Call for Speakers and Panelists, Digital Commonwealth’s 15th Annual Conference, Virtual
Posted August 31, 2020
Description:
The Digital Commonwealth’s 15th Annual Conference will be held online via Zoom on Tuesday April 13th, 2021 from 9:00am to 4:00pm (EDST). Digital Commonwealth’s Conference Committee invites interested speakers to submit abstracts of 1 page or less in length for presentations centered around the theme: The Politics of Collections. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
- Promotion of collections on controversial topics or hot-button issues
- Equitable digital access
- Restrictions on how content is used and for what purpose
- The decision to digitize and the selection process
- Vendor and platform selection, problems and successes
- Procuring initial and continued funding, problems and successes
- Relationships with material donors, problems and successes
- Collaboration/competition with other institutions with similar collection interests
- Adoption of policy, standards, procedures, and guidelines; problems and successes
- Digitizing materials with unknown copyright; problems and successes
- Disposition of older digital exhibits: update, remove, or re-design?
- K-12 education and digital resources: problems and successes
Proposals for individual presentations, or being a panel participant, and joint proposals for a panel or interactive dialogue between 2-3 people will be considered for inclusion. Panel sessions will be 1 hour in length. Individual presentations will be approx. 40 minutes. Both will include time for audience Q&A.
About Digital Commonwealth:
Digital Commonwealth is a non-profit collaborative organization that provides resources and services to support the creation, management, and dissemination of cultural heritage materials held by Massachusetts libraries, museums, historical societies, and archives. Digital Commonwealth currently has over 200 member institutions from across the state.
Digital Commonwealth’s mission is to provide access to thousands of images, documents, and sound recordings that have been digitized by member institutions so that they may be available to researchers, students, and the general public. Digital Commonwealth provides a single point of online access to digital assets hosted by Massachusetts cultural institutions. It also serves as a repository for hosting an institution’s content. Free digitization services are provided by the Boston Public Library as part of the Library for the Commonwealth program. Our member institutions include libraries, museums, historical societies, archives, research institutions, and other organizational repositories of our cultural heritage.
How to Apply:
Abstracts should be submitted by email no later than Thursday October 1, 2020 to [email protected]. Please email any questions to the same address.