In the face of the pressing global challenges posed by climate change, the recent Digital Rights and Inclusion Forum 2024 event hosted by Open Knowledge Ghana brought together a diverse group of stakeholders to explore the intersection of digital rights, sustainability, and inclusion. The panel discussion, titled “Bridging the Gap: Digital Rights, Sustainability, and Inclusion in the Face of Climate Change,” delved into the crucial role that technology, innovation, and digital empowerment can play in addressing the climate crisis.

Unlocking the Power of Open Knowledge

The session kicked off with a thought-provoking lightning talk by Monica Granados, Assistant Director at Open Climate Project, Creative Commons. Granados emphasized the urgent need for open access to knowledge in the fight against climate change. She highlighted the alarming statistic that 57.1% of research outputs from 1980 to 2020 were inaccessible due to paywalls, hindering the progress of scientists, communities, and policymakers.

Granados advocated for a cultural shift towards open knowledge sharing, underscoring the importance of bridging the gap between digital rights, sustainability, and climate action. She outlined the efforts of the Open Climate Campaign to promote the open sharing of research through advocacy, coalition building, policy labs, workshops, and the implementation of robust open access policies.

Empowering Women and Leveraging Technology

The panel discussion, moderated by Maxwell Beganim, the Open Knowledge Foundation Network Anglophone Africa Coordinator, featured esteemed speakers including Francis Acquah Amaning, President of Internet Society Ghana Chapter, Anita Ofori, Executive Director of Women For Sustainability Africa, and Yakubu Adam, Policy, Programmes and Projects Lead at the Institute for Energy Security.
Anita Ofori spoke passionately about the disproportionate impact of climate change on women, emphasizing the need to understand these differences and empower women digitally and economically. She highlighted the importance of closing the gender gap by providing women with opportunities, particularly in the digital space, and the value of collaboration between organizations and grassroots groups to tackle these complex issues.

Francis Acquah Amaning underscored the significance of raising awareness about climate change and leveraging technology to address it. He discussed how digital rights, such as access to information online, are crucial in this endeavor. Acquah Amaning shared examples of how technology can contribute to tackling climate change, from smart meters that help reduce energy consumption to projects like Radionet, which uses AI and Raspberry Pi to help farmers in underserved communities predict rainfall patterns.

The Pivotal Role of ICT in Climate Action

Maxwell Beganim highlighted the critical role of ICT in addressing climate change, emphasizing the need to safeguard the digital ecosystem to protect the rights of activists championing climate action. He acknowledged the contribution of ICT to anthropogenic emissions, from manufacturing to consumer use, and stressed the importance of ICT companies mainstreaming efforts to reduce emissions and utilize renewable energy.

Beganim also discussed how simple actions, such as not charging phones overnight or reducing screen brightness, can contribute to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. He underscored the pivotal role of ICT in climate action, showcasing the potential for technology to both contribute to and help address the challenges posed by climate change.

Fostering Inclusivity and Sustainability

Yakubu Adam shared his impressions of DRIF24, describing it as a remarkable gathering of young innovators committed to addressing inequality and exclusion in Africa’s digital ecosystem. He emphasized the importance of innovation in ensuring inclusivity and sustainability, as outlined in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Adam highlighted how climate change exacerbates global inequality, making it imperative to leverage digital rights and innovation to leave no one behind in achieving these goals.

Collaborative Efforts for Positive Change

The session was marked by engaging discussions and insightful contributions from participants, who actively engaged with the panelists on various aspects of the topic. Abigail Afi Gbadago, the Technical Associate for Open Knowledge Ghana, expertly coordinated the session, ensuring a fruitful exchange of ideas.

As the discussion unfolded, it became evident that bridging the gap between digital rights, sustainability, and inclusion is essential for effectively addressing the challenges posed by climate change. DRIF24 provided a platform for stakeholders to come together, share insights, and collaborate on solutions aimed at promoting digital rights, fostering inclusivity, and advancing social justice in the digital age.

STAPLR (Sounds in Time Actively Performing Library Reference), my sonification of activity at the help and reference desks at York University Libraries, is on hiatus.

Yesterday we moved from a free and open source self-hosted system to LibAnswers (one of the proprietary hosted services rented out by Springshare, the most well known of which is LibGuides). I will look at how I can adapt STAPLR to use its API.

Colombia has been present in the celebration of Open Data Day with participation in different events in various cities for several years. From the OpenStreetMap-OSM Colombia community, we have found in this date a space to invite citizens to become new contributors to the map. Events with different approaches have been held in the past with such focus. Sometimes, the planning, organisation and subsequent realisation could require a lot of work on the part of the volunteers, and sometimes the retribution of doing an event with a good audience was not appropriate, which generated a bit of disinterest in retrying it the following year. To avoid that, this year the OSM community decided to join forces and make a bigger event in Colombia, holding the same activity in different cities.

The community of YouthMappers of the National University of Medellin – SAGEMA has been working on OpenStreetMap with topics associated with forestry engineering. One of the works that integrated SAGEMA students with the OSM mapping community was the mapping of trees on the university campus. This activity included not only locating the tree but also taking some field measurements and identifying the species. All this work has involved both groups, and the result has been very satisfactory.

As the young people from the YouthMappers chapters have started to play an important role in the OSM community, as they have integrated very well and have taken the lead in several areas, it was proposed to do a parallel event for the ODD in Medellín and Bogotá. For this, it was decided to do the tree mapping activity, as it could be simplified and divided by removing some of the complexity of the technicality of not only mapping OpenStreetMap, but also the identification of trees, and in this way be able to attract a wider audience. It should be noted that this also fitted perfectly with the ODD 2024 guidelines, which sought to align activities with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

The entire organisation was done remotely, relying on tools from the OSM LatAm community, such as the HedgeDoc pad, which is a collaborative tool for writing documents. Everything was coordinated in this space, as well as designing the invitation to the community to attend the events.

As tree mapping is a long and complex task, and taking into account that those attending the event probably did not know about mapping, trees or open data, it was decided to divide the whole event into 3 parts:

1. In the first part, the whole community was invited to attend in person to an area to collect tree data. In this space, we wanted to talk about open data, OpenStreetMap, and licenses, and we invited them to install the StreetComplete application, which greatly simplifies mapping, as well as allowing them to take photos and write data in notes. This tool was appropriate for this stage as we needed to take some data on the ground, such as height and trunk diameter at breast height. We decided that the best way to collect the data was with OSM notes, rather than having them map directly with the phone, as this requires explaining the concepts of node, way, tags, changeset, and all these particularities of OSM could detract from the objective of the event and confuse the attendees.
2. In the second part, we turned OSM notes into points on the map, with a basic tree tag. In this part, mappers were invited who knew the OSM note resolution process, and thus could quickly get the basic information on the map.
3. The last part consisted of identifying the species and adding the appropriate labels, with the help of experts on the subject of trees. This part, as well as the second, was decided to be done virtually, as the activities carried out lend themselves to mapping from the computer.

As all this was prepared, the dialogue continued through the communication channels of the Colombian community, and it was in this way that members from other cities became interested in participating. So we went from 2 cities to having the event in 6 cities in parallel: Medellín, Bogotá, Yopal, Duitama, Villavicencio and Granada. This was achieved mainly because the burden of planning and organising the event was distributed so that each volunteer could focus on the realisation of the event in his or her city. What’s more, the different organisers came up with different ways to reach out to their communities, and in Yopal even the mayor’s office invited people to the event on their social networks.

On the day of the event, there was a cumulative attendance of more than 80 people across Colombia, with approximately 30 people in Yopal, and 20 in Villavicencio. This exceeded our expectations, as these events for the organisers in those cities could be complex to articulate the activity with so many attendees. Explaining open data, showing OpenStreetMap, helping with the installation, guiding the tree survey process, and creating notes. But on the other hand, this reflects the interest of citizens to recognise their terrain and contribute to its improvement.

Anyway, the first part of the event, which was the most important part because open data was collected on the ground, had very good results. More than 500 notes were created all over Colombia, which is equivalent to 500 trees inventoried; more than 1200 photos of trees were captured.

As the other two parts required virtual computer work, attendance was much lower, but those who attended understood the potential of how this data collected in the field would be aggregated in the OSM database, and how it could then be used for different analyses. However, due to the large numbers captured in the field in the first stage, we were not able to complete the work in the virtual sessions, and this data will remain for the OSM volunteers who continuously resolve notes in Colombia.

In conclusion, we can say that the results of this event exceeded our expectations, but this success was achieved by the integration of the community. In addition, it was integrated with activities that are already carried out within the community, such as tree data collection and note resolution, so the ODD was an event to attract new contributors and to spread the importance of open data. Finally, as we continually do these activities, attendees have participated in other events and have become interested in OSM, open data, and how they can contribute to the community.

About Open Data Day

Open Data Day (ODD) is an annual celebration of open data all over the world. Groups from many countries create local events on the day where they will use open data in their communities.

As a way to increase the representation of different cultures, since 2023 we offer the opportunity for organisations to host an Open Data Day event on the best date within a one-week period. In 2024, a total of 287 events happened all over the world between March 2nd-8th, in 60+ countries using 15 different languages.

All outputs are open for everyone to use and re-use.

In 2024, Open Data Day was also a part of the HOT OpenSummit ’23-24 initiative, a creative programme of global event collaborations that leverages experience, passion and connection to drive strong networks and collective action across the humanitarian open mapping movement

For more information, you can reach out to the Open Knowledge Foundation team by emailing opendataday@okfn.org. You can also join the Open Data Day Google Group to ask for advice or share tips and get connected with others.

I like how the fourth Noble Truth is just a pointer to to the Noble Eightfold Path, and the eighth division of the Eightfold Path is a pointer to the practice of meditation (dhyāna).

Hypermedia yo.

Hybrid search combines keyword precision with the contextual understanding of semantic search for superior search results. Learn how it works and its benefits.

The post What Is Hybrid Search? appeared first on Lucidworks.

This month’s DLF group events:

DLF Project Managers Group – Digital Repository Management and Ownership with Kim Leaman

Friday, May 17, 1pm ET / 10am PT; Register in advance

Kim will give an introductory overview with examples of her role as a Product Owner and how she fits into the workflows and expectations of the Digital Library Services (DLS) team and their stakeholders. 

About the speaker: Kim Leaman is a Library IT Project Manager who focuses primarily on Princeton University Library’s (PUL) digital projects and initiatives. She collaborates with staff members from various departments to meet the needs and manage the expectations of Princeton’s internal and external stakeholders. Kim is also a Product Owner for PUL’s digital repository and curated collections platform (Digital PUL).

The post DLF Digest: May 2024 appeared first on DLF.

Creative Commons, Open Knowledge Foundation, Open Future, and Wikimedia Europe are hosting a day-long side event to Wikimania 2024. The event will take place in Katowice, Poland, on 6 August 2024, the day before Wikimania kicks off on 7 August 2024. 

Wikimania 2024 is the biggest meeting of open movement activists and organizations this year. It offers a rare occasion for activists to meet in person. We are making use of this opportunity to bring together those working in the field of Openness, Free Knowledge, and the Digital Commons to talk about shared advocacy strategies: the political challenges of Knowledge Commons. We are counting on the participation of people already planning to attend Wikimania, and those who will come especially to attend our side event. We are expecting around 70 people to join our event. 

Our goal is to establish relationships needed to design a shared advocacy vision that over time can result in stronger, collaborative advocacy work. To this end, the event will focus on three topics:

1. Legal and Policy issues
2. Communication and Global Campaigns
3. Community activation and Sustainability

Are you planning to attend Wikimania and interested in joining us for this event? Please let us know.

There are few opportunities to bring together the movement’s most engaged participants and discuss shared strategies for advocacy and ways of moving forward together. Wikimania’s 2024 motto is “Collaboration of the Open.” Our one-day side event to Wikimania is an opportunity to bring this motto to life.

The Council on Library and Information Resources is pleased to announce that the program is now available for the in-person Digital Library Federation’s (DLF) Forum happening at Michigan State University in East Lansing, MI, July 29-31, 2024.

The program for the in-person event is available here.

We are also pleased to announce our featured speakers, Kathleen Fitzpatrick and Germaine Halegoua. Meet our featured speakers and read about their talks.

The DLF Forum welcomes digital library, archives, and museum practitioners from member institutions and beyond—for whom it serves as a meeting place, marketplace, and congress. Here, the DLF community celebrates successes, learns from mistakes, sets grassroots agendas, and organizes for action. Learn more about the event. Limited general registration for our in-person event opens soon!

Also, reminder that the Call for Proposals for our virtual DLF Forum event happening this October is open through May 15. Learn more and submit here. 

Subscribe to our newsletter to be sure to hear all the Forum news first.

The post 2024 In-Person DLF Forum Program Now Available appeared first on DLF.

(I'm blogging my journey to the 2024 New York Marathon. You can help me get there.)

 It wasn't the 10 seconds that made me into a runner.

I started running races again 20 years ago, in 2004. It was a 10K sponsored by my town's YMCA.  I had run an occasional race in grad school to join my housemates; and I continued to run a couple of miles pretty regularly to add some exercise to my mostly sitting-at-a-computer lifestyle. I gradually added 10Ks - the local "turkey-trot"  because the course went almost by my house - and then a "cherry-blossom" run, through beautiful Branch Brook Park. But I was not yet a real runner - tennis was my main sport.

In 2016, things changed. My wife was traveling a lot for work, and one son was away at college, and I found myself needing more social interaction. I saw that my local Y was offering a training program for their annual 10K, and I thought I would try it out. I had never trained for a race, ever. The closest thing to training I had ever done was the soccer team in high school. But there was a HUGE sacrifice involved - the class started at 8AM on Saturdays, and I was notorious for sleeping past noon on Saturdays! Surprise, surprise, I loved it. It was fun to have people to run with. I'm on the silent side, and it was a pleasure to be with people who were comfortable with the  somewhat taciturn real me.

I trained really hard with that group. I did longer runs than I'd ever done, and it felt great. So by race day, I felt sure that I would smash my PR (not counting the races in my 20's!). I was counting on cutting a couple of minutes off my time. And I did it! But only by a measly 10 seconds. I was so disappointed.

But somehow I had become a runner! It was running with a group that made me a runner. I began to seek out running groups and became somewhat of a running social butterfly.

Fast-forward to five weeks ago, when I was doing a 10-miler with a group of running friends (A 10 miler for me, they were doing longer runs in training for a marathon). I had told them of my decision to do New York this fall, and they were soooo supportive. I  signed up for a half marathon to be held on April 27th  - many of my friends were training for the associated full marathon. The last 2 miles were really rough for me (maybe because my shoes were newish??) and I staggered home. That afternoon I could hardly walk and I realized I had strained my right knee. Running was suddenly excruciatingly painful.

By the next day I could get down the stairs and walk with a limp, but running was impossible. The next weekend, I was able to do a slow jog with some pain, so I decided to stick to walking, which was mostly pain-free. I saw a PT who advised me to build up slowly and get plenty of rest. It was working until the next weekend, when I was hurrying to catch a train and unthinkingly took a double step in Penn Station and re-sprained the knee. It was worse than before and I had only 3 weeks until the half marathon!

The past three weeks have been the hardest thing I've had to deal with in my running "career". I've had a calf strain, T-band strains, back strains, sore quads, inter-tarsal neuromas and COVID get in the way of running, but this was the worst. Because of my impatience.

Run-walk (and my running buddies) were what saved me. I slowly worked my way from 2 miles at a 0.05-to-0.25 mile run-to-walk ratio up to 4 miles at 0.2-to-0.05 mile run-to-walk, with 2 days of rest between each session. I started my half marathon with a plan to run 2 mimutes and walk 30 seconds until the knee told me to stop the running bits. I was hoping for a 3 hour half.

The knee never complained (the rest of the body complained, but I'm used to that!!) I finished with the very respectable time of 2:31:28, faster than 2 of my previous 11 half marathons. One of my friends took a video of me staggering over the finish. 

 I'm very sure I don't look like that in real life.

Here's our group picture, marathoners and half-marathoners. Together, we're real runners.

After this weekend, my biggest half marathon challenge to date, I have more confidence than ever that I'll be able to do the New York Marathon in November - in one piece - with Team Amref. (And with your contributions towards my fund-raising goal, as well.)

We're gonna get to that place where we really wanna go and we'll walk in the sun

Jim Thorpe Half Marathon 2024 results. 

The Digital Library Federation (DLF) cordially invites libraries, museums, cultural heritage organizations, and academic institutions (or a combination of collaborating organizations) to submit expressions of interest in hosting the in-person 2025 DLF Forum. 

The DLF Forum is a multi-day immersive experience dedicated to learning, networking, and skill-building. Having evolved since its inception in 1999, the Forum has traditionally been hosted in hotel venues. Embracing deliberate, experimental change in conference structure after participant feedback, we are excited to announce our intention to hold the event at a cultural heritage or academic organization in 2025, following the 2024 event at Michigan State University (Summer 2024) and online (Fall 2024). 

We are open to hosting the event anytime between late spring and the end of fall 2025, before the holiday season. Prospective hosts should be located in the United States or Canada. 

DLF will oversee the coordination of the volunteer Planning Committee and conference logistics, assuming fiscal responsibility for the event. Host sites are expected to provide 2-3 designated lead staff members to offer location-specific support as outlined below. Additionally, hosts will be responsible for covering indirect costs. We welcome submissions for any capacity over 200 attendees. 

Evaluation of applicants will be based on their capacity to fulfill these requirements, as well as considerations such as venue space, food and beverage options, local lodging, and transportation options. We welcome collaborative applications from multiple organizations.

Hosting a national conference like the DLF Forum can offer numerous benefits for a cultural heritage or academic organization. Some key advantages include: 

• Increased visibility. Hosting a well-known national conference provides an opportunity to showcase your organization’s facilities, capabilities, and expertise to a wide audience of professionals, potentially leading to new partnerships, collaborations, and opportunities. 
• Networking opportunities. Hosting a national conference facilitates networking with professionals from diverse backgrounds and geographical locations. 
• Enhanced reputation. Hosting a successful conference demonstrates the hosting organization’s leadership, organizational skills, and commitment to advancing the field. 
• Community engagement. Hosting a national conference can foster community engagement by involving local collaborators, such as businesses, academic institutions, government agencies, and community organizations. 
• Economic impact. Hosting a conference can have a positive economic impact on the local community, generating revenue for local businesses, hotels, restaurants, and other service providers. 
• Professional development opportunities. Hosting a conference provides opportunities for staff members of the hosting organization to gain valuable experience in event planning, project management, and leadership roles. 
• Knowledge sharing and learning. Hosting a conference allows the organization to contribute to the advancement of knowledge and best practices in its field. 

We eagerly anticipate receiving your proposals to make the 2025 DLF Forum a memorable and enriching experience for all attendees. 

Host Requirements and Roles 

If your organization does not meet all of the desired requirements but is interested in the possibility of hosting the DLF Forum, we’d still love to hear from you! Please feel free to apply anyway. If you’d like to discuss the feasibility of hosting this event at your organization before applying, please reach out to Team DLF at forum@diglib.org. We welcome collaborative applications from multiple organizations.

Meeting Space 

• All meeting, meals, and reception spaces should be ADA-compliant. 
• Space for 1-2 plenary (general) sessions that can accommodate 200-500 attendees each time, including a stage, projector, and AV equipment, preferably theater style or organized in table rounds. In-house livestreaming or the ability to bring in an outside vendor is a plus.
• Spaces for concurrent program sessions over 2 days that can accommodate 200-500 people across 5-7 spaces in various room formats, such as theater and classroom, and include appropriate AV capabilities. 
• Desired, but not required: Space for a reception that can accommodate all attendees and includes some seating and/or standing table options. 
• Spaces for breaks and meals that are in a central location and easily accessible. If on a university campus, access to dining halls would suffice.
• If lunch will not be provided, restaurants and other food options should be located within close walking distance of the conference venue. 
• Space near plenary and concurrent sessions for registration setup for Team DLF and local volunteers to check in registered attendees, provide information, and display sponsor signage. 
• Space and tables for sponsors (up to 7) to exhibit during the event, preferably in spaces where breaks and/or meals take place. Many sponsors bring their own signage as well. 

Food and Beverage

• Local catering options (onsite catering, campus dining hall, local restaurants or catering businesses, etc.) should be able to meet a wide variety of dietary needs. 

Technical Requirements

• Robust wi-fi for conference participants. 
• Tech support is available during the event to help address any issues in plenary or breakout rooms.
• Support for presenters to use their own laptops, possibly including access to necessary connecting cables. 
• For the plenary session room: a projector with a large screen; microphones for speakers and audience Q&A; and the in-house ability to provide live streaming and recording of speakers and slides, OR the ability for DLF to contract services with an outside provider.
• For breakout rooms: a projector with a screen; one microphone for speakers; one microphone for audience Q&A.

Lodging 

• The host site should have a variety of hotels within 2 miles. Public transportation between hotels and venues is a plus.
• Not required, but desired: If the host site is an academic institution, lodging would be made available on campus in dorm rooms (to be paid for by participants). 

Transportation

• The venue is in close/reasonable proximity to a major airport (within 90 minutes). 
• Public transportation options and/or shuttles are available to/from the airport. 
• Public transportation options around campus (if an academic institution) and/or around the city/town.

Host Staff Roles 

• The host provides 2-3 primary contacts for the conference who meet with Team DLF regularly, serve on the Planning Committee, and provide knowledge and help make local arrangements like reserving session rooms. 
• The primary contacts are also the onsite point people for local issues for the duration of the conference. 
• The primary contacts are also able to connect the planning team with relevant other departments, such as marketing/communications, room bookings, etc.

Costs and Expenses 

• DLF covers the cost of running the conference, including catering. 
• DLF manages all sponsorships. 
• The host site provides complimentary access to general sessions and meeting rooms as well as basic AV and wi-fi in those spaces.
• Host sites will be expected to cover indirect costs. 

If your organization does not meet all of the desired requirements but is interested in the possibility of hosting the DLF Forum, we’d still love to hear from you! Please feel free to apply anyway. If you’d like to discuss the feasibility of hosting this event at your organization before applying, please reach out to Team DLF at forum@diglib.org. 

Application 

Please apply through this form.

Sample Conference Schedule 

Day 1 

Welcome Reception (evening event)

Attracts almost all registered attendees. Could be sponsored by our Platinum partner and requires a table for this one sponsor only. 

Day 2, 9:00am-5:00pm

Plenary Session: Opening plenary event for all registered attendees. Consists of information from Team DLF and a speaker or panel. 

AM Coffee Break

Sessions: 6 concurrent sessions 

Lunch Break 

Sessions: 6 concurrent sessions

PM Coffee Break 

Networking event 

Day 3, 9:00am-5:00pm

Sessions: 6 concurrent sessions

(15 minute transition) 

Sessions: 6 concurrent sessions 

AM Coffee Break 

Networking event 

Lunch Break 

Sessions: 6 concurrent sessions

PM Coffee break 

Closing plenary: Closing plenary for all registered attendees. Consists of closing information from Team DLF and a speaker or panel. 

The post Call for Host of the 2025 DLF Forum appeared first on DLF.

A colleague in Slack (thanks Snowden) shared that the Coalition for Networked Information recently had a good session on Copyright and AI for librarians. It was run by Jonathan Band, who is an attorney for the Library Copyright Alliance, and Timothy Vollmer who does scholarly communications at Berkeley. The presentation is an hour long and worth watching, or listening to as you do something else, like walking your dog…as you do.

Below are the brief notes I jotted down afterwards.

Band helpfully pointed out that discussions about AI and copyright often center on the question of whether fair use applies, and that these discussions often tangle up three separate issues that are useful to think about on their own.

1. Can ingestion for training AI constitute infringement?
2. Can AI output infringe?
3. Is AI output copyrightable?

For ingestion (1) it seems like the EU Copyright law and the new AI Act will (like the GDPR) have a lot of sway elsewhere around the world since businesses will want to operate their AI services in Europe.

AI companies will be required to disclose what content they used to build their models, and also to provide a way for publishers to opt out (e.g. robots.txt or newly developing standards) from having their content used to train generative AI models. There are also provisions in EU Copyright that protect non-commercial ingestion of copyrighted material.

However even if these legal instruments help shape how generative AI services get deployed, a law on the books in the EU can’t be used in a court case outside of the EU?

For 2 it seems like things are largely up in the air, and that the [NYTimes v Microsoft] case is something to watch, since they are arguing that OpenAI’s ChatGPT can generate near verbatim text from their copyrighted materials. Unlike other quasi AI tools (e.g. Google Search) ChatGPT doesn’t link to cited material (because it doesn’t know how to), which negatively impacts web publishers like the NYTimes since it deprives them of clicks (and revenue).

There are multiple other court cases testing the waters around 2, and apparently the same law firm seems to be representing many of them?

As for 3, the US Copyright Office has a report coming out later this year, but it’s likely that it will present the factors to consider, without providing explicit guidance. So questions about whether AI generated content can be copyrighted, and by who (the creators of the tool, the creator of the prompt, etc) will likely be decided in court cases. Band didn’t mention if there are any of these pending.

There was also some interesting points shared by Timothy Vollmer nearer the end about vendors who are making libraries sign contracts that prevent library patrons from ingesting content for research purposes, which is something that the EU Copyright explicitly allows. He had some good suggestions for how to push back on these by demanding alternate language in these contracts that doesn’t infringe on fair use.

I think some coordination amongst libraries for pushing for consistent legal language here would be helpful in making sure library patrons aren’t negatively impacted, and libraries aren’t held liable for breach of contract in cases where fair use should apply. I’m not sure where that work is happening, but presumably Vollmer would be a good person to reach out to, to find out.

All this prompted me to add a robots.txt file to this website, based on directives I saw in the NYTimes robots.txt. Band said that legal questions about ingestion may hinge on whether a publisher has indicated that they did not want their content used in generative AI tools. I don’t realistically expect to be suing any of these companies, but I decided to do it in solidarity because I’m pretty skeptical of this generative AI technology.

I’m really interested to hear if we get more declarative ways of controlling whether content is used for generative AI instead of bluntly blocking particular bots by User-Agent. Some companies may want to crawl a page once and repurpose content for different things (search index, llm, etc) without requiring multiple fetches from the multiple bots. I wonder what will happen over at the IETF in this area? The use of robots.txt has proven problematic for use cases around web archiving (crawl and replay) in the past, so a fresh approach would be helpful I think.

The following post is one in a regular series on issues of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility, compiled by a team of OCLC contributors.

Libraries Northern Ireland defends stocking LGBTQ+ children’s books following complaints 

_{Photo by Teslariu Mihai on Unsplash}

On 2 April 2024, the Gay Community News website, which is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, reported that the Chief Executive of Libraries NI (Northern Ireland) and the chairperson of the Library Board released a statement to defend the presence of LGBTQ+ children’s books in their collection. In the statement, they argued that libraries should “meet the needs of the entire community” by providing “a range of library materials and resources reflecting the diversity of the population and library customers.” The statement comes after Communities Minister Gordon Lyons requested a meeting with the Libraries NI chiefs to discuss the children’s books dealing with LGBTQ+ themes available in their library branches. Minister Lyons said that having these books as part of the collection was “concerning,” adding that “parents should not need to worry” about whether the titles their kids can find in the libraries are age-appropriate or not. Sinn Fein Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) Colm Gildernew accused Lyons and others of “an unwarranted and disgraceful attack on an entire section of our children.” 

Public libraries everywhere are being forced to debate the importance of maintaining collections that represent diverse communities. It is very important that we continue to support those libraries that provide inclusive materials for their users. Contributed by Morris Levy. 

Creating inclusive spaces in cultural heritage institutions with AI 

Dr. Piper Hutson of Lindenwood University (OCLC Symbol: MOQ) discusses how artificial intelligence (AI) can help cultural heritage spaces can provide more cognitive inclusion in her webinar “Inclusive Design in Cultural Heritage: Embracing Sensory Processing and Neurodiversity.” The webinar (presented live on 8 April 2024) is available as a recording on the Balboa Park Online Collaborative YouTube channel. Hutson’s design considerations for neurodiversity include wayfinding that is interactive and multi-sensory so that users are not dependent on finding and interpreting signs and maps posted in the museum. AI chatbots can cater to sensory profiles by providing personalized recommendations for visiting museums and reduce anxiety by giving visitors information about less crowded times and sensory spots ahead of time. [A preview of this webinar was covered in the 2 April edition of Advancing IDEAs.] 

Hutson’s research on cognitive inclusion in museums may be applicable to libraries. Visiting a library today can be an overwhelming experience for a person with sensory processing issues. Although we think of libraries as quiet spaces, they are often not. Sound and visual stimuli can be overwhelming for neurodivergent people, and sources of these stimuli in libraries include public programs, computers, and copy machines. The same AI technology that helps neurodiverse people navigate museums can help them navigate libraries. The current literature about using AI in libraries seems focused on improving technical services workflows and academic honesty, both of which are important. Given the importance of the library as a public space, we will also consider using AI to improve the library space for neurodivergent users. Contributed by Kate James. 

Support for menopause in the workforce 

Although librarianship is a predominantly female profession, even in 2024 men still hold a disproportionate number of leadership roles.  Librarian Bobbi L. Newman, who writes the award-winning blog “Librarian by Day,” posits that one reason for that discrepancy could be “The challenges associated with menopause, such as the need for flexible work arrangements and the stigma and stereotypes associated with menopause, [which] may affect women’s career paths or opportunities for advancement within the field.”  Newman’s post, “Supporting Menopause in Libraries for Workplace Wellbeing,” was prompted by a 9 April 2024, BBC report by Megan Tatum entitled “Without support, many menopausal workers are quitting their jobs.”  Tatum cites the impact of menopause, as well as the premenopausal transition known as perimenopause, on workers, especially within the male-dominated world of work.  As Newman puts it, “After all, the workplace is not supportive of childbirth, post-childbirth physical or emotional issues, or childrearing; why would it be supportive of menopausal issues? And, of course, there is the real risk that disclosing menopause symptoms could increase age and gender-related discrimination at work.” 

Newman makes common sense suggestions for supporting library workers who are experiencing perimenopause and menopause, all of which dovetail with practices that responsible institutions will already have in place (or under development) for improving productivity, enhancing worker health and well-being, promoting inclusivity and equity, and increasing worker retention.  An explicit recognition of menopause as a wellness issue can make the library workplace more welcoming and comfortable for everyone. Contributed by Jay Weitz. 

The post Advancing IDEAs: Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, 30 April 2024 appeared first on Hanging Together.

On March 3rd and 4th, the Centre for AI/ML at MDI Gurgaon hosted a ground-breaking Open Data Day event featuring a hands-on “NoCode-LowCode GeoAI Workshop for Sustainable Climate Action.” This immersive offline event brought together over 50 enthusiasts from various backgrounds to explore the potential of AI/ML tools in driving meaningful change.

The workshop kicked off with an introduction to the concepts of NoCode/LowCode tools for analysis and visualization. Participants then dove into the world of Python programming using Google Colab, learning the basics and mastering data fetching techniques. They discovered how to harness the power of APIs, such as climate data APIs like OpenWeatherMap and yahoo finance api, to gather real-world insights related to climate action and climate finance.

Next, attendees learned how to clean and wrangle data. They gained hands-on experience in fixing data types, removing inconsistencies, and shaping data for visualization. This prepared them for the exciting world of data visualization.

In the final hour, participants brought their data to life through captivating visualizations. They learned how to create basic charts, graphs, and interactive dashboards that tell compelling stories about climate action. Advanced techniques like calculated fields and storytelling with data were also covered.

Throughout the workshop, attendees had the opportunity to apply their newfound skills to real-world examples related to climate action. They explored GeoAI analysis and combined it with environmental data to uncover actionable insights.

The event concluded with a discussion on best practices for sharing the code and/or visualizations to inspire change. MDI Gurgaon’s Open Data Day event showcased the transformative potential of NoCode-LowCode GeoAI tools in driving sustainable climate action. By equipping individuals with these skills, we can unlock the power of data and visualization to create a greener, more resilient future for all. The event was made possible by a generous grant from Jokkolabs Banjul, Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN), Open Knowledge Germany, Datopian and Link Digital.

About Open Data Day

Open Data Day (ODD) is an annual celebration of open data all over the world. Groups from many countries create local events on the day where they will use open data in their communities.

As a way to increase the representation of different cultures, since 2023 we offer the opportunity for organisations to host an Open Data Day event on the best date within a one-week period. In 2024, a total of 287 events happened all over the world between March 2nd-8th, in 60+ countries using 15 different languages.

All outputs are open for everyone to use and re-use.

In 2024, Open Data Day was also a part of the HOT OpenSummit ’23-24 initiative, a creative programme of global event collaborations that leverages experience, passion and connection to drive strong networks and collective action across the humanitarian open mapping movement

For more information, you can reach out to the Open Knowledge Foundation team by emailing opendataday@okfn.org. You can also join the Open Data Day Google Group to ask for advice or share tips and get connected with others.

Text originally published at OKFN Greece Blog.

On 15 April, Věra Jourová, European Commission Vice-President for Values and Transparency, visited Greece as part of her Democracy Tour. During this tour, the Vice-President travelled to several European capitals to exchange views with stakeholders on how to better protect the information space in light of the upcoming European elections and the European Commission’s recent democracy package.

During the Vice President’s visit to Athens, a round table discussion on the fight against misinformation and the protection of the information sphere was organised on Monday 15 April at the offices of the European Commission Representation in Greece, with the participation of Mr. Charalambos Bratisas, Assistant Professor of the Department of Computer Engineering and Electronic Systems of the International University of Greece and President of Open Knowledge Foundation Greece.

The roundtable was attended by representatives of the agencies responsible for implementing the Digital Services Act and the Media Freedom Act to counter foreign propaganda. These were Professor Charalambos Bratsas (Open Knowledge Foundation Greece), Mr Nikos Sarris (MedDMO), Ms Anna Kandylla and Ms Evangelia Psychogopoulou (ELIAMEP), Professor Pantelis Vatikiotis and Professor Betty Tsakarestou (Panteion University), Professor Kostas Mourlas (University of Athens), Dr Yannis Kliafas (Athens Technology Centre), Konstantinos Karantzalos (Secretary for Telecommunications at the Ministry of Digital Governance), and journalists Stelios Pournis (Ellinika Hoaxes), Andronikos Koutroubelis (Fact Review), and Elias Nikolaidis (DiaNEOsis).

At this meeting, Prof Bratsas highlighted the crucial role of open data in the fight against misinformation. “By providing transparent and verifiable data, we can increase the credibility of information and more effectively address the challenges of misinformation,” he said.

Prof Bratsas also stressed the importance of creating tools and platforms that allow for easy and quick verification of the accuracy and authenticity of information. “In this way,” he said, “we can ensure that citizens have access to reliable and objective information while protecting public debate from the influence of misinformation.”

He also underlined the need for cooperation between Open Knowledge Foundation and the European Commission’s Committee on Values and Transparency. He stressed the importance of using open data to promote transparency and accountability and to counter misinformation. Finally, he expressed the desire to work together and exchange ideas on how to harness the potential of open data for the benefit of public trust and democracy.

As announced in January, this year the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) team is working to develop a stable version of the Open Data Editor (ODE) application. Thanks to financial support from the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, we will be able to create a no-code tool for data manipulation and publishing that is accessible to everyone, unlocking the power of data for key groups including scientists, journalists and data activists. (Read more about the Open Data Editor).

[Disclaimer: Open Data Editor is currently available for download and testing in beta. We are working on a stable version. Updates will be announced throughout the year. Learn more here.]

The Open Data Editor is built on top of Frictionless Data specifications and software, and is an example of a simple, open-by-design alternative to the complex software offered by the Big Tech industry. Developing this type of technology is part of our current strategic focus on promoting and supporting the development of open digital public infrastructure that is accessible to all.

As part of this, we want to open up this process in a series of blogs, sharing with the community and those interested in the world of open data how each stage of the creation of this software is developing.

Since the beginning of the year, we’ve been working on building the ODE team and conducting the first phase of user research. We have interviewed 10 people so far, covering different user profiles such as journalists, people working in NGOs and the private sector, and data practitioners in general. Our vision of technology is centred on simplicity and people. We want to encourage real uses of really useful software. 

Here’s what we are learning along the way when it comes to user research:

• Practice being a good listener. Being part of the open data community in LatAm, many of the problems people described to me during the interviews were the same ones I face every day. The interviews tested my ability to listen more and talk less  

• Paper and pencil. Even if you are recording the interview, make sure you have paper and pencil to write down important things that people might say after you have finished recording.

• Think about your own biases. At OKFN we set a clear timeframe for the user interviews. For the first phase, we decided to start with people we knew from our open data network, based on clear data profiles. Most of them were women (7) and all of them were born in the Global South (Latin America), although some of them work in non-regional positions or the Global North. I disclosed this bias to the team and as the project progresses, I will ensure that I enrich the user research with people from other regions.

• Iterate between documentation, user research and the team you are working with. After your user research, revisit the tool’s documentation. This is always a good exercise. You will discover other key elements that you thought were not there before. Also, when trying to understand the technical elements of the project, ask more than one person in your team to explain to you “how this thing works”. I’m sure you’ll get different answers and they’ll be complementary  

• You don’t have to transcribe everything: group the results of interviews by topic to see patterns clearly. Before interviewing people, try to think about the issues you want to address with your questions. Then label the answers so that you can easily see patterns.

If you want to get more closely involved with the development of the Open Data Editor application, you can express your interest in joining one of the testing sessions by filling this form.

You can also email us at info@okfn.org, follow the GitHub repository or join the Frictionless Data community. We meet once a month.

Smile is a very engaging novel. It is the most popular of Raina Telgemeier&aposs works, if measured by Amazon sales. I bought it last year, prompted by the enormously successful exhibition about her work at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum at The Ohio State University.

The graphic novel version came out just too late to be a big part of our own children&aposs reading, so I was not familiar with it before.

It is based on the author&aposs own experience of damaging two front teeth in sixth grade, and the emotional, practical and social consequences that followed.

I liked the wit and the clever illustration. I liked how it spoke to the ramifications of such an event through so much of life at an important time in growing up. I have been interested to read a little about its web-comic origins as well as the general impact.

However, most of all, it resonated strongly with my own experiences, and caused me to reflect on those.

I broke a front tooth when I was about 10. We were streaming out of school on the last day of term when the boy in front of me suddenly turned; my upper teeth crashed into his forehead.

I remember the prolonged treatment to try and save the tooth as it became infected. I traveled many times on the bus with my mother to the dental clinic in the city centre, near the looming large and grey Christ Church Cathedral. The clinic was a cold, institutional building.

However, I ended up losing three of my front teeth as the infection spread. I was fitted with a dental plate, which over the years would break from time to time. It also fit progressively less well as I got older, and sometimes in class, I would realise I was moving the teeth in and out with the suction of my tongue on the plate.

I had to take the false teeth out for sports, and it was before people wore mouth guards. In retrospect, I was lucky not to have one of the teeth on either side of the gap knocked out on the rugby field. Swimming was definitely safer. I was not, I confess, a natural athlete, but having to play without front teeth further dampened my desire to participate. In general people were kind, although I was occasionally called Dracula.

Years later, I had what seemed like an overly prominent bridge fitted when I worked for a year in a rubber factory in Germany. When the dentists saw the denture, they were amused and disbelieving that I still wore something so old and by now ill-fitting. Years later again, I had a new less prominent bridge fitted when living and working in the UK. And then when I came to the US, I needed something of an overhaul as the teeth holding the bridge were replaced by implants and I got another bridge.

Yes, with this and other things I have spent a lot of time in the dentist, and a lot of money. Rather more, maybe, than the character in Smile.

I believe the experience shaped me in various ways. It certainly made me self-conscious about smiling, which played into more general social interactions, conspiring with a natural shyness to make me sometimes seem aloof. And I do not like posing for photographs, as smiling on demand does not come naturally.

I was drawn to the way in which psychological and emotional consequences were explored in Smile. I admired the wit with how the story was told and illustrated. However, my normal critical responses were largely suspended as I was transported back into my own at once similar and very different experience.

Picture: Part of the cover of my copy of Smile.

Open Tech Community celebrated Open Data Week 2024 with the Open Datathon event. As a pre-event, orientation events were organized through various colleges in Kathmandu with student clubs of the college. The pre-event collective reached approximately 500 students across institutions, the Open Datathon aims to promote open technologies, encourage the use of open data, and share insights about the upcoming Open Data Week 2024.

College Collaborators for Open Data Week 2024 (ODW24) pre-events

The goal of the pre-events were to orient the students of colleges to understand the concept of Open Technologies and gain the technical aspect of Open Data which would ease them in participating in the OWD24. Also, these events would bring new and fresh open data enthusiasts to the Open Data Community.

As student clubs were the target of the ODW24, the pre-event was supported by:

1. Pre-event at Virinchi College
Located at the Lalitpur city of Kathmandu district we did this event on February 25.

2. Pre-event at Texas International College
Located in Kathmandu city we did this event on February 26.

3. Pre-event at Institute of Crisis Management Studies, Samarpan Academy
Located in Kathmandu city we did this event on February 27.

4. Medhavi College
Located in Kathmandu city, we did this event on February 28.

5. St. Xavier’s College
Located in Kathmandu city, we did this event on February 29.

6. Amrit Campus
Located in Kathmandu city, we did this event on February 29.

Each college plays a vital role to create a vibrant environment for students to learn and explore on open technologies and open data.

Social Media Buzz

We used Open Tech Community’s Facebook page and twitter page as our social media outlets of the events and activities:

• Facebook: facebook.com/opentechcommunity
• Twitter: twitter.com/OpenTechNP
• YouTube: youtube.com/@opentechcommunity

Main Event – Open Data Week 2024, Open Datathon

• Event Title: Open Data for Green and Circular Economy
• SDG Focus: Sustainable Cities and Communities
• Date: March 02 – March 07

The main event is set to explore the potential of open data in promoting sustainable practices, with a specific focus on Sustainable Cities and Communities. This aligns with the broader global effort to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

We open up an online application form for participants to submit their idea and selected 7 teams from the submitted idea:

• Dumba: Easing in public transportation
• Impact Minds: Finding accommodation easily
• TechBug: Improve local bus transportation
• Team Infinite: Community driven farming
• Nyano Nano: Managing parking spaces
• Team ICMS: City pollution analysis
• Glocal: Recycling city and community waste

Local Community Partners as Mentors

To support the participants of Datathon to build their idea we take support of esteemed local community partners to mentor participants. These include

1. Flutter Kathmandu: Damodar Lohani helped the participants on solving problems related to mobile application development.
2. Kathmandu Living Labs: Bhawak Pokhrel helped the participants on solving problems related to building civic technology.
3. Open Knowledge Nepal: James Shrestha helped the participants on solving problems related to the concepts of open data.
4. YouthMapper Nepal: Nishan Aryal helped the participants on solving problems related to the concepts of data used in open source communities and the concept of green and circular economy.
5. Women Leader in Information Technology: Sarila Ngakhusi helped the participants on solving problems related to the concepts of data visualization, web application and business model.
6. Open Tech Community: Pawan Kumar Kandel & Arjun Gautam helped the participants on solving problems related to the concepts of building product.

Event Schedule

The event unfolds in a multi-faceted schedule:

1. First day at the venue
2. Four days of remote mentorship with online sessions
3. Final day back at the venue

First day at the venue

On the first day of the datathon event, teams and mentors gathered to share their ideas. Teams talked about their plans, and mentors gave guidance. When teams got closer to mentors, the mentors helped them understand what they needed to do and what they didn’t need to worry about. It was a day of exchanging ideas and getting helpful advice.

Four days of remote mentorship with online sessions

For the next four days, the event continued online with two sessions each day. In the first session, mentors talked about things that would help teams develop a strong idea. Then, in the second session, participants could ask questions, interact, and share how they were doing with their projects. It was a way for everyone to learn and work together.

Final day back at the venue 

On the last day, participants finished up their ideas and plans for a product that uses open data to solve a problem. They then presented these ideas to the judges. The judges for the day were:

• Nishan Aryal, who is an ambassador for YouthMapper in Asia-Pacific
• Bhawak Pokhrel, a senior mobile engineer at Kathmandu Living Labs
• Arjun Gautam, who is a community organizer for Open Tech Community.

This diverse format allows participants to immerse themselves in the collaborative spirit of the Open Datathon, benefiting from both in-person interactions and remote guidance.

Open Datathon Event

The Open Datathon Event was a dynamic and engaging gathering that fostered collaboration and innovation within the realm of data-driven problem-solving on Green and Circular Economy (SDG 11: Sustainable cities and communities). Participants showcase their ideas and expertise in leveraging data to address real-world challenges related to GCE. The event’s interactive nature between mentors and participants created a vibrant atmosphere where participants actively presented their unique perspectives and potential solutions.

Mascot Release

A symbol of Open Data has always been a search for us in community activities. We released a new Open Data Mascot as a contribution to Open Data communities under Creative Commons license.

The brand-new Open Data Mascot, “DataBuzz Duo” promotes the idea of transparency, collaboration, and the power of data!

As its designer Arjun Gautam says: “DataBuzz Duo” is brought to life by two adorable cartoon bees, presenting the idea of a dynamic spirit of collaboration and teamwork. The background has regular hexagonal shape with text “Open Data”, symbolizing the strength and unity within our Open Data Community.

Winning Team at Open Datathon

Out of the 7 teams that took part, the winning team is “Team Dumba” from Amrit Campus. They stood out because of their amazing product idea called “YetaUta.” This idea is all about making transportation in busy city areas smoother and more efficient.

“Team Dumba” showed everyone how their innovation could really make a difference. They came up with creative ways to improve how people move around in crowded cities. Their outstanding effort and unique approach set them apart from the other teams. This recognition highlights their dedication and clever thinking in solving real-world problems during the Datathon event.

Next Steps for the Winners

For the winning team, “Team Dumba,” the journey doesn’t end with the Datathon victory. We are keen on coordinating their participation in a national-level conference in Kathmandu, offering them a platform to showcase their innovation to a wider audience.

Event Banner, Participants, and Venue Partner

Keep an eye out for the vibrant event banner that encapsulates the essence of the Open Datathon. The diverse pool of participants promises a dynamic exchange of ideas and skills, creating an atmosphere ripe for innovation. A special acknowledgment goes to the venue partner for providing the space and support necessary to make this event a reality.

As the Open Datathon gains momentum, it’s evident that this gathering of minds is not just an event; it’s a step towards a more sustainable and connected future.

Outcome

The Open Datathon event energized our open data community, fostering collaboration and innovation. It engaged 7 diverse teams, promoting sustainable solutions for a greener future. Through mentorship and idea-sharing, participants developed impactful projects, supporting the power of open data in solving real-world challenges. This vibrant gathering not only celebrated creativity but also laid the groundwork for a connected future. A heartfelt thanks to the Open Knowledge Foundation for this opportunity, ensuring that our community remains dynamic and ready to tackle tomorrow’s challenges with the spirit of openness and collaboration.

About Open Data Day

Open Data Day (ODD) is an annual celebration of open data all over the world. Groups from many countries create local events on the day where they will use open data in their communities.

As a way to increase the representation of different cultures, since 2023 we offer the opportunity for organisations to host an Open Data Day event on the best date within a one-week period. In 2024, a total of 287 events happened all over the world between March 2nd-8th, in 60+ countries using 15 different languages.

All outputs are open for everyone to use and re-use.

In 2024, Open Data Day was also a part of the HOT OpenSummit ’23-24 initiative, a creative programme of global event collaborations that leverages experience, passion and connection to drive strong networks and collective action across the humanitarian open mapping movement

For more information, you can reach out to the Open Knowledge Foundation team by emailing opendataday@okfn.org. You can also join the Open Data Day Google Group to ask for advice or share tips and get connected with others.

In Brief

This comprehensive review illuminates the current state of scholarly literature on trans and gender diverse inclusion in libraries, with the intention to provide a foundation and identify gaps for further research. Covering 50 works published between 2002 and 2023 in the areas of general inclusion, public libraries, academic libraries, experiences of library workers, archives, information behavior, and cataloging, we found that, with the exception of works on archives and cataloging, little scholarly literature goes beyond introductory talking points on basic information about trans and gender diverse people. We conclude with a call for much more in-depth research on this essential topic.

by Keahi Adolpho and Stephen G. Krueger

Trans and gender diverse people¹ are present in all areas of library work. We use libraries of all types, as members of the public, as students, as researchers. Though as of this writing the most recent public demographics from the American Library Association do not count us (Rosa & Henke, 2017), we are library workers and volunteers. We are library students and professors. Just as importantly, we are people who are not any of those things, often due to exclusionary practices on the part of library systems, spaces, or individual employees. The harm may not always be intentional; many library workers mean well and simply have not educated themselves on how to eliminate trans-exclusionary practices and institute gender inclusive ones.² This literature review is one tool for supporting that work.

Scope and Purpose

Through our engagement with gender inclusion work since we joined the library profession, we have observed that the majority of the literature consists of trans 101 talking points (e.g. definitions of gender terminology, explanations about the difference between gender identity and sexual or romantic orientation, basic information about pronouns, statistics about violence and other harm enacted upon trans and gender diverse people). While this kind of remedial content is necessary, it merely asks individuals to reduce or avoid harm, rather than imagine possibilities for truly gender inclusive library systems, practices, and spaces. 

This article is an overview of the current state of scholarly literature on gender inclusion in libraries, in order to provide a foundation and identify gaps for further research. The material covered includes journal articles, proceedings from library conferences, book chapters, and full books. It is worth acknowledging that our scope leans more toward the types of literature that academic librarians are more likely to both publish and engage with, rather than public or school librarians. Many—though still not enough—blog posts, magazine articles, webinars, and other materials address the topic, so we do not present this article as an encapsulation of everything library workers have created about gender inclusion.

In order to focus on our topic, as well as to make the project feasible, we placed a number of other restrictions on what is included.

1. Library-centric: There are some works that address the central theme from external perspectives, such as articles about trans and gender diverse information behavior, without being tied back to the library context. Materials of this type were not included, as the intent was to focus on how library workers and scholars are addressing trans and gender diverse topics in the context of library work.
2. Trans and gender diverse-centric: There is a lot of library literature on LGBTQ+³ identities, including but not specific to trans and gender diverse people. While these materials may have some content relevant to the topic and are valuable in their own right, they were not included. The needs and experiences of trans and gender diverse people are not synonymous with those of others under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, though there may be some overlap, and the purpose of this project was to look at materials specifically about trans and gender diverse people in regards to library work. In addition, a great deal of work claiming to cover LGBTQ+ people omits trans and gender diverse people entirely. Pieces about gender that did not center trans and gender diverse people were likewise excluded.

Methodology

We have both been working on gender inclusion in libraries for several years, so we were familiar with a lot of the existing literature already. Long before deciding to write this article, Stephen created a Zotero group for anything on the topic that anyone can add items to. Many of the materials came from citation chasing. We performed a final search of LISTA (Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts) on December 1, 2023, using the search terms (transgender OR transexual OR transsexual OR gender diverse OR nonbinary OR non-binary) AND librar* to make sure we had everything we could find before plunging into analysis. An overall analytical methodology would have been difficult to apply given the variety of types, lengths, and focuses of the materials. For each piece we considered its context and objectives and assessed it accordingly. For example, a brief introductory article would not be expected to go into as much depth as a chapter researching a specific topic. Reviews, newspapers, and works in languages other than English were filtered out. The resulting list had 324 items, most of which fell outside the scope outlined above; we looked through these to find ones that did not. With these search techniques and limitations, we ended up with a total of 50 works, dated from 2002 to 2023.

Literature Review

This review begins with general literature that addresses gender inclusion in libraries broadly. Then, we look at the literature in public libraries and academic libraries. Topically, these two sections cover representation, youth services, recommendations, misinformation, collection development, and task forces. The fourth section reviews literature by and about trans and gender diverse library workers on their experiences in the profession. The fifth section discusses archives, looking specifically at access barriers, description issues, and collections. The next section is on information behavior which includes studies on trans and gender diverse people in order to better understand how libraries can serve these communities. The last section is the most well developed area of gender inclusion work in libraries; it addresses cataloging and metadata, looking specifically at the history of trans and gender diverse subject access, the development of best practices, and Resource Description and Access (RDA) rule 9.7, which instructed catalogers to record gender information in name authority records.

General

A few pieces address gender inclusion in libraries broadly. An essay by Marquez (2014) provided basic definitions, followed by an overview of the current (at the time) literature on trans and gender diverse issues in libraries, discussion of restrooms, and a brief section on other elements of gender inclusion. A conference paper by Pun et al. (2017) profiled all gender restroom situations in different types of libraries, including contextual factors like local and state politics and institution type; the authors recommended that libraries collaborate with community and institutional partners such as gender studies programs or diversity centers.

In an article directed towards those in leadership positions, Keralis (2023) asked “how do libraries become gendered places, what harm might that cause – however unintentionally – to transgender and gender non-conforming patrons and staff, and how can library leadership ameliorate this harm if they choose to do so?” Keralis defines “gendered place” as a space that perpetuates the gender binary, further explaining that binary to functionally be male and not-male (p. 284). Suggested actions included growing and learning, modeling inclusive behavior, consistently enforcing policies, and—most importantly—actively and publicly leading.

So far, the only full book on gender inclusive practices in library work is Supporting Trans People in Libraries. The first few chapters covered trans 101 and pronouns; the next several offered practical guidance for the most common issues that come up in libraries, including how to gather personal information, hiring practices, conferences/events, and, of course, restrooms. Interactions with patrons and with employees get a chapter each, as do library schools, academic libraries, access services, and collection development. Concluding material includes a glossary and recommended resources (Krueger, 2019). 

Public Libraries

The two pieces on youth services in public libraries mainly address representation, information behavior, and how public librarians can better serve trans and gender diverse youth. Sokoll (2013) discussed the importance of representation in young adult literature for trans youth and the inadequacies of traditional collection development tools in locating relevant materials. The article included recommendations of specific titles to purchase and supplementary websites to consult for collection development purposes. Austin’s (2019) chapter attempts to cover a lot of ground, which is perhaps an understandable desire given how little in library literature moves beyond basic information about gender identity. From trans 101 to broad issues (representation in mass media, legal recognition and medical care for trans and gender diverse youth, surveillance) to library-adjacent topics (information behavior of trans and gender diverse youth, how youth turn to zines and online spaces to share information and find community), the scope is extremely broad. The chapter included a number of suggestions that would significantly widen the scope of work of public librarians, which includes that librarians could perform outreach to trans-friendly medical providers to co-create resources, maintain lists of trans-friendly medical providers, and create resources on processes for youth seeking transition-related care (p. 177). Other suggestions fell within regular library job duties, such as providing critical information literacy support around misinformation and fake news, curating library guides of online resources and booklists, and creating racially diverse displays that link printed images to online projects such as the Digital Transgender Archive. Recommended general practices included hiring and respecting trans and gender diverse staff, and not expecting trans and gender diverse people to serve as information sources.

Byrne (2020) described the need for public library management to actively support gender inclusive practices in addition to expressing good intentions; after describing a committee’s attempt to enact meaningful change in their library, the author concluded that they must rely on themself rather than hoping for movement from managers and administrators.

The chapter by Sancho-Brú, McIntyre, and Bermúdez Raventós (2019) discussed the Trans Identities and Gender project to build a collection of materials about and for the trans and gender diverse community in Catalonia, which (at the time, at least, and possibly still) “is the only collection centered on trans identity that exists in the public library network in Catalonia” (p. 252). The project, which was started by a trans activist who began their transition while working in libraries, included a photographic exhibition, a living library, and “ongoing activities using the library as a communal meeting point between the local and the trans community as well as a means of promoting the collection and its use” (p. 244). The opening event had the highest public attendance of any event held by the library in its 20 year history.

Academic Libraries

In a conference paper on trans inclusion in libraries presented at an academic library conference, Smith-Borne (2017) provided nine recommendations. The only portions specific to the academic library context are recommendations to learn about and connect with campus resources such as LGBTQ+ centers. The other items vary between applicable to most libraries, such as “Remove gendered language on signage, library forms, web forms, or surveys” (p. 112), and the most basic elements of trans inclusion, such as not assuming gender. A few years later, Smith-Borne (2019) wrote about creating an inclusive environment for trans and gender diverse music library users; with a few exceptions (such as creating an exhibit featuring trans composers and encouraging music faculty to refer to choir parts by name rather than assumed gender), this guidance too was essentially about gender inclusion in libraries overall. Both pieces covered trans 101 level information. Krueger and Matteson (2017) suggested relationship building with campus and local LGBTQ+ centers, workshops and training to build a foundation of knowledge, as well as the importance of moving beyond education into practical support. This would include removing gendered language from written and oral communication, not guessing the pronouns or gender of patrons, all-gender restrooms, anonymous online chat, and self-checkout options.

Two articles discussed how anti-trans bias relates to misinformation, and what academic libraries can do to combat this. Lockmiller (2023) discussed the harm of anti-trans misinformation through a theory called the “Misinformation – Legislation Pipeline,” using Florida as a case study to show how stigmatization and misinformation can lead into legislation around healthcare (pp. 742-753). In conclusion, Lockmiller discussed the role of health science librarians in recognizing these pipelines, ensuring that collections do not feed into them, redirecting researchers away from misinformation, challenging the need for assignments and research to always address “both sides” of a debate, and creating curricula around understanding these pipelines (pp. 757-758). Krutkowski et al. (2019) discussed the global, UK legal and social, and institutional contexts around anti-trans discrimination and fake news before describing the aims, content, and overwhelmingly positive reception of a professional development session on these topics (pp. 115-118). They concluded by encouraging information literacy interventions against misinformation and bias towards marginalized groups (p. 124).

Occasionally, an academic library develops a working group or task force on gender inclusion. Marrall (2015) described one such effort at Western Washington University to develop best practices for serving trans and gender diverse patrons (p. 184), following a university resolution to implement gender neutral restrooms across campus and a preferred names policy. Marrall concluded that whether other libraries should implement best practices for gender inclusion depends on if there is administrative support, prior DEI work on this topic, patron need, collegial support, existing expertise, and more. Marrall reminded readers that committing to this work requires ongoing learning and labor (pp. 187-189). Doherty and Coghill (2020) described the Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries’ Gender-Inclusive Work Group, which started out by seeking direct feedback from student workers as well as conducting a literature review and environmental scan. The libraries had already implemented some practices including optional Safe Zone training, removal of gendered pronouns from job postings, and a few all gender restrooms. The group recommended immediate actions, such as wastebaskets in all restrooms, and long-term ones, such as hiring a diversity and inclusion librarian.

Leahy (2023) described the process of selecting a 20-item collection of “transgender life-writing” for an academic library. Noting that “the project recognizes that the category of ‘life writing, autobiography, or memoir’ does not reflect all transgender experiences,” Leahy explained that items beyond this official scope were included in order to increase the racial diversity of the materials and represent a greater variety of trans experiences (p. 96). Difficulties included the often outdated and offensive cataloging terms the materials were tagged with, and the division of what had been envisioned as a cohesive collection into different areas of the library (some closed-access).

Wagner and Crowley (2020) used critical discourse analysis to examine library guides, article abstracts and author biographies of work produced by trans and gender diverse scholars, and shelving at academic libraries as examples of “continued systematic failures” that “alienate, ignore and exploit” trans and gender diverse people (p. 160). Their analysis of library guides revealed an overreliance on academic sources that largely focused on white gay men, and that only 50% of the guides addressed or mentioned trans and gender diverse students. Their analysis of article abstracts and author biographies found only one author referred to with the correct name and pronouns, six authors misgendered, and one author both deadnamed and misgendered. In their review of shelving at academic libraries, they found trans and gender diverse books near books about intersex studies, sex work, kinks, and fetishes. They argued that, while none of these topics should be viewed negatively, the proximity of the materials may lead to incorrect connections and conflations (pp. 168-175). Wagner and Crowley conclude by stating “valuing justice and equity will always be different from doing justice and equity” and by encouraging libraries to “also look inward to think about how they might never have been inclusive” (p. 178).

Library Workers

The first book in the Series on Gender and Sexuality in Information Studies is Out Behind the Desk: Workplace Issues for LGBTQ Librarians (Nectoux, 2011). Four of its nearly 30 chapters make up the section “The Rest of the Rainbow,” which seems to mean everything beyond lesbian and gay. Only one, “Passing Tips and Pronoun Police: A Guide to Transitioning at Your Local Library,” fully centers trans identities, though others touch on them. The largely personal narrative includes the experience of coming out (and being outed, though not maliciously) during a job search, and of transitioning at work: “My coworkers didn’t have much experience with a trans colleague, but I didn’t have much experience being a trans colleague, so ultimately we were well matched” (Roberto, 2011, p. 125). The chapter concludes with a section speaking directly to trans and gender diverse library workers, which is refreshing given how rarely LIS literature acknowledges our presence as anything other than patrons.

In contrast is the most recent (as of this writing) book in the same series, Trans and Gender Diverse Voices in Libraries (2023), whose three editors and almost 60 chapter authors are all trans or gender diverse people (Adolpho et al.). (Full disclosure: two of those editors are the authors of this article, so we may be a little biased about the book.) Consisting primarily of personal essays, with some professional thoughts and even a few poems, it showcases a range of experiences and identities of trans and gender diverse LIS students and library workers. The first section, Personal Experiences, consists of chapters that center the author’s identity more than a particular area of library work. LIS Education covers the experiences of trans and gender diverse LIS graduate students. It is worth noting that half of the 10 authors in this section opted for anonymity; the library field as a whole would do well to reflect on what it means that incoming members question whether they can share such experiences under their professional names, enough so to pass on the benefits of having a published chapter on their CVs. The sections Public Libraries, Academic Libraries, and Archives and Special Collections all, as one might expect, include chapters by people in these specialties. Professional Reflections consists of essays and one poem on a variety of topics related to the field. The final section, Leaving Libraries, is only two chapters; it demonstrates that the caution demonstrated by all those anonymous student authors is warranted. As a whole, the book is intended to show that trans and gender diverse people are not just patrons of libraries, but are also past, current, and future members of the library profession. 

Ness (2023) conducted a study on bias towards trans and gender diverse people in the attitudes and behaviors of LIS workers in Illinois. Due to the nature of the survey consisting of fairly generic questions that a primarily cisgender group of respondents self-reported their attitudes and actions to, the results are of limited use without further research using different types of assessment. Ness identified a need for meaningful actions and training rather than relying on individual good intentions and broad professional standards.

Archives

Archival work is one of the areas where professional library literature moves beyond trans 101 and gets into what it does or would look like to incorporate gender inclusion into our work. Rawson (2009) discussed access barriers for trans researchers and (potentially) trans materials in archives. These barriers for patrons included environmental accessibility, such as the existence of gender neutral restrooms and what types of materials and images are on display (pp. 127-129). For materials, the largest barrier centered around description. How do we describe materials when the creator or subject did not explicitly identify as trans? How do we balance self-identification (especially for individuals who lived prior to the term “transgender” being coined) with the fact that not labeling materials relevant to the history of “people who trans-gender” may render them invisible to researchers (p. 131)? Rawson (2018) later examined the metadata for objects held in various archives that depicted “transgressive gender presentations” to discuss the rhetorical power of archival description (p. 330). He stated that this power “stems from the ability of those records to persuade us to see historical materials as they are described, to share their orientation to the past,” and then described the tension between how “unqueer” archival description can be with the need to, as a scholar of rhetoric, “queer the archive” (p. 348). Also on the topic of archival description, Wagner (2021) wrestled with issues pertaining to visual media in archives, suggesting that catalogers and archivists “embrace ambiguity,” “describe gendered ways of being and not the gender,” take caution with pre-existing description, use alternative text description and thesauri, and develop case-specific rules, all of which would explore and expand inclusion for trans people and materials with the hopes that temporary solutions will be followed by new systems of organization (pp. 30-31, 36, 39).

The bulk of professional literature on trans and gender diverse topics in archives comes from the “Archives and Archiving” special issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly, edited by Rawson and Devor (2015). The first two sections explore themes and issues in emerging and established archives. The in-scope emerging archives described are trans and gender diverse resources in the Pittsburgh Queer History Project Archive (Apple, 2015); Gender DynamiX, a trans and gender diverse archive from sub-Saharan African countries (Theron & Kgositau, 2015); and a trans and gender diverse military archive (Barnett & Hill, 2015). The three established archives discussed in the second section include materials in the University of Toronto’s Sexual Representation Collection (Matte, 2015), University of Minnesota’s Tretter Collection (Vecoli, 2015), and Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America (Peimer, 2015). The remaining sections are largely out of scope. 

Information Behavior

Taylor (2002) conducted the first study on trans and gender diverse information needs geared toward library workers. From the 316 surveys sent out, 45 usable responses were received, and the sample population of respondents was 94% white (compared to 75.1% of the US in 2004) and largely well-educated (36% held graduate degrees, compared to 8% of the US population at the time) (p. 89-90). The majority of the survey questions asked what information sources respondents consulted (internet, peers, books, etc.), how they learned about trans identity, early versus current information needs (for example, interest in researching anti-trans hate crimes increased from 4.5% to 24.4%, p. 93), and most read and recommended books. Taylor concluded by stating that the study was meant to help libraries better understand trans and gender diverse information needs, but that “we cannot draw any sweeping conclusions from these results” given the nonrandom and small sample size (p. 95). 

In 2007, Beiriger and Jackson published an article on a community information needs assessment project conducted in Portland, Oregon. The intent was to learn if there were information needs in trans and gender diverse communities that were not being addressed by libraries. The results indicated that legal information and health information were the two top-ranked priorities for participants (p. 54). This study yielded 99 responses; 88% of respondents identified as white and 100% selected English as their primary language (pp. 50-51). Largely relying on the above studies to understand information needs for trans and gender diverse people, Jardine (2013) discussed access barriers and practical solutions for trans and gender diverse patrons meeting their information needs in libraries (pp. 240-241). Identified barriers include prejudice, censorship, and the inadequacy of controlled vocabularies for trans and gender diverse topics (pp. 253-258). Needs include restrooms, optional gender information on library card application forms, inclusive or gender neutral language in interactions, and inclusive policies (pp. 245-249). 

Thompson (2012) observed that “attempts to promote effective library service to the LGBT community have by and large overlooked the ‘T,’or the transgender members of their communities” (p. 12). The essay served as an overview of LIS literature on information needs (referencing Taylor, 2002, and Beiriger & Jackson’s 2007 studies) and access barriers for trans and gender diverse communities, as well as resources for LIS professionals to consult in order to better meet those needs.

Drake and Bielefield (2017) conducted a study to better understand how trans and gender diverse people use and perceive libraries. They described the demographics of the study as a “close match” to the population, with 74% of the respondents identifying as non-Latine white, 6% Latine, and 4% Black (compared to the following population demographics from the 2013 US census: 62% white, 17% Latine, and 12% Black). Ninety-one of the 102 respondents were under the age of 40, 78 were assigned female at birth (note: “gender assigned at birth” was the only gender-related information shared in the article), and 96 used English as their primary language (p. 162). Slightly over a quarter of respondents stated that they visited the library in the last year specifically for trans-related research, with some reports that libraries were inadequate in meeting their information needs. Most respondents stated they did not ask for reference assistance due to fear of discrimination, a fear others demonstrated was well-founded when they described the “clear distaste” and invasive questions from library staff they interacted with (p. 164). Ninety-seven percent of respondents indicated that libraries needed to make accommodations in order for them to feel safe. The top five accommodations included: current literature and information, single stall gender neutral restrooms (non-key access), non-discrimination policies, a remote name change process, and removing or creating open text fields for gendered information on library forms (pp. 165-166).

Lyttan and Laloo (2020) discussed information seeking patterns, gender neutral restrooms, collection development, reference interactions, centering patron privacy, the need for staff training, and the idea of the library as a safe space. Despite including “transgender” in the article title, the majority of the article discusses sexual orientation along with gender identity, perhaps due to the paucity of literature focused exclusively on trans and gender diverse people and resources. The article also contains outdated language for the time, such as a section titled “Library collections related to transgenders,” and strangely classified transgender people as “the third gender” (pp. 51, 54). The article has since been retracted by the publisher due to the authors misrepresenting and altering direct quotations (“Statement of Retraction,” 2024).

Tenney et al. (2021) discussed erasure and discrimination that trans and gender diverse people experience in healthcare settings generally, and specifically in navigating breast cancer health information. They called on academic health librarians to curate content dedicated or inclusive to trans and gender diverse people, recommended culturally competent LIS education, and increased advocacy for trans and gender diverse people (pp. 138-140). Shen (2023) reviewed the Tenney, et al. article using the Evidence Based Librarianship Critical Appraisal Checklist. Shen found that the article’s validity rating was below the accepted threshold of 75%, largely due to population and data collection issues and questions around how the literature search was conducted and articles were selected (p. 128). That being said, Shen believed the health information resource gap identified and the practical implications for the LIS profession were important (p. 129).

It should be noted that there are a number of articles on general and health-specific information behavior by and about trans and gender diverse people that we considered out of scope for this literature review, as they did not focus explicitly on libraries (e.g., Adams & Peirce, 2006; Hawkins & Gieseking, 2017; Huttunen, 2023; Huttunen et al., 2019, 2020; Huttunen & Kortelainen, 2021; Ortiz-Myers & Costello, 2021; Pohjanen & Kortelainen, 2016). These pieces are frequently cited in library literature.

Cataloging

While a number of authors have addressed cataloging and classification of trans and gender diverse resources, only a few focused explicitly on the historical angle. Johnson (2010) discussed the history of subject access to trans and gender diverse materials and then compared Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) with three LGBT thesauri: Michel Thesaurus, Internationale Homo- en Lesbisch Informatiecentrumen Archief (IHLIA) Thesaurus, and LGBT Life (p. 665). Johnson found that some terms used by LGBT thesauri were eventually incorporated into LCSH, which, when combined with OCLC encouraging adherence to LCSH, unfortunately led to many LGBT collections no longer developing and maintaining specialized controlled vocabularies (p. 675). It is worth noting that Johnson’s article predates Homosaurus, an international LGBTQ+ linked data vocabulary that grew out of IHLIA, by six years. While there are many articles discussing Homosaurus, they are out of scope for this literature review as they tend to focus on the entire LGBTQ+ umbrella. In 2014, Transgender Studies Quarterly published their inaugural issue containing articles focused on keywords or concepts central to transgender studies. Angell and Roberto (2014) contributed an article on the keyword “cataloging,” which discussed cataloging and controlled vocabularies, and specifically the history of the treatment of transgender topics in LCSH (pp. 53-55). 

The harmful and inadequate nature of LCSH, Library of Congress Classification, and Dewey Classification when describing and classifying transgender and gender diverse resources has been discussed as well. Adler (2009) compared LCSH and user tags in LibraryThing for twenty books with trans themes (p. 319). Unsurprisingly, Adler found that the most popular tags with users were hardly represented or were non-existent on Worldcat (p. 323). In 2011, Roberto published “Inflexible Bodies: Metadata for Transgender Identities,” which argued that inaccurate and offensive description and classification creates a “passively hostile” environment for trans and gender diverse users, as well as a disconnect between the reality of our collections and their representation that “haunt library catalogs by being partially visible yet not fully manifest” (pp. 57, 63). 

In recent years, there has been increased attention towards developing best practices for describing trans and gender diverse resources and how to approach describing (or not describing) gender in visual resources. After conducting a qualitative study on the gendering practices of thirteen North American catalogers, Wagner (2022) suggested a “body-oriented approach” to cataloging, stating, “the answer is not to identify the correct way a body is gendered within visual information but instead to imagine the ways gender is being communicated as an action and an idea through a body” (pp. 622, 641.) Also in 2022, the Trans Metadata Collective released “Metadata Best Practices for Trans and Gender Diverse Resources,” a set of best practices for classifying trans and gender diverse resources and individuals in cultural heritage institution settings. Meyer (2022) reviewed the guidelines, referring to them as a “timely alternative to vocabularies that misrepresent and pose harm to trans and gender diverse community members” (p. 1).

After RDA rule 9.7, which instructed catalogers to record gender information in name authority records (NARs), was adopted in 2013, there were a number of critiques published. Billey, Drabinski, and Roberto (2014) argued that RDA 9.7, which at the time required catalogers to assign authors as male, female, or “not known” with dates of transition for known trans creators, “denies the shifting and contextual nature of gender identities” fixing them into one of two binary genders and ignoring the many gender identities that fall outside of the binary (pp. 414, 417). The article also delved into examples of errors and other complications with recording gender in NARs that had, at the time of writing, already been found (pp. 418-419). Ultimately, the authors called for the rule to record gender to be rescinded (p. 420). 

In 2016, Thompson reviewed 50 NARs for trans creators and found that 65% contained some form of outing information in the 375 or 670 field, including mentions of “sex change operation[s]” and other details about creators’ medical histories, identities, and changing pronouns (p. 149). Thompson demonstrated that recording gender in NARs frequently outs trans people and that fields beyond the 375 “warrant further scrutiny from the cataloging community” (p. 153).

Billey and Drabinski (2019) provided an overview of the history of name authority control and updates about RDA 9.7. The article discussed a 2015 proposal to add the term “transgender” to the list of possible gender options, before a new proposal was submitted to the RDA Steering Committee meeting to record gender in NARs without predefined terms. The Program for Cooperative Cataloging’s (PCC) Ad Hoc Task Group on Gender in Name Authority Records produced a best practices report on how to carry out this work in 2016 (pp. 121-122).

Ethical Questions in Name Authority Control, edited by Sandberg (2019), contains several chapters addressing RDA 9.7 and the 2016 Report of the PCC Ad Hoc Task Group on Gender in Name Authority Records. Adolpho’s (2019) chapter stated that the Report’s “proposed best practices are still rooted in Western-centric, cisnormative understandings of gender that deny gender diverse people both agency over our own identities and decision making power over the frameworks that seek to include us” (p. 113). Polebaum-Freeman (2019) argued that “authority record catalogers consider transgender authors puzzles that need solving,” and that they “made purposeful, transphobic decisions about the nature of the metadata selected for inclusion” in NARs for trans and gender diverse people (pp. 171, 156). Shiraishi’s (2019) chapter used a philosophy of language approach to NARs, discussing how self-identification and publicly disclosed information may contradict one another alongside issues with assigning dates to gender, emphasizing the potential social impact and harm in recording gender. Wagner’s (2019) chapter discussed issues around “naming and unnaming queerness” for historical figures when it may not be clear how they self-identified, as well as issues with anachronistic language (p. 197). Overall, while it seemed possible for the proposed best practices to be revised to do less harm, the only way to do no harm would be to rescind the rule, which ultimately occurred in 2022 (Billey et al., 2022). 

Conclusion

Clearly, we have work to do as a profession. Aside from examples in archives and cataloging, library literature has seldom strayed beyond trans 101 content. Some of us—those who are already well aware of how few libraries have implemented basic gender inclusion practices—may find this unsurprising. It can be difficult to imagine future possibilities when so many library workers cannot even go to the restroom or fill out human resources paperwork without being forced to misgender ourselves, and when we must use systems that out and misgender patrons at every step. And so, gaps in library practices go hand in hand with gaps in the literature.

And the gaps are enormous. Some topics have been covered in the past, but need updating, while others have received only little attention. Other topics, such as restrooms, are barely covered at all outside of magazine articles and blog posts. The literature we found focuses largely on academic libraries (we suggest that this is related to who is permitted and encouraged to research and publish as part of their jobs). There have been no U.S.-based case studies on gender inclusion in public libraries, and the ways in which they can best support and serve trans and gender diverse patrons has been little explored in the scholarly literature (though it is certainly a topic of discussion through other avenues).

Even in academic libraries, writing on gender inclusion occasionally delves deeper than surface-level from one angle or another, but it largely reiterates the basics. This is not a critique on the authors of these works; on the contrary, it demonstrates that the field as a whole has made little progress, and reminding academic library workers that trans and gender diverse people exist at all is still necessary. Wagner and Crowley’s (2020) point that holding a value does not equate to doing the work to uphold it is one that academic libraries—and others—need to pay attention to. There is a fair bit of talk about being inclusive, and sometimes even discussion of what that looks like in practice. But it seems that the actual work remains limited or nonexistent in most places.

There has been very little in the literature acknowledging the fact that trans and gender diverse people are library workers in addition to being library patrons, and our experiences in the profession have hardly been discussed until recently. Personal accounts from trans and gender diverse people of color, people with disabilities, and people who work outside of academic and public libraries are still underrepresented. As stated previously, the fact that there is so little literature by trans and gender diverse people on our experiences in the profession stems at least partially from safety issues around very publicly and irrevocably coming out as trans or gender diverse. Even anonymous accounts may be recognizable, especially for individuals who are multiply marginalized. Other trans and gender diverse library workers may simply not feel like writing publicly about their personal experiences, and should not be expected to do so.

The few studies on information behavior that are tied to libraries (instead of information behavior more broadly) focus on how trans and gender diverse people discover our identities and learn about issues. While literature on information behavior and barriers has shifted somewhat over time to focus more on perceptions of libraries and what librarians can actively do to remove these barriers, there is still much work to be done. For starters, the demographics of respondents from the three studies we found were overwhelmingly white trans and gender diverse people with graduate degrees who spoke English as their primary language. Moreover, the studies all had fairly small and/or non-representative sample sizes, which makes it difficult to generalize the results and leaves out many patron communities.

As stated previously, description in cataloging and archives is the most developed area in the literature. While earlier literature on gender inclusion in cataloging largely focused on history and examples of exclusions and harm, in recent years we have seen a shift in focus towards developing and implementing best practices. Outside of the Transgender Studies Quarterly issue, most professional literature on archives addresses description and other access barriers. While there is still room for growth in these areas, they have received the most consideration thus far.

There are too many gaps in the literature for us to list them all. Even the most detailed of the topics covered here have all sorts of work left to do; most of the others have yet to move past trans 101. Many areas of library work do not appear in this review at all because nothing has been published on them in the scholarly literature. As a summary, here are some of the many possible areas of future research, some of which are new and some of which build on the literature covered above.

• General: restroom options and usage in all types of libraries and the impact on trans and gender diverse people; intersectional studies on trans and gender diverse information behavior, access barriers, and needs in libraries; gender inclusion in library work that goes beyond the colonial gender system (which attempts to map everyone along the binaries of man/woman, cis/trans, and binary/non-binary, excluding Indigenous gender systems and other ways of being); gender inclusion (or the lack of it) in LIS education.
• Public libraries: meeting room issues related to anti-trans speakers, youth services, book bans
• Academic libraries: gender inclusive instruction and research support, collection development of materials on trans and gender diverse people, campus-wide limitations and opportunities around gender inclusion in the library
• Library workers: gender demographics of the library profession, surveys on the experiences of trans and gender diverse library workers (including student workers), institutional efforts around gender inclusion, anti-trans bias and transantagonistic behavior by library workers, career tracking of trans and gender diverse library workers
• Archives: collection development, relationship building, practical workflows and policies for gender inclusion
• Cataloging: how to discuss (or not discuss) gender information in the 670 field of NARs (an issue raised by Thompson in 2016 and acknowledged in the 2022 PCC report as an area for future work), the history of subject analysis for materials on Indigenous and non-colonial genders
• Types of libraries and areas of library work not mentioned in the review: literally anything.

The most effective approach to making libraries safer and more welcoming for trans and gender diverse people is fairly simple in concept, largely because the bar is currently so low as to be nonexistent. Essentially, the library profession needs to start behaving as though it knows that trans and gender diverse people exist. All library workers must learn the basics of gender inclusion, and to apply those practices to their work. That goes for trans and gender diverse library workers too–being of an identity does not automatically transfer expertise on workplace practices, and the wide variety of trans and gender diverse people means that any two of us may or may not have many common experiences.

Filling the gaps in the scholarly literature is more difficult. Every library worker needs to learn the basics in order to be considered competent at their work, otherwise they end up harming and excluding trans and gender diverse patrons and coworkers. But the level of self-education needed to conduct research on or about trans and gender diverse people is significantly higher—it is insufficient to know that gender has no place on a library card application, or how to give instructions to the restroom without misgendering a patron. We don’t need more trans 101 articles (well, we do, probably—see that low, low bar—but our hope in writing this literature review is that we also get to move on to more interesting and impactful issues). The past and present of gender diversity is too huge and complicated a subject for knowing everything to be a realistic expectation for future researchers; transgender studies is an entire field in its own right. At the very least, though, one should be aware of the scale of the topic and the relevant specifics before deciding to conduct original research.

Library workers are not in a position of neutrality regarding gender inclusion; in most cases, they are enacting exclusion and harm, intentionally or not. This article is partly intended as a call to action, but it is not enough to mean well. We need people to fill the many enormous gaps in the literature; in order to do that, we need people to do the work of extensive self-education first. Perhaps then we can move beyond an endless series of trans 101 articles pleading for harm reduction, and into a future where libraries truly welcome and support trans and gender diverse people.

We envision a library profession in which nobody needs to write another trans 101 article for their specialty because that knowledge is assumed to be the norm, a baseline for anyone working in libraries. In which people can instead pursue whatever gloriously niche aspect of gender inclusion brings them joy. In which trans and gender diverse library students and workers can choose whether or not to be out based on personal preference, not concerns for safety and job security. We hope that the next time someone attempts to do a literature review on this topic, they find that they cannot possibly fit all the new material into one article. We ask for your help in making that future come true.

1. Trans and gender diverse people is an umbrella term that includes trans people, as well as anyone whose gender does not fall into the binaries of man or woman and trans or cis (meaning, those who identify with the gender they were assigned at birth) ︎
2. Gender inclusion means practices that result in equitable treatment for people of all genders. We do not specify trans and gender diverse inclusion because there is no such thing as gender inclusive behavior that applies only to cis people. ︎
3. This may be a good place to note that this article does not intend to provide introductory information about queer identities. If you need this acronym spelled out or don’t have a working understanding of gender identity basics, much of the following material won’t make sense until you have filled that knowledge gap. ︎

Acknowledgements

We would like to express our sincere thanks to our article’s external peer reviewer, nicholae cline, internal peer reviewer, Jessica Schomberg, and Lead Pipe Publishing Editors Brittany Paloma Fiedler and Ryan Randall. We would also like to thank Anastasia Chiu and Adrian Williams for offering feedback on our draft before submission. This literature review benefited greatly from all their labor. Additionally, we’d like to share our gratitude to K.J. Rawson for writing or editing the bulk of the existing literature on trans and gender diverse inclusion in archives, K.R. Roberto for writing the first scholarly piece (that we could find) by a trans or gender diverse person on our experiences in the profession, the Trans Metadata Collective and Travis Wagner for their work on creating practical guidance on gender inclusive metadata and cataloging, and everyone who helped end RDA 9.7.

References

(2024) Statement of retraction: Equitable access to information in libraries: A predicament for transgender people. Journal of Access Services, 21(1), 68-68, DOI: 10.1080/15367967.2024.2314905

Adams, S. S., & Peirce, K. (2006). Is there a transgender canon?: Information seeking and use in the transgender community. Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Canadian Association of Information Science 2006, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.29173/cais161

Adler, M. (2009). Transcending library catalogs: A comparative study of controlled terms in Library of Congress Subject Headings and user-generated tags in LibraryThing for transgender books. Journal of Web Librarianship, 3(4), 309–331. https://doi.org/10.1080/19322900903341099

Adolpho, K. K. (2019). Who asked you? Consent, self-determination, and the report of the PCC Ad Hoc Task Group on Gender in Name Authority Records. In J. Sandberg (Ed.), Ethical questions in name authority control, 111–131. Library Juice Press.

Adolpho, K. K., Krueger, S. G., & McCracken, K. (Eds.). (2023). Trans and gender diverse voices in libraries. Library Juice Press.

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Apple, H. (2015). The $10,000 woman: Trans artifacts in the Pittsburgh Queer History Project archive. Transgender Studies Quarterly, 2(4), 553-564.

Austin, J. (2019). Lines of sight and knowledge: Possibilities and actualities of transgender and gender-nonconforming youth in the library. In Mehra, B. (Ed.), LGBTQ+ librarianship in the 21st Century: Emerging directions of advocacy and community engagement in diverse information environments, 167–196. 

Barnett, J. T. & Hill, B. J. (2015). Covert Operation: Archiving the experiences of transgender service members in the US military. Transgender Studies Quarterly, 2(4), 584-594.

Beiriger, A., & Jackson, R. M. (2007). An assessment of the information needs of transgender communities in Portland, Oregon. Public Library Quarterly, 26(1/2), 45-60. https://doi.org/10.1300/J118v26n01_03

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Billey, A., & Drabinski, E. (2019). Questioning authority: Changing library cataloging standards to be more inclusive to a gender identity spectrum. Transgender Studies Quarterly, 6(1), 117–123. https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-7253538

Billey, A., Drabinski, E., & Roberto, K. R. (2014). What’s gender got to do with it? A critique of RDA rule 9.7. Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 52(4), 412–421. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639374.2014.882465

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Burns, J., Cronquist, M., Huang, J., Murphy, D., Rawson, K. J., Schaefer, B., Simons, J., Watson, B. M., & Williams, A. (2022). Metadata best practices for trans and gender diverse resources. Librarian Publications & Presentations, 52. https://digitalcommons.osgoode.yorku.ca/librarians/52

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Doherty, M. T., & Coghill, D. E. (2020). Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries’ Gender-Inclusive Work Group experience. In H. L. Seibert, A. Vinogradov, & A. H. McClellan (Eds.), The library workplace idea book: Proactive steps for positive change, 95-100. ALA Editions.

Drake, A. A., & Bielefield, A. (2017). Equitable access: Information seeking behavior, information needs, and necessary library accommodations for transgender patrons. Library & Information Science Research, 39(3), 160–168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2017.06.002

Hawkins, B., & Gieseking, J. J. (2017). Seeking ways to our transgender bodies, by ourselves: Rationalizing transgender-specific health information behaviors. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 54, 702–704. https://doi.org/10.1002/pra2.2017.14505401122

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Huttunen, A., Hirvonen, N., & Kähkönen, L. (2020). Uncomfortable in my own skin – emerging, early-stage identity-related information needs of transgender people. Journal of Documentation, 76(3), 709–729. https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-09-2019-0193

Huttunen, A., & Kortelainen, T. (2021). Meaning‐making on gender: Deeply meaningful information in a significant life change among transgender people. Journal of the Association for Information Science & Technology, 72(7), 799–810. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24447

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Krueger, S., & Matteson, M. (2017). Serving transgender patrons in academic libraries. Public Services Quarterly, 13(3), 207–216. https://doi.org/10.1080/15228959.2017.1338543

Krutkowski, S., Taylor-Harman, S., & Gupta, K. (2019). De-biasing on university campuses in the age of misinformation. Reference Services Review, 48(1), 113–128. https://doi.org/10.1108/RSR-10-2019-0075

Leahy, A. (2023). Developing a collection around transgender life-writing at Senate House Library, University of London. Collection & Curation, 42(3), 94–98. https://doi.org/10.1108/CC-10-2022-0035

Lockmiller, C. (2023). Decoding the misinformation-legislation pipeline: An analysis of Florida Medicaid and the current state of transgender healthcare. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 111(4), 750–761. https://doi.org/10.5195/jmla.2023.1724

Lyttan, B., & Laloo, B. (2020). Equitable access to information in libraries: A predicament for transgender people. Journal of Access Services, 17(1), 46–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/15367967.2019.1671850

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We’re thrilled to unveil today the latest addition to the Open Knowledge Network: the Regional Hubs Prototype Programme! This programme aims to foster collaboration and expand our reach and impact within our diverse community spread across the globe, unlocking the full potential of our Network. The Regional Hubs will serve as a vital nexus for driving our mission of creating a fair, sustainable and open digital future, advancing open knowledge as a design principle everywhere.

Find out all about this programme below.

What is the Regional Hubs Prototype Programme?

Over the last 2 years, the Open Knowledge Network has been growing consistently, and a lot of it is happening in regions that we at OKFN know less well than others, and around new topics too. For some time we have felt the need to be closer to our members, so we started prototyping this programme.

At its core, the Network Regional Hubs are designed to cultivate a network of individuals committed to advancing open knowledge principles in their respective regions. With five hubs strategically located across different continents, this initiative seeks to better understand the local specificities, use languages other than English to advocate for open knowledge, and amplify our collective voice.

What are the main goals of this programme?

This is an 11-month prototype programme ending in March 2025. Throughout the year, the coordinators’ cohort will test ways to:

• Grow awareness of open knowledge in each region.
• Identify, seek out, and act on opportunities for collaboration with local entities: NGOs, activists, open advocates, and government.
• Be closer to local Network members.
• Decentralise the Network coordination.
• Find better ways to work together.

An additional tentative objective is to ​​explore ways for transitioning this prototype programme into a sustainable, well-funded initiative.

Who are the coordinators?

Selecting the Hub Coordinators was a difficult task. Excellent candidates applied through the open call last January. After a long process, we are happy to present five dynamic individuals chosen for their expertise, commitment, and vision for open knowledge. These coordinators bring a wealth of experience from diverse backgrounds, ranging from data advocacy and community engagement to open science and policy. 

Get to know our awesome coordinators:

Anglophone Africa Hub

Maxwell Beganim

Inspiring educator, tech enthusiast, and environmental sustainability advocate. He is a co-founder of Wiki Green Initiatives, organisers of Wiki Green Conferences. He serves as Knowledge Manager of the Ghana Pidgin Wikimedia Community, preserving linguistic diversity. He actively advocates for indigenous languages as a co-organiser of the Ghanaian Languages Wikimedia Community. He manages Open Knowledge Ghana.

Maxwell holds executive roles in internet governance, including Chairperson of Climate Change and Emerging Technologies at the Internet Society Ghana Chapter. He serves as a steering committee member of the Ghana Youth Internet Governance Forum and a steering committee member of the Ghana Internet Governance Forum.

Asia Hub

Setu Bandh Upadhyay

Policy practitioner with extensive experience researching and conducting legal and policy advocacy on societal impacts of technologies in the majority world. He is currently leading the Learning portfolio at the Global Network Initiative. He has previously worked with research institutes, civil society organisations, and think tanks. Setu is a public policy graduate of Central European University, and a law graduate of University of Mumbai.

Europe Hub

Esther Plomp

Data Steward (Delft University of Technology) and Open Science Community Member (The Turing Way, OLS, IsoArcH) based in the Netherlands. In these roles, Esther facilitates a more equitable way of knowledge generation, encouraging others to work more transparently. Her expertise includes a wide array of subjects including Open Science, Research Data Management, Open Data, FAIR principles, and Isotope Archaeology.

Francophone Africa Hub

Narcisse Mbunzama

IT professional, highly active in the Open Data, Open Government, and Open Science sectors in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Sub-Saharan Africa. He has been involved in several projects promoting the Open Data, Open Government, Open Science movements, and digital security for many years, making positive contributions. He is the founder of the Open Data Initiative in the DRC, an initiative advocating for the openness and transparency of public data in the DRC. Narcisse is based in Kinshasa, DRC. He is fluent in English, French, Swedish, Lingala and Kikongo.

Latin America Hub

Julieta Millan

Zoologist and data scientist from Argentina. She has over 7 years of experience in academia researching the molecular mechanisms of learning and memory, and has recently moved to the private sector to work as a data scientist. Julieta is deeply interested in all the ways we can use technology to help create a more sustainable and inclusive future.

What are the immediate next steps?

The coordinators have just been incorporated, so it will take some time for them to familiarise themselves with all the tools and services offered by OKFN, and our language and broad advocacy strategy. 

At first, they will be involved in mapping out  their regions, and identifying the main stakeholders related to the open movement. The mappings will be shared openly over the coming months, and will also be open to collaboration.

In a second phase, the prototype programme will focus on an exploration of governance model(s) for the Network itself. The coordinators will work together with OKFN staff and Network members to research and find better ways to work together, strengthen the Network, and improve its sustainability. The outcome of this exercise will be openly published. 

The coordinators will also be points of contact for developing opportunities to participate in events, alliances and other activities to advance the adoption of open knowledge. As a part of it, they will be actively participating in the production of the next Open Data Day in 2025.

In the coming weeks, we will be carrying out special deliveries of the 100+ Conversations to inspire our new direction series in which we will present each coordinator in more depth through an open dialogue with members of the Network in each region. 

Ways of getting in touch

Anyone with an interest in the open movement can join the Open Knowledge Network. There is no prerequirement and we have a low barrier to entry. While we do have technical tools, they are not the main focus of the Network. What we are interested in is bringing together at the same table all different aspects of the open movement. 

So if you’re keen to collaborate in your region, get in touch with them directly via their social media profiles or by emailing network@okfn.org. You can find out more about how the Network works and its current members here. 

—

Finally, here’s a photo taken past week during the welcome meeting. Most of us put an image of the city/region where we’re based, or with which we identify, in the background.

It’s very gratifying to see our Network grow! Join us in welcoming the wonderful Regional Hubs Coordinators, and stay tuned for updates and opportunities to engage with them.

Source

The BTM industry surged during the pandemic: The number of installed units increased more than five-fold over four years to about 31,100 units nationwide, according to Coin ATM Radar. But a closer look into the BTM boom revealed that the machines are often disproportionately located in areas with a majority of Black and Latino residents, charging fees as high as 22% per transaction.

Wrosenb2 CC BY-SA 4.0

A Bloomberg review of Bitcoin Depot locations and data from the Census Bureau shows that states with proportionally large Black and Latino populations tend to have more of the company’s BTMs, especially in southern states like Georgia and Texas. Bitcoin Depot President and Chief Executive Officer Brandon Mintz dismissed any suggestion that the company targeted areas with underrepresented groups in deciding where to place its machines.

“Never in our history have we once targeted an area based on any sort of racial profile,” Mintz told Bloomberg News. “Our focus is targeting areas that have low competition and that have populations that can support a Bitcoin ATM profitably.”

In Alabama, the concentration of Black and Latino residents within a mile radius of Bitcoin Depot BTMs is 20 percentage points higher than the broader state average, per a Bloomberg analysis of location data and the 2022 American Consumer Survey. In Dallas, BTMs are consistently located in areas where the highest percentages of Black and Latino people live.

Proponents of cryptocurrency often tout the asset as a way to reach unbanked people, who lack a more traditional bank account. In the US, that comprised 6% of adults in 2022, per the Federal Reserve. Black and Hispanic people were more likely to be more unbanked than their White counterparts.

Bitcoin Depot, the largest US operator with about 7,300 BTMs as of April 8, charges some of the highest fees in the industry while touting financial inclusion, a concept that ensures that all customers, regardless of their socioeconomic standing, have access to such financial services as savings, credit and insurance. Over 80% of Bitcoin Depot’s customers earn less than $80,000 a year, according to a November 2023 investor presentation from the company.

Mintz, the Bitcoin Depot CEO, said the percentage of a transaction the Atlanta-based company retains as its fees is typically in the “low twenties,” but would not provide a bottom or top boundary. “Nothing’s definitive, it just depends on the market and what we need to do to cover our expenses,” Mintz said. The company also charges a flat $3 fee on every transaction
...
CoinFlip and Bitstop, Bitcoin Depot’s main rivals, charge transaction fees as high as 22%, depending on the location, according to company representatives and customer service agents. CoinFlip also charges a “network fee” of $2.49 on every transaction.

One restaurant owner in Essex, Maryland, who declined to give his name, said Bitcoin Depot paid $145 a month for the kiosk that was installed a month ago. Another store owner in New Jersey, who identified himself only as Jai, said his store received $200 a month for the kiosk, also operated by Bitcoin Depot.

The majority of BTMs — 92% of machines in the US, as indexed by Coin ATM Radar — don’t allow users to sell their crypto in exchange for cash.

What kind of customer needs to pay 22% plus $3 for "access to ... financial services" which won't let you cash out?

• Criminals, who are willing to pay high fees to launder their ill-gotten cash into Bitcoin, which they will then convert into Tether at some exchange.
• Victims of crimes such as pig-butchering, where the perpetrators require payment in Bitcoin.

The following post is part of a series related to the provision of bibliometrics and research impact services at OCLC Research Library Partnership institutions.

Photo by nine koepfer on Unsplash

Bibliometrics and research impact (BRI) support is an emerging service category for many research libraries, with a range of activities and practices. To learn more, the OCLC Research Library Partnership convened roundtable discussions with library leaders from RLP institutions in March 2023, where participants shared about current practices and challenges in the provision of BRI services. Support for BRI is universal, but is highly dependent upon local resources, with a focus on services for researchers.

Overall, 51 individuals from 33 RLP institutions in four countries participated in one of three sessions:

One size does not fit all

Support for researchers and students

All of the institutions represented in the roundtable discussions reported some research impact activities, most frequently through education, training, and advocacy to researchers. This commonly takes the form of LibGuides on the topic. Research impact is frequently addressed in workshop offerings to researchers, in a variety of ways. Some institutions described specific workshop offerings on topics like altmetrics and understanding research impact indicators, while others described how these topics were briefly covered in workshops focused on scholarly identity and researcher profiles, citation management, or scholarly publishing.

Many institutions are also providing individual support and guidance to faculty, researchers, and students. Support for faculty preparing tenure dossiers is particularly common and valued. More than one participant said that while their library provides direct support, they do not advertise or promote these services because they would be unable to scale up if demand increased.

Support for campus units

While most efforts are directed at researchers, a small number of libraries are providing direct support to other campus units and decision support for institutional leaders, which can include:

• Institutional level analyses of research activity
• Yearly reporting and KPIs for programs and units
• Benchmarking and comparative analysis against institutional and disciplinary peers
• Competitive intelligence analysis in support of grant proposal and academic program development

These types of activities require dedicated staffing.

Managing metadata and infrastructure

Responsibilities can also extend to curating metadata to support reporting needs. A few institutions have assumed responsibility for reviewing and deprecating Scopus Author IDs for affiliated researchers, with implications for local, national, and international reporting and rankings; however, at least one institution described their approach to instead train researchers to manage their own researcher profiles.

Libraries may also play a role in supporting infrastructure that aggregates the institutional scholarly record, primarily through research information management systems (RIMS) that may serve as data sources for faculty annual activity reporting and/or tenure/promotion reports. For example, we learned that at one US institution, the local open access policy requires faculty members to deposit their research outputs into the institutional repository; the library supports and provides metadata enrichment, both to support discovery and faculty activity reporting. Furthermore, several institutions described efforts to not only encourage ORCID adoption by researchers but to also increasingly connect ORCID with campus systems like the campus directory, RIMS, and repository.

Advocacy for responsible metrics

Educating researchers as well as institutional leaders about responsible metrics and bias was mentioned as a priority at a few institutions, which can extend to the development and revision of institutional responsible data statements and position papers. A few participants described efforts to move their institutions towards adoption of the SCOPE Framework for Research Evaluation and/or formal institutional commitment to the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).

Staffing and organization

Several libraries support BRI activities through librarians working in dedicated roles with titles like Research Impact Librarian or Research Information Analyst. However, the majority of institutions described an ad hoc approach that “takes a village of liaisons.” Indeed, even at institutions with a dedicated research impact librarian, there are many other librarians supporting research impact education, training, and analysis as a small component of their jobs. This can provide a way to scale the work as well as meet researchers at the point of need through a trusted liaison, but these liaisons may find it challenging to maintain a level of specialist knowledge in a rapidly changing environment.

We heard from a handful of institutions that have tried to address this challenge by making organizational changes. For example, the library at a private US university has subdivided its liaison librarians into several functional groups within scholarship and research, including research impact. The research impact team, which is comprised of a team leader, three liaison librarians, and a graduate assistant, serves as the locus for research impact work at the library, supporting both researcher and institutional needs, such as tenure dossier preparation, Scopus data cleanup, RIMS administration, and institutional reporting. The hope is that with this configuration, librarians can develop deeper expertise in fewer areas, with clearer path for skills development and career advancement.

While bibliometrics and research impact support is largely an emerging area for most RLP libraries, with few dedicated resources or discrete services, we did hear from a few libraries that have been developing BRI services–and staffing–for several years. These institutions report rapid growth, appreciation for services by users (both researchers and campus units), and the need to continuously assess, strategize, redefine, and scope. In a few cases, the library has assumed the role of campus leader and expert. Two separate Canadian libraries described how the library now plays an important campus leadership role by convening communities of practice around institutional data, comprised of users in the library, campus institutional research/analysis, the research office, and other campus units. At one US institution, the library’s BRI portfolio is supported by 4 FTE librarians plus several graduate assistants! This is certainly the exception rather than the rule, but demonstrates an area of potential growth for research libraries.

Licenses and tools

Participants briefly shared about the products their institution licenses to support BRI activities. Most institutions reported licensing one or both of the Web of Science and Scopus indexes, which are also, of course, of keen value for discovery. Other products include Journal Citation Reports, Altmetric Explorer, Lens, Overton, and OpenAlex. Several institutions reported using RIM systems like Pure, Elements, and VIVO, and/or were implementing a faculty information system like Interfolio, all with implications for metadata curation and interoperability. Furthermore, several institutions license research intelligence products like SciVal, InCites, and Dimensions. Even when another campus unit was the primary user of a product like SciVal, the library usually still manages the license, with the client user covering the costs, with the exception of Academic Analytics, which was usually purchased by a central unit like the Provost’s Office, and only at US institutions. There are also tools in use like DataBricks for ETL processing, as well as VosViewer, PowerBI, and Tableau for supporting data visualizations.

A few institutions describe the challenges of license coordination across campus. Because research institutions are characterized by self-organized independent agents working in a non-linear fashion, it’s not a big surprise to find that individual (non-library) units may license resources without enterprise coordination. This can lead to duplication, and libraries find they may have a role to play in corralling these licenses, particularly since some may be provided by vendors with which the library has preexisting relationships.

Is bibliometrics and research impact support a new service category for libraries?

I think so. After all, no other campus unit has the same expertise with bibliometric metadata. And indeed, there are a few libraries that are demonstrating how the library can take a lead in this space. I’ve blogged about some of these institutions here previously, including Virginia Tech, the University of Waterloo, the University of Pennsylvania, and Syracuse University.

But resources are a huge challenge for the majority of libraries, and many participants described a very reasonable reluctance to invest in advance of demand from both researchers and campus units. And the environment is made even more challenging by the unrelenting churn taking place in leadership roles up and down the ladder, resulting in months or even years of waiting as positions are filled, seats are pulled up to the table, and new strategies are unveiled. But most critically, other needs are simply more urgent. Support for systematic reviews was mentioned as a stronger competing priority by many participants, second only to the urgent need to support research data management activities. There is simply too much to do, and too few resources with which to do all the things.

Understanding the landscape and what’s next

RLP leadership roundtable participants learned a great deal from their peers through this effort, giving their institution a knowledge advantage when they return to think strategically about research support priorities. Many institutions without formalized research impact librarian roles or programs found solidarity with each other as well as possible partners as they contemplate future needs assessment activities.

We will next convene the research support roundtables in June will be discussing the challenges and opportunities of cross-campus collaborations in the provision of research support. I look forward to learning from our partners.

The post Library support for bibliometrics and research impact: Insights from an RLP leadership roundtable appeared first on Hanging Together.

EcoMappers, the OpenStreetMap community of Rwanda, celebrated Open Data Day on March 9, 2024, with the participation of representatives from various organizations and students. The event’s theme centered around “Mapping Nyarugenge High-Risk Zone for Disaster Preparedness,” with the goal of generating open data to aid areas within the Nyarugenge District of Kigali City, Rwanda, in their disaster preparedness efforts. The event was organized and encompassed a range of activities designed not only to contribute to open data but also to enhance the knowledge of Youth and stakeholders, empowering them in decision-making processes.

The event also served as an occasion to commemorate Open Data Day and International Women’s Day, recognizing and celebrating the significant impact of women across Rwanda.  It aimed to provide training opportunities for young girls, equipping them with the skills to contribute to open data development. The emphasis was on elucidating the importance of open data for the advancement of various development initiatives, underscoring its pivotal role in fostering progress and resilience in communities.

By fostering collaboration and knowledge-sharing among diverse stakeholders, the event sought to foster a culture of data-driven decision-making and empower individuals, particularly Youths,  women and young girls, to actively engage in shaping the future through open data initiatives. Through these efforts, EcoMappers, OpenStreetMap community reaffirmed their commitment to leveraging data for positive social impact and sustainable development in Rwanda and beyond.

Event Outline:

Training Sessions:

• Beginner Training: Introduction to ID Editor for contributing to Open Data development and Humanitarian Response. Participants signed up for OpenStreetMap.
• Advanced Training: Usage of Java OpenStreetMap (JOSM) Editor for advanced mapping and contribution to Open Data development and Humanitarian Response.

Guest Speakers:

• Mr. Ivan Buendía Gayton – Product Innovation Manager & Humaintain Advisor from Humanitarian OpenStreetMap, discussing open data development, free software like QGIS, and the importance of community participation for driving open-source data and knowledge.
• Ms. Hajar  El Ouafi from TomTom – Speaking about the necessity of women’s inclusion and diversity in open data development.
• Mr. Esdras RWAYITARE – Emphasizing open data development and its importance, particularly in geospatial data for humanitarian response, focusing on Rwanda’s susceptibility to natural disasters.
• Mr. Bernard Hakizimana – Geospatial Expert highlighting the significant contributions of open data development to the country’s development, with a special emphasis on youth participation, considering Rwanda’s high youth population.
• Mapathon:
  • An intensive Mapping Party (Mapathon) lasting three hours, wherein participants contributed to open data projects on the HOT Tasking Manager.
  • Mapping Nyarugenge High-Risk Zone for Disaster Preparedness was the focus project, aimed at identifying high-risk zones in Rwanda, susceptible to disasters like flooding, landslides, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes.
  • Participants dedicated two hours to trace ground features, aiding stakeholders in utilizing the data effectively.

The celebration of Open Data Day by EcoMappers, the OpenStreetMap community of Rwanda, holds immense significance for both the present and future of our society. Through initiatives like mapping Nyarugenge High-Risk Zone for Disaster Preparedness, we underscore the unique importance of open data in addressing critical challenges such as disaster preparedness and response.

By generating and utilizing open data, stakeholders gain invaluable insights that empower informed decision-making processes, leading to more effective responses to societal needs. Also, by providing training opportunities to youth, particularly young girls, we invest in the next generation of leaders and innovators, equipping them with the skills to contribute meaningfully to open data development and sustainable progress.

The celebration of Open Data Day not only highlights the impact of data on stakeholder decision-making but also emphasizes its role in fostering community sustainability and resilience. Through collaboration and knowledge-sharing, we reinforce our commitment to leveraging open data for positive social impact and sustainable development in Rwanda and beyond.

In essence, Open Data Day serves as a reminder of the transformative power of data-driven initiatives and the collective effort required to harness this potential for the betterment of our communities. As we reflect on the successes of this celebration, let us reaffirm our dedication to promoting open data principles and advancing towards a more inclusive, transparent, and prosperous future for all.

About Open Data Day

Open Data Day (ODD) is an annual celebration of open data all over the world. Groups from many countries create local events on the day where they will use open data in their communities.

As a way to increase the representation of different cultures, since 2023 we offer the opportunity for organisations to host an Open Data Day event on the best date within a one-week period. In 2024, a total of 287 events happened all over the world between March 2nd-8th, in 60+ countries using 15 different languages.

All outputs are open for everyone to use and re-use.

In 2024, Open Data Day was also a part of the HOT OpenSummit ’23-24 initiative, a creative programme of global event collaborations that leverages experience, passion and connection to drive strong networks and collective action across the humanitarian open mapping movement

For more information, you can reach out to the Open Knowledge Foundation team by emailing opendataday@okfn.org. You can also join the Open Data Day Google Group to ask for advice or share tips and get connected with others.

Why Decentralize?

Tweets by language

1. It can be more resilient to failures and attacks.
2. It can resist acquisition and the consequent enshittification.
3. It can scale better.
4. It has the economic advantage that it is hard to compare the total system cost with the benefits it provides because the cost is diffused across many independent budgets.

Why Not Decentralize?

1. Their advantages come with significant additional monetary and operational costs.
2. Their user experience is worse, being more complex, slower and less predictable.
3. They are in practice only as decentralized as the least decentralized layer in the stack.
4. They exhibit emergent behaviors that drive centralization.

What Does "Decentralization" Mean?

Source

The Nakamoto coefficient is the number of units in a subsystem you need to control 51% of that subsystem.

TCP/IP

IBM Cabling System

Domain Name System

Source

LOCKSS

• A centralized system would provide an attractive target for litigation by the publisher oligopoly.
• The paper library system already formed a decentralized, permissionless network.

Why LOCKSS Centralized

• Although we always paid a lot of attention to the security of LOCKSS boxes, we understood that a software monoculture was vulnerable to software supply chain attacks. So we designed a very simple protocol hoping that there would be multiple implementations. But it turned out that the things that a LOCKSS box needed to do other than handling the protocol were quite complex, so despite our best efforts we ended up with a software monoculture.
• We hoped that by using the BSD open-source license we would create a diverse community of developers, but we over-estimated the expertise and the resources of the library community, so Stanford provided the overwhelming majority of the programming effort.
• The program got started with small grants from Michael Lesk at NSF, then subsequently major grants from the NSF, Sun Microsystems and Don Waters at the Mellon Foundation. But Don was clear that grant funding could not provide the long-term sustainability needed for digital preservation. So he provided a matching grant to fund the transition to being funded by the system's users. This also transitioned the system to being permissioned, as a way to ensure the users paid.
• Although many small and open-access publishers were happy to allow LOCKSS to preserve their content, the oligopoly publishers never were. Eventually they funded a completely closed network of a dozen huge systems at major libraries around the world called CLOCKSS. This is merely the biggest of a number of closed, private LOCKSS networks that were established to serve specific genres of content, such as government documents.

Gossip Protocols

Bitcoin

1. One node is selected from the network using Proof-of-Work. It is the first node to guess a nonce that made the hash of the block have the required number of leading zeros.
2. The selected node proposes the content of the next block via the gossip network.
3. The "longest chain rule", Nakamoto's most important contribution, ensures that the network achieves consensus on the block proposed by the selected node.

Increasing Returns to Scale

Source

Bitcoin Economics

• The target block time is 10 minutes, so in a network of 600 equal nodes the average time between rewards is 100 hours, or about 4 days. But in a network of 600,000 equal nodes it is about 4,000 days or about 11 years. In such a network the average node will never gain a reward before it is obsolete.
• Moore's law means that over timescales of years the nodes are not equal, even if they are all CPUs. But shortly after Bitcoin launched, miners figured out that GPUs were much better mining rigs than CPUs, and later that mining ASICs were even better. Thus the miner's investment in hardware has only a short time to return a profit.

Mining Pools 02/27/23

/**
 * List of fixed seed nodes for the bitcoin network
 * AUTOGENERATED by contrib/seeds/generate-seeds.py
 *
 * Each line contains a BIP155 serialized (networkID, addr, port) tuple.
 */

Economies of Scale in Peer-to-Peer Networks

Source

There is no central authority capable of collecting funds from users and distributing them to the miners in proportion to these efforts. Thus miners' reimbursement must be generated organically by the blockchain itself; a permissionless blockchain needs a cryptocurrency to be secure.

Cryptocurrencies

ETH miners 11/2/20

Ethereum's Merge

ETH Stakes 05/22/23

Ethereum Validators

1. A "smart contract" uses a pseudo-random algorithm to select one node and a "committee" of other nodes with probabilities based on the nodes' stakes.
2. The one node proposes the content of the next block.
3. The "committee" of other validator nodes vote to approve the block, leading to consensus.

Validator Centralization

Producer Centralization

Producers 03/18/24

In its solicitations for public comments on the proposed spot Ether ETFs, the SEC asked, “Are there particular features related to ether and its ecosystem, including its proof of stake consensus mechanism and concentration of control or influence by a few individuals or entities, that raise unique concerns about ether’s susceptibility to fraud and manipulation?”

Software Centralization

Source

A bug in Ethereum's Nethermind client software – used by validators of the blockchain to interact with the network – knocked out a chunk of the chain's key operators on Sunday.
...
Nethermind powers around 8% of the validators that operate Ethereum, and this weekend's bug was critical enough to pull those validators offline. ... the Nethermind incident followed a similar outage earlier in January that impacted Besu, the client software behind around 5% of Ethereum's validators.
...
Around 85% of Ethereum's validators are currently powered by Geth, and the recent outages to smaller execution clients have renewed concerns that Geth's dominant market position could pose grave consequences if there were ever issues with its programming.
...
Cygaar cited data from the website execution-diversity.info noting that popular crypto exchanges like Coinbase, Binance and Kraken all rely on Geth to run their staking services. "Users who are staked in protocols that run Geth would lose their ETH" in the event of a critical issue," Cygaar wrote.

The Decentralized Web

companies have emerged that sell API access to an ethereum node they run as a service, along with providing analytics, enhanced APIs they’ve built on top of the default ethereum APIs, and access to historical transactions. Which sounds… familiar. At this point, there are basically two companies. Almost all dApps use either Infura or Alchemy in order to interact with the blockchain. In fact, even when you connect a wallet like MetaMask to a dApp, and the dApp interacts with the blockchain via your wallet, MetaMask is just making calls to Infura!

It Isn't About The Technology

Source

If a decentralized Web doesn't achieve mass participation, nothing has really changed. If it does, someone will have figured out how to leverage antitrust to enable it. And someone will have designed a technical infrastructure that fit with and built on that discovery, not a technical infrastructure designed to scratch the itches of technologists.

BitTorrent

Unless decentralized technologies specifically address the issue of how to avoid increasing returns to scale they will not, of themselves, fix this economic problem. Their increasing returns to scale will drive layering centralized businesses on top of decentralized infrastructure, replicating the problem we face now, just on different infrastructure.

Source

Blockchains

Every widely used blockchain has a privileged set of entities that can modify the semantics of the blockchain to potentially change past transactions.

The challenge with using a blockchain is that one has to either (a) accept its immutability and trust that its programmers did not introduce a bug, or (b) permit upgradeable contracts or off-chain code that share the same trust issues as a centralized approach.

Source

A dense, possibly non-scale-free, subnetwork of Bitcoin nodes appears to be largely responsible for reaching consensus and communicating with miners—the vast majority of nodes do not meaningfully contribute to the health of the network.

Of all Bitcoin traffic, 60% traverses just three ISPs.

Source

The Ethereum ecosystem has a significant amount of code reuse: 90% of recently deployed Ethereum smart contracts are at least 56% similar to each other.

Decentralized Finance

Source

TL;DR: DeFi is neither decentralized, nor very good finance, so regulators should have no qualms about clamping down on it to protect the stability of our financial system and broader economy.

While the main vision of DeFi’s proponents is intermediation without centralised entities, we argue that some form of centralisation is inevitable. As such, there is a “decentralisation illusion”. First and foremost, centralised governance is needed to take strategic and operational decisions. In addition, some features in DeFi, notably the consensus mechanism, favour a concentration of power.

Based on the [Herfindahl-Hirschman Index], the most competition exists between decentralized finance exchanges, with the top four venues holding about 54% of total market share. Other categories including decentralized derivatives exchanges, DeFi lenders, and liquid staking, are much less competitive. For example, the top four liquid staking projects hold about 90% of total market share in that category,

Federation

Source

Source

That leaves Mastodon with a total of 1.8 million monthly active users at present, an increase of 5% month-over-month and 10,000 servers, up 12%

Summary

a ledger agreed upon by consensus of thousands of anonymous entities, none of which can be held responsible or be shut down by some malevolent government

In the case of blockchain protocols, the mathematical and economic reasoning behind the safety of the consensus often relies crucially on the uncoordinated choice model, or the assumption that the game consists of many small actors that make decisions independently. If any one actor gets more than 1/3 of the mining power in a proof of work system, they can gain outsized profits by selfish-mining. However, can we really say that the uncoordinated choice model is realistic when 90% of the Bitcoin network’s mining power is well-coordinated enough to show up together at the same conference?

it is much harder for participants in decentralized systems to collude to act in ways that benefit them at the expense of other participants, whereas the leaderships of corporations and governments collude in ways that benefit themselves but harm less well-coordinated citizens, customers, employees and the general public all the time.

Questions

• What is a viable business model for participation that has decreasing returns to scale?
• How can Sybil attacks be prevented other than by imposing massive costs?
• How can collusion between supposedly independent nodes be prevented?
• What software development and deployment model prevents a monoculture emerging?
• Does federation provide the upsides of decentralization without the downsides?

Discover how AI-powered vector search goes beyond simple keyword matching to deliver significantly more relevant and intuitive search results.

The post Beyond Keywords: How AI Vector Search Transforms Your Search Experience appeared first on Lucidworks.

Text originally published at OK Somalia Blog.

Open Data Day is an annual global celebration of open data, and this year, Open Knowledge Somalia took part by hosting a training workshop on “Open Street Mapping” on March 25, 2024. The event, sponsored by Zamzam University of Science and Technology, featured Abdiaziz Hassan Ahmed from Open Knowledge Somalia as the lead facilitator. The workshop aimed to enlighten attendees on the fundamentals and applications of open street mapping, a collective method for creating and refining maps with freely accessible geographic data.

Throughout the workshop, various facets of open street mapping were explored, including its significance in disaster relief, urban planning, public health, and community development. Attendees were introduced to essential tools and methodologies for contributing to open street mapping projects, such as gathering data through GPS devices or satellite images and collaboratively editing maps on platforms like OpenStreetMap. Furthermore, the training provided participants with valuable insights and competencies in open street mapping initiatives, offering advantages for both individuals and organizations.

The Open Knowledge Somalia team extends its heartfelt gratitude to all participants and the facilitator for their invaluable contributions to the workshop.

About Open Data Day

Open Data Day (ODD) is an annual celebration of open data all over the world. Groups from many countries create local events on the day where they will use open data in their communities.

As a way to increase the representation of different cultures, since 2023 we offer the opportunity for organisations to host an Open Data Day event on the best date within a one-week period. In 2024, a total of 287 events happened all over the world between March 2nd-8th, in 60+ countries using 15 different languages.

All outputs are open for everyone to use and re-use.

In 2024, Open Data Day was also a part of the HOT OpenSummit ’23-24 initiative, a creative programme of global event collaborations that leverages experience, passion and connection to drive strong networks and collective action across the humanitarian open mapping movement

For more information, you can reach out to the Open Knowledge Foundation team by emailing opendataday@okfn.org. You can also join the Open Data Day Google Group to ask for advice or share tips and get connected with others.

As a winning organisation of an Open Data Day 2024 mini-grant, Diálogos organised the Datos y Tarros event in Guatemala on 7 March. The objective was to open the space to promote data-based initiatives that use machine learning tools, predictive modeling, data mining, natural language processing (NLP), Internet of Things (IoT), among others.

For this edition, within the framework of Open Data Day and the commemoration of International Women’s Day, we talked about research, journalism and innovation projects based on data with a gender perspective to bring to the table a conversation about the challenges that exist regarding violence and inequalities that affect women and girls differently.

We held conversations with strategic allies to join efforts and obtain better results. For this reason, we worked in alliance with Proyecto Poporopo, an open space to art, gastronomy and innovation ideas.

We made calls through our social networks to invite research, journalism and innovations projects based on data to present their results, the selection criteria were the following:

1. The selected project makes use, analysis or visualization of data related to the theme of the event.
2. The organization, media or individual person applies methods and/or tools in a rigorous, systematic and innovative way.
3. The data was obtained transparently and through reliable and publicly accessible sources.
4. The organization, media or individual respects human rights criteria and international ethical standards on the use of data.

We exchanged experiences for the collection and processing of data from a gender perspective. In addition, each project provided valuable evidence of the challenges that exist regarding violence and inequalities that affect women and girls differently.

The projects we heard about were:

• Without women there is no democracy, a project promoted by Red Ciudadana and Plaza Pública that collects and presents data analysis of the participation of women in the political sphere and shows the differences and challenges faced in achieving parity.
• Living Without Violence, an initiative of Guate Diversa e Inclusiva and launched with the support of Hivos; It consists of a portal that collects data, contains visualizations and analysis blogs on violence against women, girls and the LGBTIQ+ population.
• Women Who Code presented a “Diagnosis about the gender gap in Information Technologies”.
• The Open Justice Observatory from the civil society of the Grupo de Apoyo Xela (GAX), unveiled its web page, which focuses on accessing data from the justice sector in Guatemala to make visible how efficient is the justice system in the country attending women, the LBGTIQ+ population, children and youths, and the migrant population.
• On behalf of Diálogos we presented the “Report about violence in the interactions of the social network X (Twitter) during the electoral campaign of 2023”. This report identifies different manifestations of violence in the comments of the social media X (Twitter) to different candidates during the electoral campaign in 2023. The profiles analyzed were women, people belonging to indigenous peoples, and LGBTIQ+ communities.

About Open Data Day

Open Data Day (ODD) is an annual celebration of open data all over the world. Groups from many countries create local events on the day where they will use open data in their communities.

As a way to increase the representation of different cultures, since 2023 we offer the opportunity for organisations to host an Open Data Day event on the best date within a one-week period. In 2024, a total of 287 events happened all over the world between March 2nd-8th, in 60+ countries using 15 different languages.

All outputs are open for everyone to use and re-use.

In 2024, Open Data Day was also a part of the HOT OpenSummit ’23-24 initiative, a creative programme of global event collaborations that leverages experience, passion and connection to drive strong networks and collective action across the humanitarian open mapping movement

For more information, you can reach out to the Open Knowledge Foundation team by emailing opendataday@okfn.org. You can also join the Open Data Day Google Group to ask for advice or share tips and get connected with others.

As announced in January, this year the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) team is working to develop a stable version of the Open Data Editor (ODE) application. Thanks to financial support from the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, we will be able to create a no-code tool for data manipulation and publishing that is accessible to everyone, unlocking the power of data for key groups including scientists, journalists and data activists. (Read more about the Open Data Editor).

Since the beginning of the year, we’ve been busy building the team that will work on developing the app. After meeting and interacting with incredible candidates from all over the world, the team is now formed as follows, including three software developers, a product owner and a project manager. We are happy to announce them to the world today.

Sara Petti, Project Manager

Sara leads the Open Knowledge Network, which brings together experts of the digital commons globally. The Network’s main focus is the intersection of tech and democracy. At Open Knowledge Foundation Sara also supports open source and open data communities, like the Frictionless Data one, and is passionate about all issues linked to community care and health, like governance. Sara has extensive experience in managing projects. Before joining Open Knowledge Foundation, she was part of a project advocating for public libraries to be on the EU agenda (notably for the review of the Copyright Directive), and was part of the team that developed Khan Academy in French.

Romina Colman, Product Owner

Romina is a hybrid data journalist working at the intersection of technology and communities of practice. For more than 10 years, Romina has designed and implemented complex data initiatives in close collaboration with journalists and NGOs. Her expertise lies in building bridges between technical and non-technical teams to transform abstract plans into concrete and impactful projects. Romina holds a degree in Communication sciences from the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina) and a master’s degree in Media and Communications (Data and Society) from the London School of Economics and Political Sciences (LSE).

Patricio Del Boca, Tech Lead

Patricio is an Information Systems Engineer with more than 10 years of experience both in the private sector and NGOs. He has also been an activist of the open movement since a young age. He likes to collaborate with different communities to disseminate technical knowledge and participate as a speaker in events to spread the importance of more simple technologies. He loves programming and is always exploring new projects and tools.

Evgeny Karev, Senior Software Developer

Evgeny is a passionate open-source developer living in Portugal. During his tenure at OKFN, he has led the Frictionless Data project, and designed and partially authored a complete programming stack from low-level data reading to high-level end-user applications like Open Data Editor and services like Frictionless Framework and Livemark. Evgeny participated in many open data empowering projects like CKAN, OpenTrials, and OpenSpending as a Python/JavaScript programmer.

Guergana Tzatchkova, Senior Software Developer

Guergana is a software developer working mainly on free and open source software, educational tools and non-profit organisations. With a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, her interest in the creative use of media and technology led her to a Master’s degree in Design of Multimedia and Interactive Systems and later a PhD in Theory and History of Cinema in Barcelona. For several years she has been working on projects that combine audio, video, design and programming. She has also been involved in NGOs working on gender issues in Mexico.

If you want to get more closely involved with the development of the Open Data Editor application, you can express your interest in joining one of the testing sessions by filling this form.

You can also email us at info@okfn.org, follow the GitHub repository or join the Frictionless Data community. We meet once a month.

Read more

• Open Data Editor: what we learned from user research
• Announcement of strategic funding for the Open Data Editor
• Introducing Open Data Editor (beta): Towards a No-Code Data App for Everyone

The announcement was made last July by the Prime Minister, Anatole Collinet MAKOSSO. On Tuesday 12 March 2024, the Minister of the Interior and Decentralisation, who is in charge of elections, convened a meeting of election stakeholders, political parties and associations, and representatives of civil society organisations involved in multiparty elections, to officially inform them of the announcement and request their involvement in the process of implementing biometrics for the elections on the horizon: the presidential elections in 2026 and the legislative elections in 2027.

To this end, a political dialogue will be organised to determine the contours and content of the system, which will be used to revise the electoral law, train electoral officials and raise voter awareness.

Biometrics has often been called for by the Congolese opposition, which has always contested the results of previous elections.

In fact, it has become customary for the Congolese government to organise a political dialogue on the eve of each multi-party election to guarantee the organisation and peaceful conduct of the forthcoming electoral process. On this occasion, political parties and associations, as well as civil society organisations, propose solutions for inclusive and peaceful multiparty elections.

It was during the Owando dialogue, organised in 2022, that the use of biometrics in elections was recommended by the participants.

Electoral processes in the Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville), from the first experience of multiparty pluralist elections in 1959, resumed in 1992 after a period of single-party rule, to the present day, have been a source of armed conflict and internal civil war. The bloodiest of these were in 1997, 1998, 2015 and 2016, and several opposition candidates are still in prison. 

The use of biometrics in the Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville) could serve as a remedy for the ills that undermine the electoral process, including multiple voting, ballot box stuffing, the inflating of the electorate, etc.

The political will to use biometrics as a means of peacefully resolving political disputes and strengthening the credibility of multi-party elections in the Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville) should be seized as an opportunity for the international community and national and international civil society to propose actions to support the implementation of biometrics in multi-party democratic elections in the Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville).

The following post is one in a regular series on issues of Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility, compiled by a team of OCLC contributors.

Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash

Reclassifying for religious equity

The 2024 Public Library Association (PLA) Conference featured the program “Increase Religious Equity by Reclassifying Dewey 200’s,” which described how two public libraries implemented the optional arrangement of the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) 200 Religion Class. OCLC’s DDC Senior Editor Alex Kyrios explained that the standard arrangement uses the bulk of the 200s for Christianity topics (230-280), leaving the span 290-299 for other religions. The result is books about Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and other major religions are often shelved very close together with long numbers that do not fit on book spines. For example, Islam, the second largest religion by population, is classed in 297 in the standard arrangement while the optional arrangement uses 281-298. Librarian Emily McDonald from Lawrence Public Library (OCLC Symbol: KSA) in Lawrence, Kansas, described how her library implemented the optional arrangement and created a 220-299 Project Packet to help other libraries considering switching to the optional arrangement. Elizabeth McKinstry and Matthew Jaquith, two librarians at Springfield City Library (OCLC Symbol: WRS) in Springfield, Massachusetts, were inspired by a Tweet from the Lawrence Public Library to implement the optional arrangement in their library system.

This program was inspiring to me in multiple ways. It demonstrates how our profession improves cataloging practices in response to patrons’ needs. It is also a wonderful example of how librarians help each other to provide better service to users. The Lawrence Public Library’s project packet helped Springfield to complete its reclassification project, and the Springfield librarians have provided outreach to other New England public libraries about how they might implement the optional arrangement. Contributed by Kate James.

Book censorship in academic, public, and school libraries

On March 28, 2024, Ithaka S+R, the not-for-profit dedicated to “helping the academic community use digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways,” issued its research report on “Censorship and Academic Freedom in the Public University Library,” by Senior Analyst Ess Pokornowski and Vice President Roger C. Schonfeld. Interviewing five library leaders from U.S. states with restrictive DEI and gender-issue policies and five from states where such laws have been “tabled or defeated,” they found strong agreement on the goal of defending academic freedom within the context of their institutions of higher education. ALA’s American Libraries Direct for 3 April 2024, appropriately brought the Ithaka S+R report together with Kelly Jensen’s Book Riot roundup of “How Public Libraries Are Targeted Right Now—It’s Not ‘Just’ Books:  Book Censorship News, March 29, 2024.” Former librarian Jensen particularly notes how censorship in school libraries tends to differ from that in public libraries.

Both the Pokornowski-Schonfeld research and the Jensen report contain reasons for optimism, but strongly argue against any complacency on the part of library communities. Because they are superficially similar types of organizations operating within dissimilar institutional and political contexts, school libraries, public libraries, and public university libraries face some different challenges, although there are certainly common threads. Perhaps the most obvious and ominous thread is that the challenges are not going away any time soon. Contributed by Jay Weitz.

Arlington Public Library’s Passport Program receives 2024 City Cultural Diversity Award

The City of Arlington, Texas has been honored with the 2024 Cultural Diversity Award for Arlington Public Library’s (OCLC Symbol: AR9)  Passport Scholarship program. Presented by the National League of Cities, this award recognizes leadership in developing creative and effective programs that demonstrate quality and innovation in cultural diversity. The Passport Scholarship program was designed to help students in the Arlington community obtain their first passport, eliminating the initial hurdle for those eager to explore other cultures. The program is funded by the Otis and Rosie Brown Foundation and was launched in 2022 to align with the library’s goal of supporting learning and new experiences for residents. “By enriching their own lives, they will ultimately influence, shape, and edify the community they live in.”

As demand for U.S. passports remains high, and in times of reduced funding, many libraries are capitalizing on this need by serving as an official Passport Acceptance Facility (PAF) for the U.S. Department of State. American Libraries shares one library’s experience on running a passport acceptance facility, and the U.S. Department of State provides step by step instructions on becoming a Passport Acceptance Facility. Contributed by Jennifer Peterson.

Reparative Archival Description: The Past, Present, and Future

Yale University’s Reparative Archival Description (RAD) Working Group is hosting an 18 April virtual panel that is focused on reparative archival description, and how practices have evolved over the last five years. Speakers will focus on challenges and opportunities and are from a range of institutions, including Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan (OCLC Symbol: BEU), University of North Carolina (OCLC Symbol: NOC), Algoma University (OCLC Symbol: CNALU), UC Berkeley (OCLC Symbol: CUY), and Yale University (OCLC Symbol: YUS).

Because of the nature of archival description, (typically more voluminous and prose based than bibliographic description) there are special challenges inherent in identifying and remediating language used in finding aids and other modes of archival description, especially when those descriptive forms may have been written decades ago. In hosting online sessions like this, Yale’s RAD Working group is helping to contribute to a broad community of practice that continues to grow. Contributed by Merrilee Proffitt.

The post Advancing IDEAs: Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, 16 April 2024 appeared first on Hanging Together.

It seems the driver thought that it was OK to drive home with a blood alcohol level of 0.26 because he believed Musk's hype that Fake Self Driving would handle it despite having to repeatedly override it on the way out.

Source

The case involves a fatal crash in March 2018, when a Tesla in Autopilot careened into a highway barrier near Mountain View, Calif., after getting confused by what the company’s lawyers described in court documents as a “faded and nearly obliterated” lane line.

The driver, Walter Huang, 38, was killed. An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board later cited Tesla’s failure to limit the use of Autopilot in such conditions as a contributing factor: The company has acknowledged to National Transportation Safety Board that Autopilot is designed for areas with “clear lane markings.”

Under oath, however, Tesla engineer Akshay Phatak last year described the software as fairly basic in at least one respect: the way it steers on its own.

“If there are clearly marked lane lines, the system will follow the lane lines,” Phatak said under questioning in July 2023. Tesla’s groundbreaking system, he said, was simply “designed” to follow painted lane lines.
...
In his deposition, Phatak said Autopilot will work wherever the car’s cameras detect lines on the road: “As long as there are painted lane lines, the system will follow them,” he said.

Source

Huang, an engineer at Apple, bought his Tesla Model X in fall 2017 and drove it regularly to work along U.S. Highway 101, a crowded multilane freeway that connects San Francisco to the tech hubs of Silicon Valley. On the day of the crash, his car began to drift as a lane line faded. It then picked up a clearer line to the left — putting the car between lanes and on a direct trajectory for a safety barrier separating the highway from an exit onto State Route 85.

Huang’s car hit the barrier at 71 mph, pulverizing its front end, twisting it into unrecognizable heap. Huang was pronounced dead hours later, according to court documents.
...
In the months preceding the crash, Huang’s vehicle swerved in a similar location eleven times, according to internal Tesla data discussed by Huang’s lawyers during a court hearing last month. According to the data, the car corrected itself seven times. Four other times, it required Huang’s intervention. Huang was allegedly playing a game on his phone when the crash occurred.

For years, Tesla and federal regulators have been aware of problems with Autopilot following lane lines, including cars being guided in the wrong direction of travel and placed in the path of cross-traffic — with sometimes fatal results. Unlike vehicles that are designed to be completely autonomous, like cars from Waymo or Cruise, Teslas do not currently use sensors such as radar or lidar to detect obstacles. Instead, Teslas rely on cameras.

After the crash that killed Huang, Tesla told officials that it updated its software to better recognize “poor and faded” lane markings and to audibly alert drivers when vehicles might lose track of a fading lane. The updates stopped short of forcing the feature to disengage on its own in those situations, however. About two years after Huang died, federal investigators said they could not determine whether those updates would have been sufficient to “accurately and consistently detect unusual or worn lane markings” and therefore prevent Huang’s crash.

Elon Musk famously claimed that Tesla is worth zero without Full Self Driving. But although this is typical Musk BS, ... unlike some other utterances it contains a kernel of truth. Tesla is valued as a technology company not a car company. Thus it is critical for Telsa that its technology be viewed as better than those of other car companies; anything that suggests it is limited or inadequate is a big problem not just for the company but also for Musk's personal wealth.

Tesla is, overwhelmingly, a maker of electric vehicles, combining high growth with high margins — until recently anyway. Deliveries increased by 38% in 2023 — below the company’s long-term target of 50% per year — and the consensus for 2024 implies just 21%. Trailing 12-month net profit as of the third-quarter was actually down, year over year.

Yet in the most starry-eyed Wall Street financial models, the making and selling of vehicles — generating 92% of Tesla’s current gross profit — accounts for only a fraction of Tesla’s purported valuation. The rest relates to whatever Tesla’s next big thing might turn out to be, usually something related to artificial intelligence, be it robotaxis, licensed self-driving systems, the Optimus humanoid robot or just something else that might spring from the company’s Dojo supercomputing project.

Amorphous as the narrative may be, remove it and the tenuous tether between Tesla’s valuation and something approximating a potential future reality evaporates entirely.

Tesla's FSD costs have tripled since 2019, costing more than $15,000 in the United States. This pumped up, fraudulently, Tesla’s margins on selling vehicles, however Elon Musk’s promises did not come to fruition after many deadlines have passed.

In a push for end-of-quarter sales, Musk recently mandated that all sales and service staff install and demo FSD for customers before handing over the keys.
...
In a recent April 5th Tweet on X, Elon Musk says full level 5 FSD is coming in August, 2024. Tesla’s stock so far in 2024 is down 33%.

The myth that Tesla is a technology or AI company has been very crucial in the false promise marketing around the brand. Elon Musk’s weird response to this failure in 2024 is to poach AI talent from his Tesla to his own x.AI company.

This is because x.AI plans to do a huge $3 Billion funding round that would value the AI startup at $18 Billion. This is all more or less breaking news.

The problem is AI frauds have a habit of big declines. Elon Musk may have to make his SpaceX company, valued at around $180 billion as of early 2024, go public with an IPO to raise the funds needed to support his X Corp empire.

Since 2017, officials with NTSB have urged Tesla to limit Autopilot use to highways without cross traffic, the areas for which the company’s user manuals specify Autopilot is intended. Asked by an attorney for Huang’s family if Tesla “has decided it’s not going to do anything” on that recommendation, Phatak argued that Tesla was already following the NTSB’s guidance by limiting Autopilot use to roads that have lane lines.

When asked whether Autopilot would use GPS or other mapping systems to ensure a road was suitable for the technology, Phatak said it would not. “It’s not map based,” he said — an answer that diverged from Musk’s statement in a 2016 conference call with reporters that Tesla could turn to GPS as a backup “when the road markings may disappear.” In an audio recording of the call cited by Huang family attorneys, Musk said the cars could rely on satellite navigation “for a few seconds” while searching for lane lines.

Phatak’s testimony also shed light on other driver-assist design choices, such as Tesla’s decision to monitor driver attention through sensors that gauge pressure on the steering wheel. Asked repeatedly by the Huang family’s lawyer what tests or studies Tesla performed to ensure the effectiveness of this method, Phatak said it simply tested it with employees.

Tesla’s heavy reliance on lane lines reflects the broader lack of redundancy within its systems when compared to rivals. The Post has previously reported that Tesla’s decision to omit radar from newer models, at Musk’s behest, culminated in an uptick in crashes.

Other Tesla design decisions have differed from competitors pursuing autonomous vehicles. For one thing, Tesla sells its systems to consumers, while other companies tend to deploy their own fleets as taxis. It also employs a unique, camera-based system and places fewer limits on where the software can be engaged. For example, a spokesperson for Waymo, the Alphabet-owned self-driving car company, said its vehicles operate only in areas that have been rigorously mapped and where the cars have been tested in conditions including fog and rain, a process known as “geo-fencing.”

“We’ve designed our system knowing that lanes and their markings can change, be temporarily occluded, move, and sometimes, disappear completely,” Waymo spokeswoman Katherine Barna said.

On 8th March 2024, which also doubled as International Women’s Day, Rural Aid Foundation held a community Open Data Day event titled “Empowering migrant and refugee women to use open data to hold duty bearers accountable for quality sexual reproductive health services“. This event was directly linked to the advancement of SDG 3: Good health and well-being. The event took place in Nyamarunda sub-county, Kibaale district, Uganda and it was aimed at exploring the use of open Sexual Reproductive Health data (readily available and freely accessible) from public health facilities as a tool to hold duty bearers such as humanitarian agencies, refugee leaders and health service providers accountable to deliver quality Sexual reproductive health service for refugee and migrant women in Kibaale.

Activity 1: Mobilized and oriented a pool of 60 rural migrant refugee women and girls and 10 women-led community organizations on the concept of open data and how to use open data to hold duty bearers accountable for providing quality SRHR services

Rural Aid Foundation mobilized a pool of 60 rural migrant refugee women and girls and women-led community organizations and oriented them on the concept of open data and how to use open data as a tool to hold duty bearers accountable in providing quality SRHR services for refugees and migrants. The orientation that was conducted by Ms Scovia Mbabazi covered a basic introduction to open data and the dimensions of open data in the context of Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) including;  

• Availability and access: That data must be available and accessible as a whole or at a reasonable or affordable cost. In the context of sexual reproductive health data, this means that sexual reproductive health data should be available to refugees and anyone who needs it to improve the quality of health of refugees. Health facilities in refugee settings should ensure the availability and accessibility to data related to maternal and newborn health, contraception, safe abortion and post-abortion care, and Gender-based violence. The data should be available to anyone who needs it in a convenient and modifiable form.

• Re-use and Redistribution: The SRHR data available in the health facilities in the refugee settlement or emergency settings must allow re-use, redistribution, and intermixing with other data sets to enable duty bearers to make decisions to address issues related to the quality of SRHR services provided.

• Universal participation: The data should be available for use, re-use and redistribution across a range of fields and stakeholders, including refugees, migrants and duty bearers such as health service providers to improve the quality of services.

The facilitator further discussed eight open government data principles developed in 2007 by 30 open government advocates and these were discussed in the context of SRHR for refugees noting that public SRHR data shall be considered open if it is made public in a way that complies with the following eight principles:

1. Complete: All public SRHR is made available and is not subject to valid privacy, security or privilege limitations.
2. Primary: Data is as collected at the source such as health facility registers and health management systems with the highest level of quality and not modified in any form.
3. Timely: Data should be provided as quickly as possible when it is needed to enable duty-bearers to use it for decision-making.
4. Accessible: Data is available to a range of stakeholders for a range of different purposes.
5. Machine processable: Data should be easily processed and used in any form as required by the user.
6. Non-discriminatory: Data is available to anyone, with no requirement of authentication or registration required.
7. Non-proprietary: Data should be available to everyone without anyone claiming control over the data. It should be publicly available health data. Data is available in a format over which no entity has exclusive control.
8. License-free: Data should not be subject to any copyright patent or trade secret regulation. However, reasonable privacy and security to protect the rights of patients.

Due to the sensitive nature of SRHR data, participants recognized some ethical issues that must be upheld to ensure the rights of refugees and migrants are upheld in the use of open data.

‘’Some SRHR data such as HIV test results, post abortion data, cervical cancer test results cannot be open to everyone to access especially if it includes personal information such as the name of the patients. It is important to note that open data usage in refugee settings to hold duty bearers accountable must ensure the rights of refugee patients are protected’’

Health facility in charge, Bjubuli Health Center

To ensure these ethical and human rights issues are understood by all the participants, the facilitator discussed privacy, confidentiality and informed consent issues in accessing open health data.

• Privacy: This refers to the fact that all SRHR data to be accessed, reused and shared must ensure the privacy of the ‘’data owners’’ – the patients and no personal information such as names should be shared along with open data. Health facilities should not provide SRHR data for refugees with personal identifying information such as names.
• Confidentiality: Any health data such as HIV status data should not be put in the public domain provided it holds or contains personal identifying data such as names of a patient.
• Informed consent: Health service providers should always ensure the ‘’data owners’’ are notified why their data is being shared with anyone and the data should be availed for reasons that help to benefit and improve refugee health outcomes or to improve the quality of SRHR services.

Activity 2: Worked with migrant refugee women/girls and organizations to identify and document Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights service quality gaps/issues using publicly accessible data from Kibaale community health facility

Rural Aid Foundation worked with migrant refugee women/girls and organizations to document Sexual Reproductive Health and Rights service quality issues such as lack of SRHR commodities such as condoms, lack of cervical cancer screening services, lack of adequate family planning services using publicly accessible data the community health facility information registers. These were presented to duty bearers for corrective action to be taken.

Activity 3: Conducted a flash mob to create awareness on awareness on open data issues and their implications Good health and wellbeing (SDG3)

Rural Aid Foundation worked with migrant women and girls to hold flash mobs in Kibaale town to create community awareness on open data issues and their implications on achieving SDG 3. Rural women ambassadors held a match and flashmob to further create community awareness of open data as a tool to hold duty bearers accountable for quality SRHR services for refugees to achieve Universal Health Coverage (SDG 3). During the flash mobs, the migrant women and refugees displayed messages calling upon duty bearers to ensure access to data at health facilities as a tool for migrant women and refugees to demand quality SRHR services.

Activity 4: Hold a peaceful match at Kibaale district headquarters to present the open data issues identified by the Kibaale community health facility to the district health officer and other district leaders to seek corrective action.

The migrant women were matched to Kibaale Health Center IV, where they presented issues discussed under Activity 2 to duty bearers for corrective action to be taken. The duty bearers through the district biostatistician committed to ensuring all health facility health data clerks extract and publish sexual reproductive health services and delivery data from the health management information system and avail it to community members via the community note boards.

Conclusion

Open data can be used by community members to hold service providers accountable for improving the quality of sexual reproductive health services in refugee settings. 

About Open Data Day

Open Data Day (ODD) is an annual celebration of open data all over the world. Groups from many countries create local events on the day where they will use open data in their communities.

As a way to increase the representation of different cultures, since 2023 we offer the opportunity for organisations to host an Open Data Day event on the best date within a one-week period. In 2024, a total of 287 events happened all over the world between March 2nd-8th, in 60+ countries using 15 different languages.

All outputs are open for everyone to use and re-use.

In 2024, Open Data Day was also a part of the HOT OpenSummit ’23-24 initiative, a creative programme of global event collaborations that leverages experience, passion and connection to drive strong networks and collective action across the humanitarian open mapping movement

For more information, you can reach out to the Open Knowledge Foundation team by emailing opendataday@okfn.org. You can also join the Open Data Day Google Group to ask for advice or share tips and get connected with others.

it’s been a while since i’ve been deeply unsettled by the lack of resolution in a film, especially if the film’s conceit is overall preposterous. however, having just experienced the disquieting jouissance of such cinematic bombast last night, here i am, with a need to verbalize and process this tormentand whom else would i have to thank for this but my favorite member of the coppola family, nicolas cage, rumplestiltskin of the dramatic arts that he is. what, then, of the film that originated this long-winded introduction of this disquiet from theological and epistemological perspectives? it would be none other than KNOWING (2009, dir. alex proyas). spoilers follow, so be forewarned, lest ye find not your salvation.

i will not go into the plot in depth, but rather obliquely and nonlinearly. as such, the remainder of my writing assumes familiarity with the movie, and i’ll say up front that i’m providing an unalloyed recommendation. if i were to sum it up, however, its major thematic aspects relate to knowledge, faith, other-worldly forces, and the epistemic uncertainty that undergirds all of them. i’m struck by the movie’s refusal to take a clear stance on its major plot points, and thus places responsibility on the viewer to bring its own interpretation to bear. even in moments of it being at its most clear-cut — namely, the penultimate scene of ἀποκάλυψις, a razing of new york city by fire caused by climate change “solar flares” (i.e. “the wrath of god [that] burns against them” a la jonathan edwards) — an engaged viewer will most notably exclaim “what the actual fuck?” despite this ambiguity, this film is masterfully unsubtle, teeming with intertextual references to christian eschatology across multiple denominations and media, an embarassing use of skepticism as a kind of morality strawman-cum-punching bag, and extremely intense depictions of plausible(!) real-world disasters with mildly sickening CGI.

in terms of its focus on free will, KNOWING initially opens with the conceit of nicolas cage as john koestler, an MIT astrophysicist holding court in an undergrad class opposing free will with some sort of in-between hybrid of nomological determinism and predeterminism. it is here that john, says that he thinks “shit just happens,” and soon after we discover that he’s an atheist academic raised as preacher’s kid that had his latest crisis of faith after his wife died in a horrible hotel fire just days before his birthday. as he becomes obsessed with decoding and identifies the “real life” past and impending catastrophes, we see him bias towards predeterminism, but the as the truth itself is slowly revealed we are supposed to infer that every known cataclysm is delineated as a warning that something is coming for EE — everyone else. (it’s giving “this place is a message and is part of a system of messages; pay attention to it.” real “pick me” vibes.) as john dives into to try to stop or save people from terrible things happening (literally sticking his hands in flames to no avail in a failed attempt to save a plane crash victim), he is reminded and humbled by the great futility of his own existence, and his powerlessness in a cruel universe. why are all these things happening? and why do we know the exact predicted death toll?

as we start to realize this, it’s here that i see that the film begins shifting from predeterminism to predestination, and that perhaps, someone in the film is a messenger who will receive this message from the far beyond. it’s clear that the movie’s precocious child characters – john’s son, caleb, and abby, the granddaughter of lucinda, the girl who wrote the numbers that went into the time capsule – are the recipients of the gift of prophecy. but surprise: they’re also special in that they are the elect, bound to bearing the life of the world to come and imminently transported away by these celestial beings. and yet, are they angels? are they aliens? are they both? where does that leave poor old john? fucked in the end: he is not one of the elect. faced with his own spiritual damnation and physical annihilation, he returns to his ancestral home to be with his mildly estranged parents and heavily queer-coded nurse sister.

what’s fascinating to me about this movie is that it refuses to come out and really say what it’s about, and here’s where i disagree with roger ebert.¹ we are supposed to be unsure whether they’re angels or aliens because their depiction is ambiguous. what fascinates me is that the lead writer, ryne pearson, also deliberately plays at that ambiguity.² just the same, cage also believes it’s up to the viewer what to take from the movie, and expects that it might stimulate discussion.^{3 4} compare donald barthelme:

this is, i think, the relation of art to world. i suggest that art is always a meditation upon external reality rather than a representation of external reality or a jackleg attempt to “be” external reality.⁵

pearson is apparently a dedicated Catholic, too.⁶ these aspects combined make it also all the more fascinating to me that the movie’s themes feel particularly Calvinist: despite our faith and good works, most of us are truly and undeniably bound to suffer. yet as john says goodbye to caleb, and both as foreshadowed by john’s phone conversation to tell his father that the end is nigh and in the koestler family barbecue incineration and damnation, there is a presumption of being ready for that next life and being sure that you’ll be reunited in the world to come based on faith⁷ – which in some senses is a not-knowing.

however, a good Calvinist epistemologist (yes, i’m side-eying Plantinga) might not say this, and may well lead us down a path of something like the presuppositional apologetics of cornelius van til. in these cases, the world of KNOWING seems to suggest that we need to accept that world’s God that makes it possible for an atheist like john to be so rationally minded in the beginning of the movie. john operates in the discursive frame of science and the academy and thus has to perform rationality to be credible. caleb is disappointed when he realizes (early in the movie) that john doesn’t believe in heaven. despite thinking that “shit just happens” and that “we can’t know for sure” (i.e., that heaven exists), at some point in the past john has accepted a presuppositional mindset, which he slowly regains as he sees the truths in the messages. he specifically notes that he lost a form of faith in knowing what was coming while in the throes of grief, which in turn led him to be more nomologically oriented. however, the list of numbers was an intervention that led him to reconsider his loss of faith, because despite how unlikely it might be to an extremely rational astrophysicist, he was called back to accept the presuppositions that inform all of his underlying complexities.

again, we need to remember this was most likely not intentionally a Calvinist apocalypse film. the statements of pearson and cage don’t jive with that. if anything, KNOWING indeed puts the onus on us to observe and dissect the discursive and epistemological frames we look through to square religion and the world. this is perhaps, indeed, why the movie is so baffling - that not even the angel/iens ever describe how or what ever directly to the audience. one cannot simply anticipate what will happen, and that in itself, leads to the revelatory experience of watching this film itself. without prior knowledge, without that grounding, you really have no fucking clue what you’re getting yourself into. with apologies to barthelme, this is the combinatorial agility of knowledge and belief, the exponential generation of meaning, once they’re allowed to go to bed together… ⁵ — the liaison where we can experience the epistemic jouissance of KNOWING.

I recently read Tyson Yunkaporta's Right story, wrong story – his latest book after the one that grew a bunch of new synapses in my brain, Sand Talk.

It was a different experience. Perhaps it seemed less revelatory because I'd already read Sand Talk. Perhaps Yunkaporta just had less time to translate these ideas into something mainstream white Australians would understand. Perhaps the endless grind of trying to survive as an Indigenous person in a settler-colonial capitalist state made it harder to write. I'm not complaining – this is a great book and you should read it. But it's hard not to hope that when one reads an author's first book for a general audience and it utterly changed how one sees the world, that the next one will be just as exhilarating. It's hardly his fault that it didn't rewire my brain a second time.

The book covers a lot of ground, but the primary concept is that when telling a story (the best way to convey information) you can tell it in a way that is "right story", or you can tell it in a way that is "wrong story". The underlying message running through this is that how you convey information and tell stories is just as important as the "content" you are conveying.

In many ways this is not particularly New News. Any educator who has undergone any training in the last 30 years will know about "constructivism" and that the idea of education as simply passing knowledge to learners like one fills a jug with water is a completely inaccurate description of how learning actually works. But I think there are some additional, more subtle things here. It's not just that "active learning" is useful. How we explain things, who is acknowledged and who is silenced, what is noted and what is glossed over – all these things matter even if the subject matter seems very straightforward. Above all, Tyson Yunkaporta teaches me again and again the importance of Noticing. It's not a coincidence that I read Sand Talk in the second year of Melbourne's interminable Covid lockdowns, and that I started noticing things around my neighbourhood soon after – the flowering of different plant species, the changes in the bird populations from month to month, and even how vehicle traffic patterns had shifted. I'd never really paid much attention to any of that previously.

Speaking of noticing: something I noticed after finishing Right story, wrong story was that I suddenly had the urge to draw. It struck me because I had exactly the same compulsion after I read Sand Talk. Yunkaporta makes a carving in an object for each chapter in each of his books. This no doubt influenced me. But there must be more to it than that. Or rather, the way he writes, influenced by the way he carves patterns to record his ideas, influences me to think in patterns too. I don't really know what's going on here but it's definitely a thing. An important thing to understand here is that I am in no way "artistic". I don't habitually draw. Or at least I didn't until I started reading Yunkaporta's work. And I'm not sure that's really the point anyway. These are tools for working out what you're thinking, and recording it as a mnemonic device. I'm not sure about the mnemonic value of my drawings on digital paper, but I do find it helps me think things through and sometimes express things I can't quite articulate.

During lockdown I was surprised to find that the thing I most missed about the office was having a whiteboard to help me think things through. This is of course related, but I'm cautious about linking them too closely because ...well, I guess I don't like connecting what I think of as more wholesome brain-expanding processes with things that are just making me more effective as an Organisation Man. On this note, I recently discovered Abby Covert's Stuck? Diagrams help. via Tracy Forzaglia's MOD Librarian blog. I haven't read it yet but I'm thinking I'll probably splash out and get the ebook since diagramming things out seems to be so helpful for me.

Anyway, there's not some profound point to this post. I just decided to share some thoughts instead of being crippled by anxiety about whether my next blog post would be The Perfect Take. It never will be.

As announced in January, this year the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN) team is working to develop a stable version of the Open Data Editor (ODE) application. Thanks to financial support from the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, we will be able to create a no-code tool for data manipulation and publishing that is accessible to everyone, unlocking the power of data for key groups including scientists, journalists and data activists.

[Disclaimer: Open Data Editor is currently available for download and testing in beta. We are working on a stable version. Updates will be announced throughout the year. Learn more here.]

Since the beginning of the year, we’ve been working on building the ODE team and conducting the first phase of user research. We have interviewed 10 people so far, covering different user profiles such as journalists, people working in NGOs and the private sector, and data practitioners in general.

The Open Data Editor is built on top of Frictionless Data specifications and software, and is an example of a simple, open-by-design alternative to the complex software offered by the Big Tech industry. Developing this type of technology is part of our current strategic focus on promoting and supporting the development of open digital public infrastructure that is accessible to all.

As part of this, we want to open up this process in a series of blogs, sharing with the community and those interested in the world of open data how each stage of the creation of this software is developing.

What have we learned so far?

• Put people first: organisations need to spend more time on user research. Organisations can lose money and spend unnecessary time on things that may not be as useful as they think if they don’t reach out to their community and try to understand their problems before building solutions. This may sound obvious, but it happens all the time.

• Spend more time thinking about the problem you are trying to solve. Whenever you want to improve a tool, you may be tempted to jump in and try to fix it from a technical point of view. This can create a bigger problem. It’s important to take a step back, learn everything you can about the tool, and talk to potential users to understand if what the technology is trying to solve is a real problem for them.

• Build diverse and interdisciplinary teams. The current OKFN team working on ODE includes three software developers, a product owner and a project manager. We all have different expertise and backgrounds, which is key to being able to put ourselves in the shoes of our potential users. Most importantly, we are all data practitioners ourselves!

• Do not reinvent the wheel: check out the resources your community has already made available. This is also a good way to reuse resources that your community has opened up, so that you spend less time on key parts of your work. For example, during our research process we used the amazing Discovery Kit created by the Open Contracting Partnership. Although the toolkit was originally developed to help teams build tools and software using open contracting data, we followed the advice and used some elements, such as their user personas, to adapt it for our specific work.

• Share and iterate your ideas with people outside your organisation. Getting external insights is a very good practice for those building open source products. “Sharing is caring” is good for you and your products

Initial findings

After the first round of user interviews, here are the first conclusions on the difficulties and current state of the art of tabular open data according to data practitioners.

• Same old problems. Data practitioners still spend a lot of time exploring and cleaning data. Analysis is only a small part.

• The struggle with PDFs continues. Some respondents explained how they have to manually copy and paste data or use technologies such as Tabula to extract tables from PDFs. 

• Preferred tools for exploring and cleaning data: Spreadsheet tools like Google Sheets, Open Office and Excel.

• Favourite features to start exploring the data: Pivot tables and filters. 

• Generative AI “not for data analysis”. Data practitioners, especially journalists, are reluctant to use AI for data analysis or to draw conclusions from the data they’re working with. They don’t want to share their datasets without knowing how they’re being used (privacy concerns), and because it’s impossible to reconstruct what the technology is doing to achieve specific results.

You can also find more details in the following presentation.

If you want to get more closely involved with the development of the Open Data Editor application, you can express your interest in joining one of the testing sessions by filling this form.

You can also email us at info@okfn.org, follow the GitHub repository or join the Frictionless Data community. We meet once a month.

DETROITography organized an Open Data Day hybrid event on 7 March 2024 at the Purdy/Kresge Library on the Wayne State University (WSU) campus in Detroit, Michigan, USA. The presentation focused on neighborhood data discovery through the relaunched CKAN data portal and catalog called DetroitData, crowdsourced input on community boundaries via Detroit-Neighborhoods.com, and the launch of an open data platform to track the city of Detroit’s progress on the SDGs using OpenSDG. 

I led the presentation first focusing on the relaunch of DetroitData as the open data catalog for the city. A few city and regional entities have their own open data portals, but nonprofits and community organizations don’t have a place to share and contribute to the city’s data narrative. I also highlighted how DetroitData can serve as an essential resource for journalists who utilize FOIA or “freedom of information act” requests to open up data from local government entities. DetroitData currently compiles over 1,000 datasets shared by more than 50 local organizations.

The next presentation featured the Detroit-Neighborhoods.com tool to collect and analyze community input on neighborhood boundaries. Detroit has a long history of defining neighborhoods without much community engagement or feedback. The tool specifically tallies a submitted response related to how the city government defines a neighborhood area as well as what the degree of agreement there is among those submitting. Alex shared that the hope for the site is that community groups can use it as a data-driven tool to better advocate for their neighborhood boundaries. 

Finally, the session ended with a discussion around the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Detroit and how well they are tracked at the city level. The OpenSDG platform applied to Detroit will slowly be adding new datasets that highlight where the city is at in relation to the global goals. As the only UNESCO City of Design in the USA, Detroit must make concerted efforts to achieve the SDGs for every community and neighborhood. The participants were very excited and engaged with the presentation with detailed questions on community involvement and ensuring clear background information gets shared about datasets. A cohort of WSU Libraries staff were on hand and shared their passion for metadata. Future collaborations are likely as the School of Information Science works to train new librarians on digital tools and metadata maintenance.

About Open Data Day

Open Data Day (ODD) is an annual celebration of open data all over the world. Groups from many countries create local events on the day where they will use open data in their communities.

As a way to increase the representation of different cultures, since 2023 we offer the opportunity for organisations to host an Open Data Day event on the best date within a one-week period. In 2024, a total of 287 events happened all over the world between March 2nd-8th, in 60+ countries using 15 different languages.

All outputs are open for everyone to use and re-use.

In 2024, Open Data Day was also a part of the HOT OpenSummit ’23-24 initiative, a creative programme of global event collaborations that leverages experience, passion and connection to drive strong networks and collective action across the humanitarian open mapping movement

For more information, you can reach out to the Open Knowledge Foundation team by emailing opendataday@okfn.org. You can also join the Open Data Day Google Group to ask for advice or share tips and get connected with others.

The Council on Library and Information Resources is pleased to announce that we have opened the Call for Proposals for the virtual Digital Library Federation’s (DLF) Forum happening online, October 22-23, 2024.

We encourage proposals from members and non-members; regulars and newcomers; digital library practitioners from all sectors (higher education, museums and cultural heritage, public libraries, archives, etc.) and those in adjacent fields such as institutional research and educational technology; and students, early- and mid-career professionals and senior staff alike. We especially welcome proposals from individuals who bring diverse professional and life experiences to the conference, including those from underrepresented or historically excluded racial, ethnic, or religious backgrounds, immigrants, veterans, those with disabilities, and people of all sexual orientations or gender identities.

Learn more about our event and session formats, view the Call for Proposals, and submit.

The submission deadline is Wednesday, May 15, at 11:59pm Eastern Time.

Curious about submitting a proposal but not sure where to start?

Join the next CFP Office Hours on Tuesday, April 30 at 1pm ET USA to learn more about the virtual DLF Forum and session types for our virtual event. Register in advance.

If you have any questions, please write to us at forum@diglib.org. We’re looking forward to seeing you online this fall.

P.S. Want to stay updated on all things DLF Forum? Subscribe to our Forum newsletter.

The post Be a Part of the 2024 Virtual DLF Forum: Submit Your Proposal Today appeared first on DLF.

By: Samantha Guss, Sojourna Cunningham, Jennifer Stout

A note on language

The authors applied the language of the American Psychological Association’s Journal Article Reporting Standards for Race, Ethnicity, and Culture (JARS–REC) (American Psychological Association, 2023). We are writing from a North American context and acknowledge the ways that race is defined differently based upon national and cultural contexts. The language and understanding of race are not universal and terms and language usage evolve as norms and practices evolve. We chose to use the terms “Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC)” and “underrepresented racial and ethnic groups.” Our participants self-identified their race and ethnicity but in an attempt to maintain strict confidentiality, we made the choice to identify the race of the participants using the terminology of BIPOC and only identified the race of the interviewee when making explicit points about race, ethnicity, and culture. 

Introduction

In this paper, we propose a nuanced definition of retention of librarians that distinguishes between functional and dysfunctional retention. We do this by integrating existing research on workplace dynamics and library culture with a qualitative exploration of academic librarians who have left jobs before they intended and what it was like for them to stay at those jobs after they realized they didn’t want to stay long-term. As a result of this exploration, we argue that structural aspects of the academic library profession (such as emotional investment in the profession, geographic challenges, and role specialization) can lead to librarians staying with organizations longer than they would otherwise and that this “involuntary staying” is not functional retention. 

The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) have been interested in strengthening recruitment and retention of academic librarians from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups since at least the early 1990s, and in the early 2000s named this issue a priority for the library profession (Neely & Peterson, 2007). Institutions and professional organizations responded by increasing the number of scholarships, training programs, and postgraduate residency programs aimed at supporting new graduates in finding entry-level positions (Boyd et al., 2017). However, for all of the discourse on “recruitment and retention,” a majority of the emphasis has been on recruitment, which is easier to quantify, with little study of how retention functions in an academic library environment (Bugg, 2016). The profession has focused on recruiting more librarians from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, but we have not prioritized supporting them to stay (Hathcock, 2015). As a result, the numbers of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) librarians has stagnated or in some cases, actually decreased (ALA Office of Research and Statistics, 2017; American Library Association, 2012; Barrientos et al., 2019). Recruitment and retention are both critical to diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in academic libraries, and failing to improve retention has and will continue to derail these initiatives (Hodge et al., 2021). 

As we looked deeper into the literature on retention in academic libraries, we recognized that the concepts of recruitment and retention have become intertwined, with recruitment as the primary focus of the literature, leaving retention insufficiently studied and defined. Research that addresses retention tends to focus on proposed strategies, such as stay interviews (structured interviews aimed at strengthening employee and employer relationships) and mentorship programs (SHRM, n.d.-a). At the same time, there is no agreed-upon definition of retention that would allow us to assess these strategies. ACRL recently published a toolkit for library worker retention that defines retention as “the ability of an organization to reduce turnover among employees and keep employees for as long as possible” (Nevius, 2023). While this definition is a good starting point for discussion, it is vague and immediately raises questions, namely whether keeping employees “for as long as possible” is truly an appropriate goal for academic libraries. 

As academic libraries attempt to define and assess retention, we should recognize that involuntary staying can be just as negative an outcome for the individual and the organization as leaving, setting the stage for legacy toxicity, which persists even through leadership changes (Kendrick, 2023). At the same time, trying to understand these dynamics will help us design policies and programs to encourage work environments that are conducive to individual and organizational goals, and propagate structural solutions across the profession. We argue that functional retention is a positive, engaged relationship between the employee and the organization, where both are contributing to a workplace that is positive, safe, and harmonious.

Toward A Definition of Retention

Most studies on retention within academic library literature reflect “retention management,” defined as strategic initiatives aimed at reducing turnover within institutions, where turnover is defined as employees leaving the organization (SHRM, n.d.-b, 2023). These studies touch on many types of initiatives, including strategies to retain librarians in their current positions (Musser, 2001; Strothmann & Ohler, 2011) and factors that encourage retention such as onboarding (Chapman, 2009; Hall-Ellis, 2014). More specifically, researchers have examined mentoring of librarians from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups (Olivas & Ma, 2009); professional development for librarians from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups (Acree et al., 2001); and inquiry into why librarians leave positions (Heady et al., 2020).

There is clear recognition in the library literature that retention is important and complex, yet we were unable to find a solid definition or agreed-upon understanding of what it means to successfully retain someone prior to ACRL’s definition, which only came online in mid-2023 (Nevius, 2023). Some researchers have acknowledged the complications inherent in retention efforts. Both Bugg (2016) and Musser (2001) state that retention requires long term communication and commitment from multiple actors across the academic libraries profession, not just by individual institutions. Consequently, the profession tends to focus its efforts on recruitment and programs like mentorship to attempt to retain employees and does not address bigger and more complex issues such as workplace culture and environment, job satisfaction, bullying, toxicity, racism, and low morale (Alajmi & Alasousi, 2018; Dewitt-Miller & Crawford, 2020; Freedman & Vreven, 2016; Kendrick, 2017; Kendrick & Damasco, 2019).

Within human resources management (HRM) literature, the definition of retention varies depending on the field in question. In a 2015 scoping review, Al-Emadi and colleagues acknowledge the variety of ways retention is defined within HRM and present a working definition of retention as “initiatives taken by management to keep employees from leaving the organization, such as rewarding employees for performing their jobs effectively, ensuring harmonious working relations between employees and managers, and maintaining a safe, healthy work environment” (Al-Emadi et al., 2015, p. 8). This definition also reflects “retention management” as described above, but is helpful in that it explains retention as an action that an organization takes (rather than a passive state that employees are in) and underscores the importance of the workplace environment and relationships between employees and managers. At the same time, this definition limits potential assessment for academic libraries. 

Why Do Librarians Stay?

There are many reasons academic librarians remain with organizations where they are generally satisfied and feel that their personal and professional needs are being met; these reasons have been explored in the Library and Information Science (LIS) literature (Alajmi & Alasousi, 2018; Kawasaki, 2006), as well as the HRM literature (SHRM, 2023). However, we were interested in reasons why academic librarians may stay in organizations when they are not happy.

The research describing the academic librarian job market generally concludes that academic library jobs are difficult to obtain. Tewell points out that historically, the librarianship job narrative has moved between a model of “job scarcity” and a “recruitment crisis” but ultimately, entry level jobs are considered highly competitive (2012, p. 408). Other researchers have examined the perceived necessity of additional educational requirements to be considered competitive for an academic librarian position (Ferguson, 2016), the precariousness of academic librarian positions (Henninger et al., 2020), and the experiences of part time librarians looking for full time employment (Wilkinson, 2015). Ultimately, the research demonstrates that there is a perception of job scarcity within the academic libraries profession, meaning that transitioning to a new job is not as straightforward as in some other fields and may be a significant reason some librarians stay at their current jobs. 

Many librarians are bound geographically to their libraries and workplaces (Kendrick, 2021; Ortega, 2017). Library workers who have familial and/or care-taking obligations cannot easily move to a new location for a new position, and may be subject to a limited job market in their current location. Many positions in academic libraries are highly specialized and draw from a national candidate pool, so even if there are several academic libraries available, there is no guarantee that an appropriate position will become available or that any individual can count on being hired. Likewise, career advancement can often require changing organizations or moving away from a home location, especially given that many academic libraries have flat organizational structures and very small staffs (Ortega, 2017). Academic librarians are also subject to the “two-body problem,” where dual-career couples must navigate job markets in a way that accommodates both careers (Fisher, 2015).

Petersen (2023) reinforces this quandary, writing about career paths that force workers to leave their bases of support to maintain their specialized livelihoods and the resulting challenges workers face in creating new support networks as adults. She describes this situation as a type of “job lock,” a term often applied to situations where employees are stuck at jobs because of non-portable benefits (like health insurance in the U.S.) but has also been used to describe other situations where employees feel unable to leave jobs (Huysse-Gaytandjieva et al., 2013, p. 588). Ritter (2023) also discusses the costs of transient careers often required of higher education workers and coins the term “academic stranger,” referring to a mobile-by-default mentality that encourages workers to accept work conditions that are socially destabilizing. Pho and Fife (2023) point to a similar narrative in academic libraries that mobility and the resulting emotional connections and disconnections are expected as librarians move from place to place to support their professional needs. Consequently, it’s natural for academic librarians to build their lives around their jobs and the people at those jobs, which can make it hard to leave an unsatisfying position.

Spencer (2022) describes this phenomenon as professional “hypermobility” or “nomadism” and emphasizes that it has positive and negative aspects, but needs to be more transparent to those considering entering the academic libraries field. Petersen argues that in fields “where jobs are scarce, [geographic] mobility is a privilege” that creates inequality in the job market and reinforces the idea that holding any job is lucky: “you take what you get and the expected posture is gratitude” (2023). 

Another reason why librarians might be hesitant to leave is because they feel deeply emotionally connected to their job. Ettarh’s work on “vocational awe” in the library profession, described as “the set of ideas, values, and assumptions librarians have about themselves and the profession that result in beliefs that libraries as institutions are inherently good and sacred, and therefore beyond critique,” sheds light on why librarians may stay in jobs that exploit them (2018). Similarly, Petersen (2022) describes library jobs as “passion jobs,” which she identifies as “prime for exploitation,” because they are often feminized and devalued. She describes how many nonprofit organizations, including libraries, work with as few staff as possible and don’t always fill vacant positions; as a result, individuals may feel guilty for leaving because of likely consequences for their coworkers and/or patrons. 

What Pushes Librarians to Leave?

Over the past decade, there has been a fair amount of focus on determining why academic librarians leave their organizations; specifically related to bullying, toxicity, and low morale in academic libraries (for example, Freedman & Vreven, 2016; Heady et al., 2020; Kendrick, 2017, 2021; Ortega, 2017). Although most of these studies assess librarians after they’ve left a job, this body of research offers insight into why a librarian might move toward involuntary staying.

Kendrick discusses the concept of a “trigger event,” which is described as “an unexpected negative event or a relationship that developed in an unexpected and negative manner” (Kendrick, 2017, p. 851). Participants in her study “perceived trigger events as the beginning of a long-term abuse cycle” (p. 853). Most employees don’t leave their job immediately after a trigger event occurs, if ever, but are forced to reevaluate their understanding of the organization and their role there. It is this mindset shift that we will describe as moving toward involuntary staying. 

Ortega’s (2017) definition of toxic leadership, characterized by “egregious actions” and “causing considerable and long-lasting damage,” can help us understand traits of toxic workplaces where employees no longer want to stay (p. 35). Ortega’s and Kendrick’s (2017) studies both support the idea that toxicity becomes an ingrained part of the organizational culture. When employees leave toxic library workplaces, they are not leaving because of one bad day or even one bad leader, but because of a pattern and culture of toxicity. Research from Heady, et al. (2020) reinforces that when academic librarians leave, they are “not fleeing their positions, they are fleeing work environments they feel are toxic” (p. 591) and that morale, culture, library administration, and direct supervisors were the top factors in their decisions to leave (p. 585–586).

Understanding Turnover

As we attempt to better understand retention, it’s helpful to begin with a framework for understanding turnover, commonly defined in the HRM field as the “movement of employees out of the organization” (SHRM, n.d.-b). There are different types of turnover, as shown in Figure 1. 

Figure 1: Turnover Classification Scheme

Reproduced by permission of the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Retaining talent: A guide to analyzing and managing employee turnover by D. G. Allen, 2008, p. 2 (https://blog.shrm.org/sites/default/files/reports/Retaining%20Talent-%20A%20Guide%20(Q1).pdf). (Alexandria, VA: Society for Human Resource Management). © 2018 by SHRM. All rights reserved.”

Allen divides turnover into involuntary (i.e. an employee is fired or otherwise dismissed at the organization’s discretion) and voluntary (i.e. an employee leaves the organization because they want to). Even considering only voluntary turnover, there are many varied reasons that would require different kinds of attention from an organization. If turnover is measured simply as the total number of workers who left the organization in a set period of time (SHRM, n.d.-b), it’s easy to see why an organization would struggle to understand if they had a retention problem or not, or what they might be able to do about it. Therefore, “reducing turnover” is too simplistic a goal (Nevius, 2023). 

The opposite of turnover is staying in an organization, which we argue is not the same thing as true retention. Staying doesn’t automatically mean that an employee is content or that retention initiatives are working. Turnover may reasonably be defined as failed retention, but retention should not be simply the absence of turnover. 

Understanding Retention through Staying

Based on Allen’s 2008 classification of turnover, we can also classify different categories of staying, defined as the opposite of turnover, or an employee who has not left the organization. We use the terms voluntary and involuntary to describe staying, similar to Allen’s approach, but in the case of staying, it’s important to note that voluntary staying and involuntary staying are mindsets and, unlike turnover, are not simply classifications of an event. Voluntary staying is a state of mind where an employee is generally satisfied and engaged to the point that they are not looking for other positions or needing coping strategies to survive their current work life. Generally, employees join organizations (i.e. begin new positions) voluntarily staying.

Figure 2: Voluntary and Involuntary Staying

When an employee becomes dissatisfied, disengaged, and starts to use coping strategies to survive their work life, they have moved from voluntarily staying to involuntarily staying. This does not mean that they will necessarily begin looking for another job right away, or ever. While the employee may be experiencing job-lock at the same time (when external factors such as non-portable health benefits prevent someone from leaving their job), involuntary staying describes their mindset and feelings about the job. In our study, we interviewed librarians who had experienced this involuntarily staying state at a previous job. 

Our qualitative research described in this paper sought to explore the moments or events that caused librarians to leave jobs before they intended and their experiences once they decided to leave. Given how difficult it is to switch jobs in our field, what was it that tipped the scales for them, making staying untenable? What were their experiences and what could we learn from them about how to define and improve retention of librarians in the future? Through this exploration, we learned about these original questions, but also about the interplay between library culture, management, leaving and staying, and turnover and retention. 

Methods

The qualitative data was gathered through 10 semi-structured interviews of academic librarians who left jobs sooner than they’d planned, for job-related reasons as opposed to personal reasons, such as moving to be closer to family. Using an interview guide (See Appendix A), we sought to learn about the interviewees’ experiences as they realized that they could no longer stay at their job and what happened before and after that realization. While we suspected that these experiences would be a little different for everyone, we hoped to expand our general understanding of times when employees were not retained by their organization (that is, when retention failed) and the effects on the individual and the organization in the time period between an employee realizing they wanted to leave and actually leaving.

The interviews, lasting approximately one hour each, were conducted between January 2021–June 2021. Participants were drawn from a pool of 57 responses to a screening survey seeking participants who had left a job before they had planned to. From our pool of respondents, we selected seven participants who identified as BIPOC (a sample that included participants identifying as non-Black POC, but none who identified as indigenous) and three participants who identified as white, using a random number generator to select participants from each strata (see Appendix B). We intentionally oversampled BIPOC librarians, to center their voices as we explored themes related to race and white supremacy culture, and acknowledging that people from historically marginalized groups are often positioned to have unique insight into dominant cultures. Our screening survey did not specify whether respondents should be managers or non-managers themselves, and we learned during our interviews that both were represented in our sample.

Our overall sample size of 10 interviews was relatively small. This was partially for practical reasons, but also because our research team agreed after our 10 interviews that we’d reached sufficient saturation; that is, we believed additional interviews would not yield new themes (Strauss & Corbin, 2014, p. 148).

Interviews were conducted via Zoom by two researchers and audio-recorded with participants’ permission. Interview audio was transcribed using Descript and copyedited and de-identified by the researchers. Consistent with our consent agreement, participants are identified in our writing only by an assigned code number (e.g. “Interviewee 7”), their self-identified gender pronouns, and whether they self-identified as BIPOC or white. 

Each transcription was coded by at least two researchers using grounded theory methodology, per Strauss and Corbin (2014), meaning that a codebook was developed during analysis based on recurring themes across interviews. In addition to exploring our research questions, a secondary goal was to provide space for participants to share their experiences, which many had never shared before, and to have these experiences heard and validated as legitimate (see Cunningham et al., 2023).

Results

The majority of our interviewees started out their positions in a state of voluntary staying: they expressed positive feelings about their jobs at the start and described minimal or no red flags during interviews. They discussed things like specific job duties or opportunities that appealed to them, positive feelings about compensation, and a feeling that they could “have a career there” (Interviewee 2).

Over time, interviewees either experienced “trigger events” (“an unexpected negative event or a relationship that developed in an unexpected and negative manner,” as described by Kendrick, 2017, p. 851) or general increasing awareness of things being “off,” specifically related to organizational culture. These trigger events and off feelings led our interviewees to move from a state of voluntarily staying to involuntarily staying.

One example of this was Interviewee 9, who was happily in her job for four years when a radical restructuring of the library departments occurred with no warning. Interviewee 9 noted that after this restructuring occurred, she and her colleagues began engaging in “checked out” behavior. 

Oh yeah. We all checked out for sure…Well, one thing you saw was people left immediately at five [and] people didn’t come in early. There was not as much engagement just on the social level. Like before this[–]and this is gonna sound like some kind of weird, perfect land[–but] we went to eat lunch together all at the same time in the lunchroom. And people had a good social relationship. After [the restructuring,] people would avoid each other.

A few months after the initial restructuring, Interviewee 9 had a defining moment in which she received explicit discouragement from her new supervisor: 

I was a high achiever. I seemed to be moving forward. And my boss turned to me, my new boss, in a meeting with other people there and said, “there are people in this organization that think that they are moving forward and they will never move forward under me,” while staring at me very directly. So, I mean, I didn’t have a career there anymore, so.

This was the final straw for Interviewee 9 and she began looking for a new job immediately. This example highlights that “involuntarily staying” is more of a frame of mind than a specific period of time and also that an employee can be involuntarily staying while not actively looking for another job. In the case of Interviewee 9, she went from happy in her job to one of many “checked out” people and finally to actively looking for a new job once it became clear that she was on her new supervisor’s “shit list.”

Interviewee 5 presents a contrasting example in which the Interviewee stayed in his position for a longer period of time:

I had trigger events, yes. Now having said that, it still took me five years to leave that job. And there’s a lot of factors in that.

Interviewee 5 described two trigger events in which he clashed with library leadership and was written up. He was at the job for a total of five years, but notes that his job search was “four years long,” indicating a very long period of involuntarily staying. Ultimately, he left without a job offer when he recognized that his health was suffering:

When I finally left that institution, I left without having a job offer at all. So it was important that I needed to get out of there and it was tak[ing] tolls on my health and everything else. My coping mechanisms had went [sic] from healthy to unhealthy, so it was time to go.

A third example is from Interviewee 1 who was on a three-year contract with her institution and noted, “I can live through anything for three years.” However, this interviewee experienced a trigger event where her boss changed a positive work review to a negative one after she refused to provide him with personal information. She realized that she could not stay, but was also conflicted about leaving colleagues and patrons:

I just felt like that just killed it. Like there was no resurrecting that relationship. After that, I worked out the rest of that contract because […] you know, I did like the students, we were very close to several of them and my colleagues and I didn’t want to leave them in the lurch because [if] I left, someone else would pick up the slack and there wasn’t enough of them to go around in the first place. So I was very mindful of that, but that was the event where I’m like, you know, can this marriage be saved? No, that was it. 

As explained earlier, “involuntarily staying” is a mindset rather than a specific period of time. In our interviews, the time period between the interviewee realizing they could no longer stay in a job and them actually leaving ranged from nearly immediately to years. Their sense of immediacy also ranged from relatively casual to dire. 

What all our interviewees had in common is that they moved from voluntarily staying to involuntarily staying and engaged in a range of coping mechanisms to survive once they realized that staying was untenable and until they were able to leave. This is congruent with Kendrick’s stages of low morale when onset of coping strategies eventually follows trigger events and exposure to workplace abuse or neglect (Kendrick, 2021, p. 12).  

Borrowing again from Allen (2008), we use the terms “functional” and “dysfunctional” to classify the coping mechanisms described by our interview participants. One important point of departure is that Allen’s terminology views outcomes from the organization’s perspective, while our study is interested in outcomes for the employee and the organization. Therefore, we classify coping strategies as functional, or, congruous with the health of the individual and the organization, or dysfunctional, or unhealthy for the individual and/or the organization (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Functional and Dysfunctional Coping Strategies

Some examples of functional coping strategies recounted by interviewees:

• Regularly validating yourself and your feelings: 

[I’d say:] ‘You’re not crazy. You’re not imagining this. They’re treating you as poorly as you think they are.’ And I think a lot of times some of these things flourish because people are made to feel like they’re exaggerating or overly sensitive, and they don’t have the support system to know that what they’re feeling is entirely valid. (Interviewee 1)

• Seeking perspective from outside the organization:
  

I would say you know, find your mentor, who are [sic] hopefully outside of your institution, because you know, if you’re in a toxic workplace and your mentor is inside, if they’ve been there for a while, it can look like it’s normal when it’s really not normal. So you need someone on the outside to help you to kind of navigate bad experience[s]. (Interviewee 10)

• Regularly reminding oneself that “it’s not personal”: 

I [would tell someone in a similar situation] to remember that it is not personal… And the reason that it’s important people know that is, one, it feels a lot worse if it feels personal. But the other thing is, that part of that feeling of personalness makes it harder for you to decide ‘screw this, I’m going.’ You know, you recognize that you are a cog in a capitalist machine. You can take your little cog-self somewhere else where they will pay you more. (Interviewee 9)

• Prioritizing physical and mental health. 
• Finding healthy ways to release anger and frustration.
• Finding validation and support from ally colleagues, especially among BIPOC colleagues.
• Setting and practicing strong boundaries around work and work interactions.

Examples of dysfunctional coping strategies described by interviewees:

• Warning new folks not to try too hard and to “stay in their lanes.” This was practiced by both interviewees and their colleagues and was described by multiple interviewees as having both functional and dysfunctional aspects.

[I was told:] If you just do what everybody tells you to do and stay away from the riff-raff…and stay below the fray you’ll do well [and] move up here. (Interviewee 5)

[The advice I was given was:] ‘Stay under the radar. Don’t try to do too much.’ (Interviewee 3)

• Participating in a culture of resentment and grudge-holding.

[There were] existing tensions and grudges and resentment, that’s been building over years and it’s created such a hostile environment where you can’t necessarily stay neutral. (Interviewee 3)

• Disengaging with meaningful work or “checking out”.

I just put the rest on autopilot, right. I stopped sharing ideas…I devoted myself to my job search. (Interviewee 6)

• Creating or reinforcing organizational silos.

It’s also important to note that the line between functional and dysfunctional coping strategies is thin and often not very meaningful without context. A coping mechanism that is functional in one scenario may be dysfunctional in another. Likewise, a coping mechanism that is functional from an individual’s perspective may sometimes be counterproductive from an organizational perspective, or vice versa. Often interviewees described using functional and dysfunctional coping strategies simultaneously. Additionally, we are not arguing that all employees who engage in harmful behaviors are doing so because they have moved into a state of involuntary staying. 

Discussion

The library literature has established that toxic leadership and organizational culture can cause or contribute to individuals leaving their organizations. Our study suggests that organizational culture also influences whether an employee is voluntarily or involuntarily staying at the organization, and whether their coping strategies are functional or dysfunctional. We can also see, just as all employees participate in organizational culture in some way, that employees’ dysfunctional coping strategies can feed into and reinforce toxic culture, creating a feedback loop.

Further, academic librarianship as a profession has structural features, described earlier, that can prolong an employee’s period of involuntary staying at an organization and therefore exacerbate the situation for all involved. Our findings about dysfunctional coping mechanisms complicate the ACRL Toolkit’s definition of retention that includes a goal of keeping employees “for as long as possible” (Nevius, 2023). In some scenarios, keeping employees is not in the best interest of the individual or the organization.

It’s important to note, though, that this does not mean that leaders of an organization should force an employee to leave. While managers and leaders should proactively address any disruptive behaviors from employees (many of which we’ve described here as dysfunctional coping strategies), the onus is on the organization to confront toxic culture and not punish individual employees for the ways they try to survive toxic work environments. It should also be recognized that disruptive behavior lies on a continuum; there are certain actors in libraries who would label calling out racist or homophobic practices as disruptive. This can be particularly fraught for employees who are expected to be “library nice,” a framework describing a highly “racialized and gendered form of workplace oppression,” where being perceived as nice is “more important than [their] knowledge, skill, or effectiveness” (Kendrick, 2021, p. 18).

Instead, we propose that retention in academic libraries is about building and maintaining a relationship between the organization and its employees that supports employees to voluntarily stay. Retention studies and strategies should take into account the different varieties of turnover and staying to help organizations honestly assess how they are building cultures that encourage employees to voluntarily stay, with the active acknowledgement that those from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups are often structurally situated to be the most negatively impacted by toxic library culture. Initiatives to improve retention should center employees’ well-being and agency, recognizing that employees and organizations both have much to gain from improving functional retention, but responsibility for bringing retention forward as an organizational focus area ultimately lies with library leaders. 

Functional retention requires good leadership, but is also dependent on building and solidifying a culture of accountability, transparency, open discussion, anti-racism, vulnerability, safety, and courtesy that is resilient to legacy toxicity and where most or all librarians are staying voluntarily. While leaders can set the stage for this kind of culture, all employees have an influence on the culture and responsibility for its success. To reiterate, functional retention is a positive relationship between the employee and the organization, with both sides contributing to a workplace that is positive, emotionally and physically safe, and harmonious. 

Recommendations for organizations:

• Engage in a regular cycle of assessment.
• Be proactive about retention. Recognize that functional retention is built through consistent, deliberate actions.
• Seek to understand turnover at your organization. This is important even in job markets where employers have the upper hand over job-seekers (as is true for many academic librarian positions).
• Seek to understand retention at your organization. When measuring retention, aim to learn whether your employees are staying voluntarily or involuntarily.
  • Strategies such as “stay interviews” (a corollary to exit interviews) and “intent to stay” instruments (developed in the field of nursing) may be useful, but it isn’t clear how often either have been deployed in academic libraries thus far and how effective they will be in this environment (Kosmoski & Calkin, 1986; Nevius, 2023).
  • Recognize that not all employees may feel safe answering truthfully. 
  • Ask employees what could improve their experience and listen to their answers. 
  • Use their answers to design or transform your retention strategies. 

Reflections & Future Directions

We were able to learn a lot about these issues from our literature review, interviews, and analysis, and we hope that our research opens many doors for future study. 

Our small sample size, though appropriate for qualitative inquiry, means that we can’t say anything meaningful about differences between demographic groups (e.g. whether BIPOC librarians might experience longer periods of involuntary staying), the potential impacts of other intersecting identities beyond race, or whether our findings are truly generalizable. It would be desirable in the future to have quantitative evidence and a representative sample. Additionally, future study of involuntary staying and its implications for functional retention should also include experiences of librarians who are involuntarily staying and have not left their organizations. 

We continue to be curious about many of the threads unearthed in our data: for example, the role of training for managers, the responsibilities of professional organizations, and the roles of human resources professionals or ombudspeople. 

Finally, the COVID-19 pandemic was responsible for igniting new questions across all sectors about employees’ relationships to work and their employers. While we believe that there are structural aspects of higher education and academic libraries that distinguish our profession, it will be essential to link studies of library workplaces more closely with research and thinkers from many fields outside our own. For example, how did academic libraries’ responses to the pandemic change the way librarians felt about their organizations and their roles, and how might this impact whether they are voluntarily or involuntarily staying? How does the framing of “quiet quitting,” or doing the minimum requirements for a job, impact involuntarily staying? How should changing societal attitudes about mutual aid and collective care factor into our  approaches to measuring functional retention? These are important questions that we hope will be incorporated into future explorations.

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our thanks to Jessica Schomberg, Brittany Paloma Fiedler, and Kaetrena Davis Kendrick for their time and flexibility in guiding us through the publishing process. We are genuinely grateful for their constructive and insightful feedback and suggestions at every stage. 

This article represents several years of workshopping and sharpening our ideas through conversations with each other, colleagues, and with audience members from presentations at several conferences; we appreciate all of these contributions. 

We would also like to recognize the grant from the Friends of Boatwright Library at the University of Richmond that allowed us to compensate our interviewees for their time. 

Finally, we are sincerely grateful to our interviewees, who each generously shared their stories, even when they were painful, so that others may feel less alone and in service of building a better profession for all of us.

Appendix A: Semi-structured interview guide

However you answer, we aren’t here to judge you. We are coming from a place of research and empowerment. Your experiences are valid and are being heard. 

Before we begin, we want to review a piece of the Informed Consent Statement you signed — as stated there, public reports of our research findings will invoke participants by a pseudonym and job title only, and that you will be given the chance to designate your own job title. This could be more specific (like “social sciences liaison librarian”), less specific (“liaison librarian”), or very general (“academic librarian”) depending on your preference. You are also welcome to choose your own pseudonym if you’d like. 

• What appealed to you about Job 1?
• What was your interview process like for Job 1? Did you feel any red flags? In retrospect?
• If someone was working at this organization, what would you like them to know?
• How was the library structured administratively? Where did you fit in the hierarchical structure of the library? Who did you directly report to? Did you have any direct reports?
• What aspects did you like about your daily job duties?
• What aspects did you dislike about your daily job?
• Did you have colleagues you trusted? 
• How were they able to navigate their jobs?
• Did you have support? 
• How did that support manifest?
• Kendrick (2017) defines trigger events as “an unexpected negative event or a relationship that developed in an unexpected and negative manner.” Was there a trigger event for you? 
• How did you begin your new job search?
• Did you feel that the environment was personal, or was it part of a larger cultural problem?
• Did HR ever seem like an option?
• Were attempts made to retain you*? Is there anything that could have been done to retain you? How would you have liked to see this event handled?
  1. How could this have been made right?/How would you have preferred supervisors/admin to have addressed the issue?
• In retrospect, would you have done anything differently?
• Do you think that the problems were specific to that library, or library culture in general?
• What would you tell someone else who is in a similar situation?
  1. What would you tell someone who is interested in applying to your (old) position?

*Note: We used the term “retain” in our interview guide referring to a situation when an organization incentivizes an employee to stay after they’ve indicated that they’re planning to leave (for example, with a salary counter-offer). We acknowledge that this usage of the term and concept is different from how we came to understand retention over the course of this project.

Appendix B

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Source

Once upon a time, three little businesses wanted a connection to the ARPAnet/internet. The year was 1990 or 1991. John Gilmore, John Romke[y], and Trusted Information Systems (TIS) split the $15K or so it took to get a leased-line and 3COM Brouters to Alternet, with what today you'd call fractional T1. An additional 56K leased line and Brouter brought the 'net up to Gilmore's house, Toad Hall, in San Francisco.

In the mid-1990s, UUNET was the fastest-growing ISP, outpacing MCI and Sprint. At its peak, Internet traffic was briefly doubling every few months, which translates to 10x growth each year.

As time went on, friends of theirs wanted in on this rare and exciting 'net connection, resulting in Tim Pozar putting an old PC running Phil Karn's KA9Q/NOS program, an amateur radio router capable of TCP/IP, onto Toad Hall's ethernet. Tim installed a pair of modems, then dialed in once and stayed connected 24 hrs/day (Pacific Bell never said you couldn't do that...)

Eventually the NOS box was full, and more friends wanted in, but everyone was too busy to deal with the hassle.

Somehow, in September 1992, Pozar and Gilmore and I worked out a deal where, I would maintain the thing, collect money to build more NOS boxes and contribute to the monthly Alternet bill, install more people, and get (1) a free connection to the internet and (2) a slice off the top after it exceeded N connections.

By that December, there were enough connections in place that I was pocketing $420/month. By March 1993 there were 11 modem-connected members (as we fancied ourselves).

• A phone line from Pacific Bell at the PoP.
• A second phone line at my apartment.
• A pair of Zyxel 9.6Kb modems, one for the PoP and one for my apartment.

SparcStation SLC

SparcStation 1+

Luckily we were bought by Best Internet Communications, Mountain View; they had money, marketing, and a non-burned-out management; we had a solid locked-in customer base and positive cash flow.

Edgar Nielsen almost single-handedly built the technical infrastructure that TLGnet ran on. He designed much of the network and routing structure, all of the security (with some help from Stu Grossman), wrote a complete, queryable, shared and remotely-accessible database (included every single modem, router, wire, cable, customer, IP (domain names and IP address allocations), and logical link) in standard and portable tools, installed equipment, built and maintained our unix boxes, put SNMP on every single node (hundreds) and automated the entire ISP technical infrastructure from one end to the other. I doubt many small to mid-size ISPs today have the things Edgar wrote by 1995.

Another thing of crucial importance to me, and to Deke, Edgar and a lesser extent Gilmore, was hiring from our local communities; we hired principled people, punk and queer writers and organizers, and trained and paid them -- pay in scale with effort. Total staff turn-over in three years was probably 20; peak staff was 12. Some 10 of them started out at $8.00/hr, unskilled, ended up with $30,000 salary a year later [1994-1996], and stayed in the industry (at prevailing pay). (And we provided health insurance too. Deke being damned Wobbly may have had some small effect.)
...
we treated our staff well, gave them credit for work done, paid them actual money, gave raises and bonuses (upon sale of the business, even some fired employees got small bonus checks). TLGnet wouldn't have existed without its talented staff!

TLGnet exercises no control whatsoever over the content of the information passing through TLGnet. You are free to communicate commercial, noncommercial, personal, questionable, obnoxious, annoying, or any other kind of information, misinformation, or disinformation through our service. You are fully responsible for the privacy of, content of, and liability for your own communications.

• Concentrate on bulk, fulltime internet access (leased-line and Frame Relay)
• Keep prices low by providing connectivity only
• Unrestricted use of TLG connectivity
• Encourage resale and vertical-market services
• Full, up-front disclosure of all pricing
• No lock-in contracts
• Unbundle installation costs and eliminate padding
• Full technical disclosure of technical information

Essentially, other ISPs restricted use and resale of their connections, in a sort of zero-sum approach. By concentrating on bulk connectivity we at once created a market for our customers to provide the vertical services we didn't want or couldn't afford to provide, and built a hard-to-beat solid rep that for a long while locked out direct competitors to our core business; having our prices online and breaking down the leased-line costs and equipment gave us a major one-up economically, technically, and in credible reputation over nearly all other ISPs, big or small.

Some thought us insane; but in fact our customers didn't "compete" with us, they provided vertical services we couldn't or wouldn't (I guess we did have a business plan). And in fact we set further standards of behavior and policies that other ISPs, including MCI and SprintLink, were obliged to match. Though some, like Alternet and PSI, never did; they skimmed the high-end deep-pockets customers, and we got all the new growth.

I would add to the "Busines Model" discussion, that communication costs per-bit dropped dramatically with volume. When you upgraded from 56k bit/sec leased lines to T1 (1,500k bit/sec), you got 24x the bandwidth but it only cost about 4x as much. An upgrade to T3 (45 megabit) provided 30x the bandwidth of a T1, and didn't cost anything near to 30x as much. So, as your traffic volume grew because you were adding more and more customers, the cost of your basic connection to the rest of the Internet got significantly cheaper (per bit). That economy of scale meant that ISPs who grew could keep affording to upgrade their backbones to handle the traffic growth. Every ISP knew, or figured out, this economics, and they all depended on it. Remember, this was back when there were 2000 ISP's in the US, mostly local ones. (About 30 of them were getting their Internet service from TLG when we sold it to Best.)

it took six months of a full-time person to get us on the DARPA net in 1985 ... but The Little Garden basically made it so that any old person [could connect] and more than that not just themselves but ... enabling other people to create their own ISPs and I don't know there are 400 ISPs now in the Bay Area in large part because of The Little Garden.

On March 2 to 4 2024, UPI Youthmappers successfully held the Open Data Day 2024 event, with the theme “Bus-friendly: mapping participation guiding blocks & halt for equality of public transportation users and engaging disabled voices”. This event lasted for 3 days with a total of 15 participants.

On the first day, UPI Youth Mappers succeeded in making the event a success with a series of activities carried out in the Reka Working Space. First, there was a Hands-on activity using Open Street Maps and Wikipedia. Then presented experienced speakers who shared information regarding “Public Awareness of the Importance of Access for Disabled People in Public Transportation”. Apart from that, UPI Youth Mappers also invited friends who had disabilities, so the sharing session felt more interesting. On the first day, there were also prizes for active participants, but apparently, all participants actively took part in the event on the first day.

On the second day, it was the day when the participants and committee collected data at every stop in Corridor 4, namely Dago-Leuwi Panjang Terminal, Bandung. This data collection activity was very exciting and all participants succeeded in collecting data to later provide information regarding accessibility for disabled users who use bus transportation, namely Trans Metro Pasundan. The second day’s activities start at 9 am until 2 pm.

Then the final day was held on March 4 2024 online via Zoom Meeting. The event on the third day was data input into Open Street Maps (OSM) obtained during the field survey. The data entered into OSM is data related to disabled users who use the Pasundan Trans Metro Bus, supplemented with photos of the condition of all bus stops. Each participant inputs data independently in their respective OSM accounts, and is directed by UPI Youth Mappers. The third day of activities closed with the announcement of the most active participants and the distribution of prizes. And with a group photo session.

Our Open Data Day 2024 event was expected to open up knowledge related to our awareness that people with disabilities need to pay attention when using public transportation, namely buses and the availability of good and disability-friendly facilities. By obtaining a number of data and information on OSM, we hope that it will be useful. Thank you for participating in making the 2024 Open Data Day event a success by UPI Youth Mappers!

About Open Data Day

Open Data Day (ODD) is an annual celebration of open data all over the world. Groups from many countries create local events on the day where they will use open data in their communities.

As a way to increase the representation of different cultures, since 2023 we offer the opportunity for organisations to host an Open Data Day event on the best date within a one-week period. In 2024, a total of 287 events happened all over the world between March 2nd-8th, in 60+ countries using 15 different languages.

All outputs are open for everyone to use and re-use.

In 2024, Open Data Day was also a part of the HOT OpenSummit ’23-24 initiative, a creative programme of global event collaborations that leverages experience, passion and connection to drive strong networks and collective action across the humanitarian open mapping movement

For more information, you can reach out to the Open Knowledge Foundation team by emailing opendataday@okfn.org. You can also join the Open Data Day Google Group to ask for advice or share tips and get connected with others.

Tailor AI solutions with private LLMs to maintain data control and maximize business impact.

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I didn’t read Nicholas Carr’s The Shallows when it came out in 2011. I was working as a software engineer at the Library of Congress helping put historical newspapers on the web, and felt indicted by the thesis of the book, which, it seemed to me, boiled down to the idea that the Web was making us stupid. I had built a career around web technology and I wasn’t interested in reading anything that questioned whether the web was a net positive.

Recently, in light of all that’s going on with AI at the moment, and my critical takes on it, I thought perhaps I had dismissed Carr’s book too quickly. Just how long has this project been going on? Did Carr see where things were headed? I mentioned the idea, and a few other people agreed to do a popup bookclub about it.

I’m glad I did get around to reading it finally. I got Carr wrong, he was (is?) a fan of the web, just like I was at the time. But noticing a decline in his ability to focus for long periods prompted him to research and write The Shallows. He draws on the history of the book, media studies and the history of technology more generally to illustrate how technologies like clocks, maps, writing, and the book shaped how we remember and thought itself. In the second half of the book he talks about how the invention of the universal machine (the computer) has effectively absorbed prior forms of media into computers, as hypermedia. I don’t think Carr explicitly mentions the concept of Remediation (Bolter & Grusin, 1996) here, but I thought it was interesting to see how he connects media to the computer’s ability to simulate other machines. He also brings in neurology and psychology research literature to explain how different phases of memory formation are disturbed by rapid attention shifts that browsing the web affords:

The Web provides a convenient and compelling supplement to personal memory, but when we start using the Web as a substitute for personal memory, bypassing the inner processes of consolidation, we risk emptying our minds of their riches. (Carr, 2011, p. 192)

I thought this line of critique was especially interesting in light of the recent popularization of AI in the form of “chatting” with Large Language Models (LLM) like ChatGPT. ChatGPT’s interface provides a smooth surface where you conversationally interact with a computer to obtain information. It doesn’t give you citations, or links to things on the web to consult. Instead it gives you an answer, and you either continue the clarify what you are looking for, move on to something else or decide to stop. You don’t see a list of search results, which you need to click on and move laterally into, to see if they contain the answer to your question. These documents could have distracting design components, ads or other boilerplate. You don’t need to read the linked documents. ChatGPT seductively bypasses all that and you read The Answer. Much to my dismay, it seemed like perhaps the affordances of ChatGPT style interaction may not present the same problems as classic web navigation, at least in terms of distractions that lead to quick context shifts, and disturb our ability to form memories? I imagine there are hordes of education and pyschology researchers looking into this as a type, or they already have.

It was bit surreal reading the detailed descriptions in the final chapters about how neurons store memories through repetitive training … which echo the same language that is used to talk about deep learning today. These are powerful metaphors that have been deployed. Almost anticipating recent developments in AI, Carr ends the book talking about the goals of classic AI, and specifically the warnings of Joseph Weizenbaum in his book Computer Power and Human Reason.

What Makes us most human, Weizenbaum had come to believe, is what is least computable about us–the connections between our mind and our body, the experiences that shape our memory and our thinking, our capacity for emotion and empathy. The great danger we face as we become more intimately involved with our computers–as we come to experience more of our lives through the disembodied symbols flickering across our screens–is that we’ll begin to lose our humanness, to sacrifice the very qualities that separate us from machines. The only way to avoid that fate, Weizenbaum wrote, is to have the self-awareness and the courage to refuse to delegate to computers the most human of our mental activities and intellectual pursuits, particularly “tasks that demand wisdom”. (Carr, 2011, pp. 207–208).

Weizenbaum was the creator the original chatbot Eliza. I didn’t realize that his experience of seeing how ELIZA was used prompted him to critique the goals of Artificial Intelligence community. Maybe it’s not surprising because according to Carr Weizenbaum’s book was trashed by leaders in the computer science community at the time. Perhaps digging up a copy of Weizenbaum’s book might be interesting reading in light of AI’s resurgence now.

The Shallows had lots of citations to current states of affairs, demographics and statistics that gave authority to Carr’s arguments. But these got a little bit repetitive at times, but the drudgery drives the points home I guess. It is striking reading it 13 years later how much the web has changed.

In discussing the technologies of literacy and the book I felt a little bit like Carr’s would have benefited at looking at the book and literacy as instruments of power, that mobilized colonialism and capitalist extraction. I found myself thinking a lot about Bernard Stiegler while reading The Shallows, especially for the idea that writing and computational devices are memory prostheses, and that they are a pharmakon (contain both a remedy and a poison). A quick Kagi search and I can see Stiegler had a sequence of lectures about Carr. So I guess they knew of each other?

Overall I enjoyed The Shallows, even though I’m still working as a web developer. Nowadays I’m explicitly interested in the web’s role in memory practices, and what can be done from an architecture and design perspective to work against the grain of the web’s most pernicious features. There are some good threads to tug on in The Shallows.

References