadata, a larger issue was discovered. The entire sum of our submissions to the Internet Archive (IA), while they presented with a uniform appearance, had too many varying hierarchies in the underlying items, to allow any reliable means of processing. Our contributions to... more information about the talk Do You Fix It, When No One Knows It's Broken? TL;DR: You'll be sorry if you don't!

BookReconciler: An Open-Source Tool for Metadata Enrichment and Work-Level Clustering

In many settings, people work with only minimal bibliographic metadata, often just a book’s title and author (e.g., “The Book of Salt” by “Monique Truong”). How can we enrich and cluster minimal bibliographic metadata, especially at scale? This presentation will introduce BookReconciler, an open-source tool for metadata enrichment and Work-level... more information about the talk BookReconciler: An Open-Source Tool for Metadata Enrichment and Work-Level Clustering

Using Static IIIF for Digital Scholarship: the Paul Thomas Annotated Project

Although more and more Digital Scholarship tools support IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework), deployment barriers such as server requirements and sustainability and maintenance concerns put these features out of reach for many projects. In this presentation, we’ll describe the static web approach we are using for Paul Thomas Annotated, a... more information about the talk Using Static IIIF for Digital Scholarship: the Paul Thomas Annotated Project

Unveiling Boston Public Library’s Hidden Collections Using the WorldCat Metadata API

Using technology enabled by the BookOps-WorldCat API wrapper (OCLC DevConnect 2024) and inspired by the functionality of MatchMarc (Code4Lib Journal, Nov. 2019), Boston Public Library has developed a tool that allows catalogers to query spreadsheets of bibliographic data against OCLC’s bibliographic database using the WorldCat Metadata API 2.0. In an... more information about the talk Unveiling Boston Public Library’s Hidden Collections Using the WorldCat Metadata API

Supporting the Hidden Work: OSS Projects for Inventory and Weeding

How can library technology teams help their stacks management colleagues in the vital tasks they do to keep the print collection relevant and available to patrons? Without an efficient shelf-reading / inventory process, we’re ignorant of lost, uncataloged or miscataloged items and can mislead students, faculty and visiting researchers. And... more information about the talk Supporting the Hidden Work: OSS Projects for Inventory and Weeding

Spreadsheet to Service: Building a Zero-Cost Search Interface (The LACLI Story)

The LACLI project began as an emergency measure to share free, online resources for Latin American, Caribbean, Latinx, and Iberian studies during the pandemic lockdown. It has since grown into a multinational effort of 50 volunteers who have indexed over 1,300 diverse resources.

Spreadsheets: where much good research goes to... more information about the talk Spreadsheet to Service: Building a Zero-Cost Search Interface (The LACLI Story)

Spec before Tech: Delivering digital objects using archival principles with DadoCM

Ask your archivist colleague(s) how your digital repository makes them feel. Digital repositories and DAMS are really designed for library-style metadata and single, atomic objects, rather than archival principles which emphasize describing in bulk and representing relationships across records, creators, and functions. This creates major headaches for archivists.

Archives users... more information about the talk Spec before Tech: Delivering digital objects using archival principles with DadoCM

Protecting Digital Library Resources through ML-Based Detection of Automated Access Patterns

Automated bots pose a growing challenge for digital libraries, consuming bandwidth, skewing usage statistics, and risking violations of licensed content agreements. Unlike human users, bots can send thousands of rapid or patterned requests, overwhelming servers and obscuring genuine research activity. To address this, the presented tool analyzes web traffic logs... more information about the talk Protecting Digital Library Resources through ML-Based Detection of Automated Access Patterns

Old Maps for New Apps: Making and Using Georeferenced Sanborn Maps at Scale

Georeferencing historical Sanborn fire insurance maps transforms them from scanned atlas pages into proper geospatial datasets, allowing for geographical exploration, comparison, and analysis. This is a common task for researchers of all stripes, and since 2022 OldInsuranceMaps.net has provided open, browser-based tools for not only processing individual sheets from the... more information about the talk Old Maps for New Apps: Making and Using Georeferenced Sanborn Maps at Scale

Offering On-Demand Virtual Machines to Library Users

This presentation recounts a pilot project at UCSB Library to offer on-demand virtual machines to students, faculty, and staff. Following a survey of campus cloud services, the project team identified a need to support digital projects and data science through accessible and easily configurable environments with commonly used software packages... more information about the talk Offering On-Demand Virtual Machines to Library Users

Not Just the Data: Holistic Frameworks for AI Use

In the past few years, many institutions have promoted the use of AI as a potential solution for tackling descriptive backlogs, identifying harmful materials, increasing access to collections, etc. Guidelines for staff use, when provided, often center around data protection, privacy, and recognizing that bias and hallucinations may affect outputs.... more information about the talk Not Just the Data: Holistic Frameworks for AI Use

Modularity: doing it all isn’t a good thing

In the world of digital repositories, we’ve all seen two extremes: the monolithic “one-size-fits-all” platform that’s impossible to maintain, and the bespoke custom build that breaks the moment your needs change. The Portal Project at the University of Texas Libraries takes a different approach — one grounded in modularity.

Portal... more information about the talk Modularity: doing it all isn’t a good thing

Happy devs and happy patrons: the wonders of "uv".

If I had to pick one work tool that has contributed most to my quality-of-coding-life and joyful surprise over the last year, I think it’d be uv.

One could say that uv is a python package manager, which wouldn’t be wrong, but certainly doesn’t capture joyful... more information about the talk Happy devs and happy patrons: the wonders of "uv".

Getting Started in 3D. Sometimes It's OK to Have 200 Bugs in Your Code

At Virginia Tech Libraries we’ve begun to experiment with 3D virtual collections. It’s been a process, but the content we’re creating is improving and we’re starting to hit our stride. This talk will revisit some of the lessons we’ve learned in developing three different 3D collections. We’ll discuss object scanning/photograpy,... more information about the talk Getting Started in 3D. Sometimes It's OK to Have 200 Bugs in Your Code

From Beta to RC: The Marriott Reparative Metadata Assessment Tool (MaRMAT)

The Marriott Reparative Metadata Assessment Tool (MaRMAT) is an open-source, Python-based application developed by University of Utah librarians for auditing metadata for potentially harmful terminology. Built with the goal of replacing tedious and bias-prone keyword searching methods, MaRMAT conducts bulk, multifield queries on schema-agnostic, tabular metadata against pre-curated or user-supplied... more information about the talk From Beta to RC: The Marriott Reparative Metadata Assessment Tool (MaRMAT)

Doing more with SSH

Logfile analysis and monitoring can help ensure the correct operation and health of IT infrastructure. For environments with a small number of servers, standard unix tools are often sufficient for this purpose. Large environments with hundreds of servers can use observabilty platforms like the ELK stack, Grafana, or Splunk. For... more information about the talk Doing more with SSH

Decoding the Past: Exploring AI-Based Handwritten Text Recognition in Digital Collections

At a university library, the Digital Services Department recently completed a pilot project evaluating the potential of AI-powered Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) tools for use with historical materials. The project tested seven products to determine which systems produced the most accurate transcriptions for a specific item. Conducted in collaboration with... more information about the talk Decoding the Past: Exploring AI-Based Handwritten Text Recognition in Digital Collections

Cybersecurity Preparedness for Libraries: A 2026 Action Plan

Libraries are facing increasingly sophisticated cyber threats that put our data, digital collections, and public trust at risk. Cybersecurity Preparedness for Libraries: A 2026 Action Plan focuses on practical, achievable steps libraries of all sizes can take to strengthen their information security posture. This session will highlight some examples, common... more information about the talk Cybersecurity Preparedness for Libraries: A 2026 Action Plan

The Redirect: Researching Data Privacy and Vendor Practices in Library Systems

As concerns about data privacy continue to grow and become increasingly difficult to navigate, how can we help library patrons make informed decisions about data privacy? An ongoing project within the Cornell University Library is researching data privacy policies and the information collected by library vendor websites. Learn about how... more information about the talk The Redirect: Researching Data Privacy and Vendor Practices in Library Systems

Tales from the Online Archives of California Replatforming

What happens when you try to migrate a homegrown system with 20 years of technical debt, with hundreds of contributors, and millions of monthly visits, in under seven months? Find out in the spine-tingling “Tales from the Online Archive of California Replatforming”.

You’ll gasp at the foreshadowing of “It shouldn’t... more information about the talk Tales from the Online Archives of California Replatforming

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (Mode)

After learning through web analytics that 38% of our users have turned on dark mode at the operating-system level, we decided to implement dark mode on our library’s website. We designed a dark color palette that balanced brand identity, readability, and accessibility, then implemented it using the new light-dark() CSS... more information about the talk Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (Mode)

Right place, right time: strategies for communicating outages, updates and other information to those who need to know

Despite our best efforts for a seamless user experience, the inevitable happens: system outages, error messages, maintenance downtime, platform changes, et cetera. With the huge range of online systems and tools our libraries utilize, there’s so many different ways to communicate important news to patrons and colleagues. It’s easy to... more information about the talk Right place, right time: strategies for communicating outages, updates and other information to those who need to know

Replacing Legacy Sites with Low Maintenance Statically Hosted Web Archive-powered Mirrors

Are you a library web site maintainer managing a growing set legacy sites? Key site running on an obsolete stack with security issues that you can’t afford to update? Funding has been cut, but a site you’re responsible for is useful to a small community or key stakeholder? Don’t want... more information about the talk Replacing Legacy Sites with Low Maintenance Statically Hosted Web Archive-powered Mirrors

On Searching for Library Standards that Align with Library Values

On March 14, 2025, the Library of Congress changed the subject headings for the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America and Mount Denali to Mount McKinley. Despite outrage amongst catalogers about the flagrant violation of their own standards, LC cited a change from the U.S. Board on Geographic Names... more information about the talk On Searching for Library Standards that Align with Library Values

New (and Old-Fangled) HTML Elements: What is Accessible Really?

Over the years, the HTML standard has dropped and added many elements for developers to play with. Some, such as <blink> and <marquee>, are long and thankfully gone. Accessibility oten emphasizes using native elements over rolling your own. However, when it comes to accessibility conformance, not every element is equal... more information about the talk New (and Old-Fangled) HTML Elements: What is Accessible Really?

Making the library web design process more collaborative // A case study using Figma to develop strategy-focused web solutions

At a time when libraries are doing amazing digital work, it’s deeply rewarding to help shape the tools that share those stories. This talk walks through how one public library built a lightweight design library in Figma, complete with reusable page patterns, motion guidelines, and component documentation, and began connecting... more information about the talk Making the library web design process more collaborative // A case study using Figma to develop strategy-focused web solutions

Librarian as institutional metadata steward: Case studies in Research Information Management Systems administration

Research Information Management (RIM) systems have become core infrastructure in universities, integrating data about research, teaching, grants, service, and people into a single platform. Institutions adopt these systems for faculty activity reporting, analytics, public profiles, repository deposit, and other data-driven workflows. While many platforms offer automation features, effective administration requires... more information about the talk Librarian as institutional metadata steward: Case studies in Research Information Management Systems administration

Integrating Open Repositories and Digital Humanities Technologies to Foster Civic Engagement

Since 2020, the American Philosophical Society (APS) has been developing an open repository based on the DAMS Islandora to build The Revolutionary City Portal—a multi-institutional collaboration that brings together institutionally siloed collections related to the American Revolution, with an emphasis on historically minoritized or otherwise hidden voices. The project integrates... more information about the talk Integrating Open Repositories and Digital Humanities Technologies to Foster Civic Engagement

Digital Preservation From Scratch

In 2025, The ArQuives (Canada’s 2SLGBTQIA+ Archives) hired its first-ever digital archivist to build and implement a digital preservation program entirely “from scratch”. No existing policy, infrastructure, or strategy existed. This talk will walk through the process of implementing digital preservation from scratch, including conducting maturity model assessments (DPC RAM... more information about the talk Digital Preservation From Scratch

Community Digitization as a Strategic Response to Political Change

In recent years, Quebec’s government introduced policies around French language promotion that have created financial and cultural challenges for English universities in the province, including McGill University, founded in the 19th century and historically associated with the Quebec’s English-speaking community. These policies have sparked broader conversations about how institutions like... more information about the talk Community Digitization as a Strategic Response to Political Change

Artificial Intelligence Ethics Regulation in the United States

This presentation summarizes recent federal activity in regulating artificial intelligence (AI) ethics. The National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Act of 2020 included a five year funded roll out for comprehensive regulation of AI across the United States including regulation of AI ethics, with the roll out funded through federal fiscal year... more information about the talk Artificial Intelligence Ethics Regulation in the United States

AI in Moderation: Assessing AI-Generated Alt Text for Digital Collections

In anticipation of the latest Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) standards, WCAG 2.2, the [redacted] Libraries are seeking to improve the accessibility of our digital collections for all users, including those with visual disabilities. To do so, one of our priorities over the next year is to add alternative text... more information about the talk AI in Moderation: Assessing AI-Generated Alt Text for Digital Collections

A workflow for automating content detection in dissertation PDFs

The University of Michigan Library stewards scanned and digital dissertations in its institutional repository, Deep Blue Documents. Many of these dissertations have not had their copyright status determined. We receive multiple global requests each week for access to dissertations that are restricted to campus, the default for items which have... more information about the talk A workflow for automating content detection in dissertation PDFs