Collections, catalogues and connections: My engagement escapade

VALA2020 PLENARY SESSION 4
Wednesday 12  February 2020, 4:20 – 5:30

Siobhan Leachman

• Wikimedia, Biodiversity Heritage Library, Smithsonian Institution
• Volunteer & citizen scientist

Please tag your comments, tweets, and blog posts about this session: #vala2020 #p4

View the video of the presentation and view the presentation slides here:

VALA2020 Plenary 4 Leachman Slides 48.5MB

Download

Abstract

I want to tell the story of my digital adventures. My journey from analogue to digital, from consumer to re-user, from passive absorber to empowered co-creator of knowledge. How my life has been enriched by the existence of, as well as my interaction and engagement with, digital collections of galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAMs). I want to detail my motivations for undertaking the work I do. To emphasise that for me, digital is not so much about access but is much more about reuse.

I intend to highlight how important people are in the digital world that we inhabit. How easy it is for individuals to have an impact. Not only on connections, catalogues and collections but on the lives of people who engage with digital content. How the GLAM community has enriched my life. I will traverse through the triumphs as well as the trials and tribulations of knowledge creation and connection. To show how anyone with a passion can help improve access to knowledge, can curate content, can facilitate reuse of digital data, and can join the effort to connect everything.

Biography

Siobhan Leachman volunteers for a plethora of GLAM, digital humanities and citizen science projects. Her mission in life is to connect everything. She advocates for open access, open Creative Commons copyright licenses, and defends the public domain. Siobhan is currently obsessed with crowdsourcing, citizen science, various Wikimedia projects, citation data, New Zealand endemic moths, women scientific illustrators, name authority data, iNaturalist and Charles Heaphy artworks. These obsessions change at her whim. In 2019 she was awarded the Auckland War Memorial Museum Medal and is a Companion of the Auckland War Memorial Museum.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Be the Goose: On Barriers, Roadblocks and Finding Your Way in Library and Information Science

VALA2020 PLENARY SESSION 6
Thursday 13 February 2020, 4:00 – 5:10

Cecily Walker

• Librarian
• Social justice advocate

Please tag your comments, tweets, and blog posts about this session: #vala2020 #p6

View the video of the presentation and view the presentation slides here:

VALA2020 Plenary 6 Walker Slides 119MB

Download

Abstract

People who live at the intersection of many different identities can sometimes experience barriers to success while working in libraries. While much of the literature acknowledges the existence of the physical, systemic, and personal barriers that can cause a marginalized person to believe that they are a poor fit for their organization, the demographic makeup of the profession ensures that marginalized people will find it difficult to find allies, mentors or advocates who share or are sympathetic to their unique challenges.

What’s a person to do when all she sees around her are people who don’t look like her or who don’t experience life the way she does? Cecily Walker will discuss some of the barriers she and other multiply marginalized librarians have experienced as they move through the profession, and she will share how she found an unlikely role model thanks to a video game about a little white goose.

Biography

Cecily Walker is a passionate librarian with 15 years experience in the profession. Currently based in Vancouver, her unique professional journey spans user experience, community digital projects, digital collections, and the intersection of social justice, technology and public librarianship. It was her frustration with the way that software was designed to meet the needs of highly technical users rather than the general public that led her to user experience, but it was her love of information, intellectual freedom, and commitment to social justice that led her back to librarianship. VALA represents Cecily’s first trip to Australia, but she hopes it won’t be her last.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Who is keeping house, tending the garden, and raising the children while AI is out marauding?

VALA2020 PLENARY SESSION 5
Thursday 13 February 2020, 9:00 – 10:10

Catherine Nicole Coleman

• Stanford University
• Digital Research Architect

Please tag your comments, tweets, and blog posts about this session: #vala2020 #p5

View the video of the presentation here:

Abstract

The social applications of AI most prevalent today weaponize convenience and distraction to very destructive ends. Incisive investigative reporting tells a story of individuals and institutions wielding AI for data collection and analysis to narrow choices, increase profits, and subjugate the populace. But of course AI isn’t doing that, people are. We can and should employ this technology in ways that reflect the ethos of the library; that support research, preserve our cultural heritage, nourish the soul, and contribute to the growth of human knowledge.

AI reveals patterns and offers predictions based on the information fed into the system. But it is trite and simply inaccurate to fall back on the axiom: garbage in, garbage out. In libraries we know that one person’s garbage might be treasure to a researcher; something that can unlock insights and lead to new discoveries. The opportunity that AI offers is the ability to process mountains of information very quickly and to assist with repetitive tasks. Integrating AI into our expert practices can spark new ideas about how to describe things, how to contextualize them, how to maintain them and how to improve discovery. We desperately need new tools in libraries to keep up with and creatively extend our work. And our work is essential to a safe and healthy civil society.

This talk will offer some practical advice about how to get started.

Biography

Catherine Nicole Coleman is Digital Research Architect for the Stanford University Libraries and Research Director for Humanities + Design, a research lab at the Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis. Nicole works at the intersection of the digital library and digital scholarship as a lead architect in the design and development of research services. She is currently leading an AI initiative within the Library to make the collections of maps, photographs, manuscripts, data sets and other assets more easily discoverable, accessible, and analyzable. Her work within Humanities + Design is encoding interpretive method in tools to create human-centered applications of machine intelligence in support of research.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Voice, treaty, truth and the archive

VALA2020 PLENARY SESSION 3
Wednesday 12 February 2020, 9:00 – 10:10

Dr Lyndon Ormond-Parker

• University of Melbourne
• Research Fellow, Indigenous Studies Unit

Please tag your comments, tweets, and blog posts about this session: #vala2020 #p3

View the video of the presentation on the VALAView channel here:

VALA2020 Plenary 3 Ormond-Parker Slides 617MB

Download

Abstract

In 2018, the Uluru Statement from the Heart called on all Australians to support a First Nations Voice to parliament, a process of agreement-making and truth-telling between governments and Indigenous people and to enable a deeper understanding of Australia’s shared past and a path towards reconciliation. Part of this deeper understanding is contained within the archives, stored globally, nationally and in many local community-based archives in regional and remote Australia.

There is now a treaty process underway in several states and territories. Focusing on the future, how can voice, treaty and truth telling ensure the long-term preservation of Australia’s diverse Indigenous languages, heritage and cultures.

Biography

Dr Lyndon Ormond-Parker is an ARC Research Fellow in the Indigenous Studies Unit of the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health at the University of Melbourne. He is a member of the Australian Heritage Council, and the Australian Government Ministry for the Arts, Advisory Committee for Indigenous Repatriation. His research interest is in repatriation, cultural heritage, information technology, community broadcast and the digitisation and preservation of community audiovisual archives.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Open as a Rule, Closed by Exception

VALA2020 PLENARY SESSION 1
Tuesday 11 February 2020, 9:30 – 10:40

Adam Moriarty

• Auckland War Memorial Museum
• Head of Collection Information and Access

Please tag your comments, tweets, and blog posts about this session: #vala2020 #p1

View the video of the presentation on the VALAView channel and view the presentation slides here:

VALA2020 Plenary 1 Moriarty Slides 2GB

Download

Abstract

In 2015 Auckland Museum started a journey which felt in many ways untested, unmoderated and unsure, but like all great adventures into the unknown, it was exciting. We were armed with a simple vision – to be “Open as a Rule, Closed by Exception”.

What would it look like if we shifted the paradigm of institutional control? If we let the people of the world find their own stories, pathways and connections to our human and natural heritage collections? What would it mean to our metrics, our reputation and would anyone even notice?

The ensuing years have broadened our understanding of what it is to truly open our collections and threw into question, what were we trying to achieve? This session will reflect upon mission fulfilment and what it means to truly be OPEN.

Biography

Adam Moriarty is the Head of Collection Information and Access Team at Auckland War Memorial Museum in New Zealand. For the past five years he has worked to open the multidisciplinary collections online in a way that their stories can be freely accessed and shared. As his own journey has unfolded it has led him to question the true purpose and validity of his work. His most recent endeavours have started him to reconsider the direction museums might take to fulfil their mission.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.