by Lizzy Baus
Quick Summary
The Library Technology Conference on March 20-21, 2019 offered a variety of breakout sessions as well as two dynamic keynote speakers.
The Library Technology Conference on March 20-21, 2019 offered a variety of breakout sessions as well as two dynamic keynote speakers.
The keynote on the first day of the conference, presented by Macalester College professor Shilad Sen, was titled Towards an Open and Equitable Source of Algorithmic World Knowledge. The talk discussed human-centered algorithmic research - the interaction between human behavior and the algorithms that learn from that behavior. Sen's main points were 1) Wikipedia powers much of our computational intelligence, 2) Algorithms must use caution when learning from Wikipedia, and 3) Individuals can engage in collective action to moderate algorithmic dangers.
Well-known activist DeRay McKesson gave the keynote address on day 2. He spoke about the differences between public perception of certain issues and the reality of those issues, pointing out that often the people closest to the content are not the people telling the story. For an example, McKesson asked the audience what percent of prisoners they thought were in private prisons, and most of the audience guessed very high numbers. He then revealed that the real number is only 8% - but most prisons have some services that are privatized. In this case the story of private prisons is not being told by actual prison workers. McKesson spoke of various other places where the general public's perceptions do not match reality and how to go about changing those perceptions. He summed up by encouraging the audiece to keep asking the big question: Who is telling the story? Part of McKesson's answer is that we can all participate in truth telling.
The breakout sessions covered a wide range of library technology topics, from digitizing analog materials to archiving online activity to the Linked Data for Production project and more. There were lots of cool tools mentioned, and presenters shared projects that worked as well as some that were not so successful. The afternoon of day 2 offered more in-depth workshops, including sessions on text mining and the process of planning multi-day workshops for a variety of audiences.
All in all, the Library Technology Conference once more offered useful, engaging, and timely sessions on interesting topics. I'm looking forward to next year already!
