Library Technology Conference takeaways

In mid-March, Macalester College hosted its annual Library Technology Conference, which focuses on all sorts of ways in which technology can make our lives better - or worse, as the case may be.

The keynote speaker was Dr. Safiya Umoja Noble, an Information Studies professor at UCLA. She is known for her research "at the intersection of culture and technology in the design and use of applications on the Internet." She gave a fascinating talk on the Politics of Information, calling attention to the fact that online search engines such as Google are far from neutral and that the algorithms that return results are meant to recall not the best or most useful information but the most lucrative advertising sources. She also addressed the issues of sensitive topics in metadata - how do you label a racist or stereotypical image? There was a lot of discussion (both in the talk and around tables afterward) about making those sorts of judgments about resources, who gets to make those judgments, and how they should be communicated to a possibly uneducated or innocent public. One sentence of hers really stuck with me: "We have more data and technology than ever, and more inequality and injustice to go with it." She left us with a list of ways we can take action today, including resisting the urge to remain neutral in all things, instead adopting actively critical perspectives towards both our library metadata and the wider Internet.

Sara Ring and I were also presenters this year, giving a workshop called Library Linked Data for the Uninitiated (yes, we did "initiate" participants at the end of the session). Over the course of this 90-minute workshop, we gave a brief overview of what Linked Data is all about, how it relates to libraries, and what you can do right now to get your library "on the map." We talked about the developing BIBFRAME model and how it uses Linked Data principles, and we demonstrated one common way of marking up library data - in RDF/XML. Participants got to really get their hands dirty, figuring out how to translate common pieces of bibliographic data into RDF triples and fit those pieces into the BIBFRAME model. Finally, we spoke about several case studies where busy library professionals were able to use already-available tools to harness the power of Linked Data. You can view our slides and handouts (and try your hand at our exercises) here: http://z.umn.edu/14cy.

I had an eye-opening and enjoyable time at the Library Technology Conference, and I look forward to next year!