by Molly Huber
Quick Summary
Craig Stevens of Northwestern University will be the keynote speaker for the Upper Midwest Digital Collections Conference and Minnesota Digital Library Annual Meeting at St. Paul's Union Depot on May 6-7, 2025. We are also still accepting session proposals for the conference until Friday, December 6, 2024.
We are pleased to announce Craig Stevens as the keynote speaker for the next Upper Midwest Digital Collections Conference and Minnesota Digital Library Annual Meeting, which will take place at the Union Depot in St. Paul on May 6-7, 2025. Stevens is a doctoral candidate in anthropology at Northwestern University, while also working for the University's IT department and their Knight Lab. His work brings together his interests in anthropology and technology, seeking to express anthropological and archaeological data through creative processes and immersive products. He uses 3D digitization and augmented and virtual reality to expose broad audiences to African and African diasporic material culture.
Stevens recently developed and curated the Augmented Curiosities exhibit for the Herskovits Library of African Studies. He will discuss his work on that exhibit and other similar projects that create captivating library-based experiences from university collections.
We are also still accepting proposals for conference sessions. The theme for this year is "Digital Directions: Lessons Learned and Future Pathways." The planning committee has created a list of potential topics related to this theme, but welcomes proposals on any topic relevant to digital collections work. Here is the list of suggested topics:
- Inclusive metadata projects (e.g., traditional knowledge labels and notices) and other DEIA practices in digital collections
- Digital genealogy work
- Growth and management of audiovisual collections
- Artificial intelligence in digital collections work
- Working with community-centered collections/archives
- Minnesota Digital Library (MDL) issues and initiatives
- Initiatives in digital cultural heritage storytelling
- Re-evaluating/auditing digital collections (remediation projects and other best practices for reviewing content)
- Open source digital content management systems/migrating to new systems
- America 250 initiatives
- Crowdsourcing digital projects
- Changing landscape for national and other large-scale digital collections
- Future directions in digital collections work
The deadline to submit a proposal is Friday, December 6. For more information about Craig Stevens and the proposal process, please visit our event page.
