CNI: Coalition for Networked Information

OCFL: A Community Developed Approach to Digital Preservation

Andrew Woods
Technical Director
DuraSpace

Rosalyn Metz
Director, Library Technology and Digital Strategies
Emory University

Simeon Warner
Director of Linked Data and Repository Architecture
Cornell University

The Oxford Common File Layout (OCFL) specification began as a discussion at a Fedora/Samvera Camp held at Oxford University in September of 2017. Since then, it has grown into a focused community effort to define an open and application-independent approach to the long-term preservation of digital objects. Developed for structured, transparent, and predictable storage, it is designed to promote sustainable long-term access and management of content within digital repositories. This presentation will focus on the motivations and vision for the OCFL, explain key choices for the specification, and describe the status of implementation efforts.

https://ocfl.io/

Of Data, Ethics, and Leadership: Building a National Roadmap for Web Privacy and Web Analytics

Scott W. H. Young
User Experience & Assessment Librarian
Montana State University

Jason Clark
Head, Special Collections and Archival Informatics
Montana State University

Sara Mannheimer
Data Management Librarian
Montana State University

This session will report on the activities and findings from the National Forum on Web Privacy and Web Analytics, an Institute of Museum and Library Services-funded project that brought together 40 librarians, technologists, and privacy researchers from across the US and Canada to critically address library values and practices related to web analytics. Libraries have historically offered safe spaces of intellectual freedom, but the widespread implementation of third-party analytics may conflict with our commitments to privacy. With these challenges in mind, our Forum essentially asked, “How can libraries implement privacy-focused, values-driven analytics practices?” This presentation will provide an overview of our National Forum and its results, including discussion of key challenges, staff skills, and partners for enhancing privacy on the web. We will also focus on generating dialogue and energizing leadership within the CNI community, especially regarding analytics needs and tools, implementation approaches, and practical strategies for achieving privacy.

https://www.lib.montana.edu/privacy-forum/

Presentation

Purposeful Space Design for Libraries

Joan Lippincott
Associate Executive Director
Coalition for Networked Information

Kelly Miller
Associate Dean for Learning and Research Services
University of Miami

Thomas Hickerson
Principal Research Investigator
University of Calgary

CNI has been working with the Learning Spaces Collaboratory (LSC) to examine how new and renovated spaces can better reflect contemporary needs and contribute to the programmatic priorities of their institution. One way of defining the characteristics of a space is to create a “job description” for it, and that is what groups of participants did at a roundtable co-sponsored by CNI and LSC in December 2018. We’ll highlight some specific aspects of job descriptions for spaces, including responsibilities, required skills, etc. Another theme of that roundtable and one heard increasingly in space design circles, is the notion of permeability, space that can be fluid and that changes according to the people using it for particular purposes at particular times. Permeability can happen anywhere, on all campuses, in all building types, and even outdoors. We will examine permeable space design and examples of collaborative use for teaching, learning, and research in academic libraries. Finally, we’ll describe linking assessment to the goals for the space and moving assessment to a mission-critical focus instead of merely a focus on user satisfaction.

https://www.cni.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Report-of-an-LSC-CNI-Roundtable.pdf
https://pubs.royle.com/publication/?i=575655&ver=html5&p=14

Presentation

A Research Agenda for Historical and Multilingual OCR

Ryan Cordell
Associate Professor of English
Northeastern University

This talk will outline the primary findings and recommendations of a report written for The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that seeks to describe the current state of optical character recognition (OCR) for large-scale humanities collections and suggest the most fruitful avenues for future research in this domain. The report surveys the current state of OCR for historical documents and recommends concrete steps that researchers, implementers, and funders can take to make progress improving the quality and use of OCR collections over the next five to ten years. We find, for instance, that advances in artificial intelligence for image recognition, natural language processing, and machine learning will drive significant progress in this area. More importantly, however, we describe how sharing goals, techniques, and data among researchers in computer science, in book and manuscript studies, and in library and information sciences will open up exciting new problems and allow a broad community, including cohorts who rarely collaborate, to allocate resources and measure progress in improving OCR for historical typography and multilingual documents. This presentation will briefly outline the report’s findings about the current state of the art for humanistic OCR, but will devote the majority of his talk to detailing the report’s nine primary recommendations for future, collaborative OCR research.

https://ocr.northeastern.edu

Research Innovation Trends and Priorities in Canadian Research Libraries

Merrilee Proffitt
Senior Manager
OCLC Research

Vivian Lewis
University Librarian
McMaster University

In 2018 the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) and OCLC Research partnered to conduct a survey of research libraries in Canada. The survey, taken by 89% of CARL library directors, is the first of its kind to capture intelligence regarding trends, capacities, priorities and collaborations within the Canadian research library community. This briefing will focus on findings from this survey, as well as comparative data from complementary surveys conducted by OCLC Research in partnership with the Council of Australian University Libraries (CAUL) and Research Libraries UK (RLUK). Understanding key similarities and differences in regional priorities provides powerful suggestion as to where the global research library community might look for leadership and partnerships. We will also share how the survey is informing work being planned and carried out by OCLC Research and CARL.

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