CNI Spring 2025 Membership Meeting
April 7-8, 2025
Hyatt Regency Milwaukee
Opening Plenary: Presentation of the Paul Evan Peters Award & Memorial Lecture
Lessons From LOCKSS
Victoria Reich and David Rosenthal
Monday, April 7, 1:00–2:15 pm CT
ARL Executive Director Andrew K. Pace will begin the opening plenary with a 20–25-minute update, including a Q&A portion, on the CNI leadership transition.
The 2025 Paul Evan Peters Award recipients will look back over their two decades with the LOCKSS Program. Reich will focus on the Program’s initial goals and how they evolved as the landscape of academic communication changed, and Rosenthal will discuss the Program’s technology, how it developed, and how this history reveals a set of seductive, persistent but impractical ideas.
Presentation Slides & Notes: https://blog.dshr.org/2025/04/paul-evan-peters-award-lecture.html
About the Speakers
In 1998, Reich and Rosenthal co-founded the LOCKSS (“Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe”) Program at Stanford University Libraries; LOCKSS aimed to ensure the long-term, low-cost preservation of digital materials and empower organizations, particularly libraries, to steward and preserve their own digital collections. The LOCKSS software has since been adopted as an economical, easy-to-use, and robust basis for the massive, global, publisher-supported CLOCKSS network and networks preserving, among others, e-journals and government documents. Through research, development, and maintenance, the proven technologies mitigate technological, economic, and legal threats to data persistence. More information about Reich, Rosenthal, and the Award is available at https://www.cni.org/news/lockss-co-founders-honored-with-2025-paul-evan-peters-award
Open Forum on Current National Trends: Discussing Key Issues in Today’s Environment
Karim Boughida (Stony Brook University) and Karen Estlund (Colorado State University)
Monday, April 7, 5:30–6:15 pm CT
This session will not be recorded; it is designed to provide attendees with a platform to openly engage in discussions about pressing issues affecting the field. All topics, whether widespread or specific concerns, can be addressed freely by participants. The session will begin with a focus on data access and infrastructure in the current US environment.
The session will be immediately followed by the Monday evening reception.
Closing Plenary: A Conversation on Cybersecurity, Essential Cyberinfrastructure for Research and Education, and Resilience
Moderator: Clifford Lynch, CNI
Panelists: Brewster Kahle (Internet Archive), Elisabeth Long (Johns Hopkins University), Cheryl Washington (University of California, Davis), and Keith Webster (Carnegie Mellon University)
Tuesday, April 8, 2:15–3:30 pm CT
The intensity and frequency of attacks on information systems and services seems to be growing without bounds. This is happening across all sectors of society.
The effects of these attacks, as well as our experience with other recent events such as the COVID pandemic, have given us a new understanding of the critical roles that archives, repositories, and scholarly communications systems play as part of the essential cyberinfrastructure for the research and higher education community (and indeed far beyond this community).
The conversation will explore these questions:
- The nature of the evolving threat landscape is complex and contains numerous actors with varying motivations. This includes ransomware, denial of service attacks, strategic compromise, and aggressive harvesting, among others. How might we better understand this landscape?
- Approaches to understanding, documenting, and communicating the costs, impacts, and implications of breaches, including to the broad public.
- What collective actions might help our community become more resilient and secure? For example, is there a need or a role for an Information Sharing and Analysis Center type organization? What might be done to facilitate bilateral or multilateral backup and disaster recovery arrangements? How can funding be generated to help improve security and resilience? What should be prioritized?
The closing plenary will include significant time for audience engagement and discussion.
Panelists
Brewster Kahle has built technologies, companies, and institutions to advance the goal of universal access to all knowledge. He currently oversees the non-profit Internet Archive as founder and Digital Librarian, which is now one of the largest digital archives in the world. As a digital archivist, Brewster has been active in librarianship, technology, and business. After graduating from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1982, Brewster helped start a supercomputer company, Thinking Machines, that built systems for searching large text collections. In 1989, he invented the Internet’s first publishing and distributed search system, WAIS (Wide Area Information Server). WAIS Inc. created the online presence for many of the world’s largest publishers, and was purchased by America Online in 1995. In 1996, Brewster co-founded Alexa Internet, which provides search and discovery services included in more than 90 percent of web browsers, and was purchased by Amazon in 1999.
Elisabeth M. Long is Sheridan Dean of University Libraries, Archives, and Museums at Johns Hopkins University. She oversees library services in the six Sheridan Libraries and coordinates library services provided by all schools of the university through the University Library Directors Council (LDC), which she chairs. She also oversees the university’s historic house museums, Homewood Museum and Evergreen Museum & Library.
Prior to becoming dean at Johns Hopkins, Dean Long served as associate university librarian for information technology and digital scholarship at The University of Chicago Library since 2016, where she began her career in 1998. She served as interim library director and university librarian from December 1, 2021 to April 21, 2022, and was an Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Leadership Fellow in 2018–2019. She serves on the HELIOS Open Advisory Council and the APTrust Governing Board, and was a member of the ARL/CNI AI Scenario Planning Task Force. Long holds a BA from St. John’s College, an MLIS from the University of Maryland, and an MFA in book and paper arts from Columbia College Chicago.
Cheryl Washington is the Chief Information Security Officer for the University of California at Davis. Cheryl has more than 20 years of experience developing and managing IT and information security programs in higher education. Currently, Cheryl leads the development and implementation of a comprehensive information security program that supports the academic, research, and public service mission of the University of California at Davis. Cheryl works closely with faculty, staff, and management to implement strategies to protect personal and institutional information assets. Cheryl is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles and maintains designations as a Certified Information Privacy Professional/United States (CIPP/US), Certified Information Privacy Professional/Government (CIPP/G), Certified Information Security Manager (CISM), Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA), Certified in Risk and Information Systems Control (CRISC), and PCI Internal Security Assessor (ISA).
Keith Webster was appointed Dean of University Libraries at Carnegie Mellon University in July 2013 and was additionally appointed as Director of Emerging and Integrative Media Initiatives in July 2015 and Posner Dean’s Chair in 2021. He also has a courtesy academic appointment at the University’s H. John Heinz III College. Previously, Keith was Vice President and Director of Academic Relations and Strategy for the global publishing company John Wiley and Sons. He was formerly Dean of Libraries and University Librarian at the University of Queensland in Australia, leading one of the largest universities and hospital library services in the southern hemisphere. Earlier positions include University Librarian at Victoria University in New Zealand, Head of Information Policy at HM Treasury, London, and Director of Information Services at the School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London. Keith has held professorships in information science at Victoria University of Wellington and City University, London. He is a Chartered Fellow and an Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (UK), and has served on government advisory boards, journal editorial boards, and as an officer in professional and learned societies around the world. He was Chair of the National Information Standards Organization in 2018/19.
Other panelists may be added
Code of Conduct
CNI is committed to maintaining a welcoming and inclusive environment for inquiry, constructive disagreement, and intellectual freedom and honesty. We do not tolerate personal attacks, harassment of any kind, violence, or disruptive behavior. Please be respectful of our community’s diversity and generous of others’ views. If you have concerns, please contact CNI staff.