CNI Spring 2025 Membership Meeting

Optional orientation session for new attendees (representatives of new member organizations and new representatives or alternate delegates from existing member organizations); guests and presenters are also welcome.

ARL Executive Director Andrew K. Pace will begin the opening plenary with a 20–25-minute update, including a Q&A portion, on the CNI leadership transition.

The 2025 Paul Evan Peters Award recipients will look back over their two decades with the LOCKSS Program. Reich will focus on the Program’s initial goals and how they evolved as the landscape of academic communication changed, and Rosenthal will discuss the Program’s technology, how it developed, and how this history reveals a set of seductive, persistent but impractical ideas.

Presentation Slides & Notes: https://blog.dshr.org/2025/04/paul-evan-peters-award-lecture.html

Authors Alliance and the Northeastern University Library (NUL) are working with a diverse set of stakeholders to develop an actionable startup plan for a public interest training corpus for artificial intelligence. "Developing The Public Interest Corpus" is advanced through a series of iterative planning workshops and other related meetings with librarians, disciplinary researchers, publishers, technologists, authors, and more. This presentation provides an update on the effort to date, synthesizing takeaways from the first project workshop held at NUL in February. The workshop included discussion of the project’s: (1) principles and goals, (2) target audiences, training data needs, and potential partners (3) legal and policy challenges, and (4) business model, sustainability, and governance.

https://publicinterestcorpus.org/

Artificial intelligence (AI) literacy has evolved from a theoretical discussion to an essential academic competency. In 2025, many academic institutions and libraries no longer debate whether to invest in AI skills, but rather how to do so effectively and responsibly. This panel will feature two library leaders highlighting how their institutions advance AI literacy initiatives. The discussion will focus on practical strategies for embedding AI literacy into library services; equipping librarians with essential AI skills; and fostering collaboration among faculty, IT, and students.

Why do we even care about data? What value do data bring us and what value do humans bring to the data landscape? As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes the default in data conversations, data curators are thinking critically about what this means. Intentional efforts from professionals such as curators invested in making data FAIR (findable, accessible, interopable, and reusable) are key to preserving the meaning of data. There is unique value and importance in people's labor and experiences when documenting and preserving data. It is the people who dig into the context and elevate what is missing to help make the data more FAIR. The session will address a project from the Data Curation Network (DCN) funded by Institute of Museum and Library Services grant [re-252343-ols-22] to support the development of a specialized curriculum for data curation training for information professionals and data stewards. Key to this work was drawing together data curators and information professionals to create in-depth training resources for four specialized data types: geospatial data, scientific images, code, and simulations. Using a cohort model with a guiding mentor, the project relied upon co-developing strategies to effectively and equitably work with volunteers to generate community-based resources. Community building, co-designing, bringing people from different types of disciplines, data backgrounds, and experiences are equally as important as developing a curriculum and sharing it. In fact, the curriculum benefits from and is made stronger when various intersectional voices are present. In this project briefing, the mentors will provide an overview of the community building that went into forming cohorts that developed, piloted, and refined specialized data curation curriculum, reflect on what worked well and where there are opportunities, and they will describe directions for future DCN work as well as how others can adapt this work for their own needs. The value that data curators in community bring to institutions, researchers, and data reuse will enable greater usability of data into the future.

https://datacurationnetwork.org/expanding-curation-training/

Flickr is huge; it contains billions of images. It's a unique visual history collection, and the Flickr Foundation believes it is time to figure out how to preserve it for future viewers to enjoy. But, it is simply too big for any contemporary archive to take on, so the Foundation developed Data Lifeboat, a simple packaging service to bundle up slivers of Flickr for preservation elsewhere. A Data Lifeboat is designed to contain images and metadata and to jettison the more standard web archive for a format that is content- and context-focussed.  

https://www.flickr.org/programs/content-mobility/data-lifeboat/

Libraries have a rich tradition of interconnection, resource sharing, and cooperative metadata work, but not of open metadata. Our work with interoperability projects and research information services including IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework), Blue Core, POD (Platform for Open Data), and RIALTO bring questions about metadata reuse to the fore. This session will describe the uncertainties and impediments created by lack of explicit licensing and argue that open licenses or declarations are the right solutions that allow the library community to innovate. We draw connections with the practices of the burgeoning open science and open data movements, as well as emerging requirements for outputs from federally funded research.

IIIF: http://iiif.io
Blue Core: https://bluecore.info/
POD: https://www.cni.org/topics/digital-libraries/pod-building-library-data-lakes-to-reduce-friction-and-enable-innovation
RIALTO: https://library.stanford.edu/rialto-research-intelligence

*The presenters will also host a breakfast discussion table on this topic (Tuesday, April 8, 7:45–9:00 am)

This briefing shares 18-month outcomes from a collaborative initiative among research libraries and iSchools at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, the University of North Texas, the University of Colorado Boulder, and Los Alamos National Laboratory. This initiative aimed to strengthen academic libraries' role as research partners and promote library and information science research collaborations. The program combines open-access training, seed-funded collaborative projects, and structured fellowships. Outcomes include institutional policy reforms that recognize research contributions as a vital element of library staff career advancement and cross-departmental partnerships addressing digital scholarship, data curation, and other key priorities in library settings. The session highlights strategies for aligning workforce development with organizational priorities, including adaptable funding frameworks and mentorship models for early-career professionals. Presenters will discuss lessons learned from coordinating implementations across distinct academic libraries and sustaining a cultural shift toward research-intensive collaboration.

https://jointpdi.github.io/
https://prolearning.unt.edu/unt/course/course.aspx?catId=130
https://lib.vt.edu/center-for-digital-research-and-scholarship/program/grant-page.html
https://library.unt.edu/deans-innovation-grant/

Neural network artificial intelligence (AI) technologies capable of working with both images and text offer promising tools for improving access to library collections at scale. In particular, libraries increasingly must address the obligation to generate succinct "alt-text" descriptions of digital images, which often entails remediation tasks in the tens of thousands of items. AI approaches are appealing given their ability to automate complex tasks involving natural language, but there are plentiful reasons to look beyond simply pasting library materials into ChatGPT. Stanford University's experiments have found that both fine-tuning of locally hosted models and "conditioning" of the captions by incorporating available metadata into the model's instructions ("prompt engineering") show promise for producing useful descriptive text for images. They've also found that tailoring approaches to specific collections and keeping human reviewers in the loop are keys to making the alt-text as accurate as possible while gaining efficiency at scale. Beyond accessibility compliance, vision language models can also enable free-text "evocative" search in multiple languages, object detection, and other tools for improving discovery within image collections.

https://web.stanford.edu/~pleonard/cni2025/

Washington University (WashU) established the Digital Intelligence and Innovation Accelerator (DI2) to catalyze digital transformation and support researchers in the development and implementation of software and related technologies to support. From the beginning, WashU Libraries have actively partnered with DI2, taking advantage of the library's central position on campus to serve as a 'front door' to digital transformation. This presentation discusses the partnership and presents case studies of three projects that have shaped both organizations' approaches to services. First, the presenters will look at chatbots for discovery. DI2 has an objective to build a state-of-the-art chatbot tool that is fully HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) compliant. The ChatBot Creator project is designed to be user-friendly and highly customizable, and the first beta use case is being developed in partnership with the university library. It is a Digital Resource Hub chatbot that supports the campus community in identifying resources to support their research and learning needs. The second case study will look at a DI2-funded project, based in the libraries, to expand the use of, and access to, open educational resources for the campus. Finally, the presenters will review ongoing efforts to implement a campus-wide research profiling system. Each of these partnerships has been different, but all have resulted in improved services for WashU faculty and students.

OER Project: https://library.wustl.edu/news/new-award-to-transform-learning-through-open-educational-resources/
DI2 overview: https://di2accelerator.wustl.edu/
WashU Libraries: https://library.wustl.edu/

The HBS Knowledge platform is a dynamic knowledge graph designed to enhance the discovery and integration of research, people, and ideas across Harvard Business School (HBS). First launched in June 2021 and rebooted in March 2025, the platform connects structured and unstructured data from heterogeneous sources across HBS, creating a rich network of insights. In the session, the presenters will explore how the graph was built, the ongoing data workflows that keep it up to date, current use cases, and their vision for further development. They will describe the technology stack and main challenges and learnings as they continue to iterate on the platform. With plans to leverage its structure for advanced semantic search and as a foundation for artificial intelligence-driven applications, HBS Knowledge represents a crucial step toward more intelligent and connected academic discovery and resources for administrative departments on campus.

This session will not be recorded; it is designed to provide attendees with a platform to openly engage in discussions about pressing issues affecting the field. All topics, whether widespread or specific concerns, can be addressed freely by participants. The session will begin with a focus on data access and infrastructure in the current US environment.

During breakfast, attendees may join optional table discussions on pre-determined topics. Designated tables will be marked by table signs and located throughout the breakfast area. There is no signup; participation is first come, first served.

• AI and Open Repositories, Jessica Davila (University of Oklahoma)
• Assessing AI Tools/Integrations, Devin Savage (Illinois Institute of Technology) 
• Changes in Federal Research Funding, Tim McGeary (Duke University)
• Discontinued Permanent Access to Ebooks, Anu Vedantham (Rowan University)
• Library Assessment & Benchmark Tools, Hilary Craiglow (Attain Partners)
• Measuring Institutional Research Output/Assessing Impact, Michael Shensky and Bryan Gee (University of Texas at Austin)
• Meet AI Researcher in Residence, Natalie Meyers (ARL/CNI)
• Meeting Digital Accessibility Standards, Cory Tressler (The Ohio State University)
  
• National Trends (Cont), Karim Boughida (Stony Brook U.), Karen Estlund (Colorado State)
• Open Library Metadata, Tom Cramer (Stanford University), Rochelle Lundy (Stanford University), Simeon Warner (Cornell University)
• Overcoming Obstacles to Shared Solutions, Jacob Nadal (Center for Research Libraries)
• Supporting Campus Open Source, Bill Branan (Johns Hopkins University) 

The growing interest in open scholarship initiatives and policies by governments, funding agencies, academic advocacy organizations, and publishers is driving an increased emphasis on the proper management, dissemination, and recognition of research outputs beyond the primary article, such as datasets and software. A proper understanding of the ecosystem of scholarly objects across various organizational scales (e.g., within an institution vs. within a department) requires a holistic approach to identify the entire corpus of scholarly outputs and to characterize the various ways in which they are connected. The session presents work being conducted at the University of Texas at Austin (UT) to develop scripted processes for gathering information about research datasets and open source software published by members of the campus community. These outputs have historically been under-recognized and more difficult to track than articles published by university-affiliated researchers. A primary motivation of this work is to identify connections between different types of research outputs in order to acquire a more comprehensive view of the research ecosystem at our institution. This presentation discusses the integration of a wide range of digital repository and platform APIs in a scalable process that can be used for on-demand discovery and analysis of these objects. The methodology can be applied across systems of varying architecture, specificity, and connectivity that are used for publishing research outputs. The session will also highlight how the data informs the strategies developed by the UT Libraries and UT Open Source Program Office for providing research data and software services to the university community.

*The presenters will also host a breakfast discussion table on this topic (Tuesday, April 8, 7:45–9:00 am)

https://github.com/utlibraries/research-data-discovery
https://github.com/UT-OSPO/institutional-innovation-grapher

Since its opening in fall 2022, the Mary Ann Mavrinac Studio X has established itself as a vibrant hub for extended reality (XR) innovation, fostering interdisciplinary collaboration, research, and learning at the University of Rochester Libraries. In Phase I, the Library successfully lowered barriers to XR access by implementing hands-on programming, space reservations, equipment lending, and faculty partnerships. Building on this success, the Library conducted user research to determine the most pressing needs for Phase II. This talk will explore how stakeholder insights have shaped strategic priorities, from expanding research support and developing an XR curriculum to building sustainable workflows that accelerate researcher projects. As the Studio X team transitions from a startup mentality to a long-term vision, they aim to position Studio X as a leader in immersive technology research and education.

https://dslab.digitalscholar.rochester.edu/downloads/StudioX-StakeholderReport2024.pdf

As vast stores of research metadata built on persistent identifiers (PIDs) continue to grow, challenges around data siloing and inconsistent metadata quality have become increasingly evident. While various stakeholders-libraries, publishers, repositories, and discovery systems-have made significant localized efforts to address these issues, a unified, scalable approach has been missing. The Collaborative Metadata Enrichment Taskforce (COMET) emerged to fill this gap, convening a series of community-driven engagements in late 2024 and early 2025 to chart a collaborative way forward. This session will highlight how COMET is transforming isolated metadata curation efforts into collective value through the development of an open infrastructure service. The service will enable stakeholders to surface, share, and contribute validated metadata improvements, enhancing the quality and interoperability of the scholarly communications ecosystem. The presentation will provide insights into COMET's progress, including identified use cases, governance models, and upcoming pilot projects, while inviting further collaboration from the community.

https://www.cometadata.org

When OpenAI released ChatGPT 3.5, Northwestern University Libraries immediately saw the potential for a new kind of search-and-discovery tool. The team pivoted to develop a chat-based, retrieval-augmented generation proof of concept that allowed end users to ask questions in natural language and receive generated answers along with semantic search results. The proof of concept made it clear that large language models (LLMs) and semantic search drastically changed what was possible in search and discovery systems. The team presented its early findings widely and held workshops with the library community to share knowledge and start the conversation. Taking cues from the startup world, Northwestern prioritized moving to production and began reimagining how chat-based search would work within a digital collections context. The result is an integrated search and discovery system that leverages the power of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and semantic search providing users with a new way to explore and understand the collections. In August 2024, Northwestern was awarded an Institute of Museum and Library Services National Leadership Grant to expand on the work, generalize the tools, and ultimately release an installable cloud-based solution for experimentation. This presentation will cover the technical and design considerations of integrating semantic search and LLMs into digital collections, the challenges faced when developing solutions in a rapidly changing environment, and the lessons learned moving to production. It will also include a demonstration of the latest version of the production system which uses an agent-based approach and introspection to answer complex multi-faceted queries. Future plans for the tool and how the team plans to continue to leverage generative AI and semantic search to improve the user experience will also be discussed.

https://dc.library.northwestern.edu
https://github.com/nulib/dc-nextjs
https://github.com/nulib/dc-api-v2/
https://www.library.northwestern.edu/about/news/library-news/2024/grant-supports-northwestern-libraries-launch-of-generative-ai-based-chat-search.html

At the CNI Spring 2020 Membership Meeting, the Yale Library (YL) presented an innovative governance model designed to achieve two primary goals. The first goal was to enhance the value delivered by the library's IT department by ensuring its strategic priorities aligned with YL's overall mission. The second goal was to clearly define decision-making authority and accountability within the organization. This presentation will showcase the substantial progress made since adopting this new governance model. The session will explore the development of the modern technology infrastructure, highlight key applications developed since 2020, and discuss the team structure that powers these advancements. Furthermore, it will underscore the project’s innovations and demonstrate how the enhanced capabilities have positioned the organization to move deeper into research support across the university.

The panel will discuss safeguarding the world's most-important audiovisual data, featuring perspectives from David Rowntree, former archivist of the International Criminal Court in the Hague who tried to organize the Yugoslavia and Rwanda war crimes interviews; Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive, which has been creating a collection of the January 6th insurrection and other material the government is now deleting; and Peter B. Kaufman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Open Learning (whose video work is now supported by the Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web).  

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262538169/the-moving-image/

As research data management (RDM) evolves, institutions are increasingly leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and interoperable technologies to move beyond compliance-driven models toward strategic, scalable data stewardship. The Machine-Actionable DMPs (MAP) Project, led by the Association of Research Libraries and the California Digital Library, is pioneering technical solutions that integrate AI-driven evaluation of data management plans (DMPs), facilitate cross-campus coordination, and improve research data infrastructure. Through institutional pilots at Arizona State University, the University of California Riverside, the University of Colorado Boulder, and others, the MAP Project is demonstrating how AI and machine-actionable frameworks can enhance institutional decision-making and resource alignment. This session will showcase cutting-edge developments in AI-assisted DMP evaluation, dynamic data stewardship workflows, and cross-institutional interoperability. It will explore how AI can analyze and refine DMPs to improve compliance tracking, identify gaps in institutional support, and optimize data lifecycle planning. Additionally, it will discuss emerging tools that enhance real-time communication between research offices, libraries, and IT, enabling institutions to develop more responsive and sustainable research data ecosystems.

https://www.arl.org/building-a-scalable-data-management-infrastructure-for-strategic-institutional-coordination/
https://www.arl.org/blog/insights-from-arizona-state-university-advancing-research-support-through-open-science-data-sovereignty-and-machine-actionable-plans/
https://www.arl.org/blog/arl-cdl-machine-actionable-plans-map-pilot-team-visits-university-of-colorado-boulder/
https://www.arl.org/blog/from-compliance-to-sustainable-capacity-strategic-insights-on-research-data-stewardship/
https://www.arl.org/blog/uc-riverside-machine-actionable-plans-map-team-builds-promising-communication-prototype/

The panel will discuss how community-owned and -led digital infrastructure can, and should, incorporate contingencies for sunsetting into sustainability planning and how to embody core values and address diverse member needs throughout the sunset process. Through its twenty years of operation, MetaArchive, the first and longest-running Private LOCKSS Network (PLN) has been consistently defining what it entails to be a digital preservation network created and hosted by and for memory organizations. Now, as the first PLN to undergo a deliberative sunset, there is the opportunity to share lessons in how endings can be carried out with as much intention and care as beginnings. In a time of field- and nation-wide change and transition, investments in shared infrastructure and inter-institutional communities of practice are more valuable than ever for building a resilient information ecosystem-only collectively can we guarantee access to our cultural heritage in the long term.

https://metaarchive.org/metaarchive-leads-pln-transformation/
https://metaarchive.org/metaarchive-is-sunsetting-updates-and-learnings-from-a-community-in-transition/

Building a Shared Grassroots and Administrative Vision for Holistic Digital Curation

Digital content creation, curation, and preservation work often spans multiple library units, leading to inconsistent resource and personnel allocation and a lack of strategic vision. At Brigham Young University Library, an ad hoc grassroots team volunteered to perform a holistic review of extant digital collections, workflows, personnel, and systems, to foster a deeper understanding of digital challenges and strategies across all units. The administration commissioned this project, requesting an investigation and recommendations from the task force. After three phases across two years, the team completed the project, resulting in twenty-one recommendations, to which the administration is responding. Today the library has a clearer understanding of its digital content ecosystems and is prepared to move forward with greater intentionality and strategic focus. This presentation summarizes the project's methodology and findings and the effectiveness of the collaborative process between staff and administrators.

Reconstructing a Digital Ecosystem: University at Buffalo Libraries' First Year

Over the past year, the University at Buffalo Libraries established a new department dedicated to reimagining the digital ecosystem for its diverse collections. The objective is to design a comprehensive digital collections infrastructure that not only leverages the advantages of open-source community initiatives but also facilitates reciprocal contributions to these communities. Through strategic recruitment, redefined staff roles, rigorous research, and collaboration with peer institutions, the department has embarked on this significant endeavor. The presentation delineates the inaugural year and the accomplished projects, including the implementation of a metadata standards working group, the creation of digital asset management evaluation rubrics, the assessment and testing of digital asset management solutions, data cleanup, and accessibility remediation.

Rethinking the Institutional Repository (Again)

In the fall of 2019, Paul V. Galvin Library at Illinois Institute of Technology (Illinois Tech) in Chicago launched a new iteration of the university's institutional repository (IR). This single instance of Islandora serves as both the traditional IR and a digital collections portal for Illinois Tech's University Archives and Special Collections. Now, six years later, Galvin Library is on the verge of another major update to a newer version of Islandora, and this is an opportunity for further reflection and reenvisioning of what this IR can be. This session will detail the unexpected wins, lessons learned, and recurring challenges that have arisen in the life of this double-duty repository, as well as a look to the future and the ways that Galvin Library hopes to enhance and modify the IR to better meet the needs of the university community and external users. The session will also move beyond one specific IR to ponder the place of an IR in the contemporary lifecycle of scholarship and hopefully inspire conversation about the ways that a library-led repository can provide new and unorthodox solutions in the face of a lack of institutional buy-in or adequate resourcing.

repository.iit.edu

Leveraging Artificial Intelligence for Improved Transcription in Special Collections and Academic Libraries

The Georgia State University Library houses an extensive collection of audio-visual assets that serve as invaluable resources for research and education, including oral histories, television and radio broadcasts, labor union meetings, and more. Historically, the process of transcribing these sensitive materials has been labor-intensive and time-consuming. This project briefing will explore an in-progress project to create a custom user interface for OpenAI's Whisper automatic speech recognition system to improve the processing of these materials. It will discuss the motivations and needs assessment for the project, project planning, development and challenges, and system testing and refinement, in addition to reporting on any findings regarding the project's impact on efficiency, accessibility, and cost savings.

Leveraging Consumer-Level Artificial Intelligence for Descriptive Metadata Creation in Archival Collections

The University at Buffalo, University Archives is leveraging consumer-grade artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the creation of descriptive metadata for over 2,000 hours of audio in the UB-WBFO Radio Archive. Utilizing Microsoft Copilot, this initiative aims to produce concise and detailed program descriptions from audio transcriptions, facilitating inclusion in the University Libraries, Digital Collections, and the National Archive of Public Broadcasting. By developing targeted command prompts paired with transcription files, archivists have drastically reduced processing time, generating generic summaries efficiently. This innovative approach not only improves access to archival content and exemplifies the impact of AI on archival practices but also evidences how entry-level or consumer-grade AI tools can be integrated successfully into project workflows.

Designing SpeakEZ: An AI System to Transcribe and Process Audio and Video Collections

Over the past five years, the Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History in the University of Kentucky Libraries has accessioned an annual average of over 1,000 new oral history interviews into the archival collection, exceeding the staff's capacity to process. This presentation reflects on designing the SpeakEZ system using AI and natural language processing to transcribe and process the Center's rapidly growing oral history collection, totaling over 20,000 interviews. SpeakEZ consists of automated transcription, the generation of new dimensions of descriptive metadata, the OHMS-ifier, which prepares draft versions of time logs/indexes for use in the Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS), and finally, the Riskalizer, which assesses and evaluates content for various points of potential sensitivity. The session will include discussion of the system's successes and role in addressing accessibility requirements, some of the design and workflow challenges introduced by the system, and possible applications of SpeakEZ for libraries beyond archived oral history collections.

The intensity and frequency of attacks on information systems and services seems to be growing without bounds. This is happening across all sectors of society.

The effects of these attacks, as well as our experience with other recent events such as the COVID pandemic, have given us a new understanding of the critical roles that archives, repositories, and scholarly communications systems play as part of the essential cyberinfrastructure for the research and higher education community (and indeed far beyond this community).

The conversation will explore these questions:

• The nature of the evolving threat landscape is complex and contains numerous actors with varying motivations. This includes ransomware, denial of service attacks, strategic compromise, and aggressive harvesting, among others. How might we better understand this landscape?
• Approaches to understanding, documenting, and communicating the costs, impacts, and implications of breaches, including to the broad public.
• What collective actions might help our community become more resilient and secure? For example, is there a need or a role for an Information Sharing and Analysis Center type organization? What might be done to facilitate bilateral or multilateral backup and disaster recovery arrangements? How can funding be generated to help improve security and resilience? What should be prioritized?

The closing plenary will include significant time for audience engagement and discussion.