Dr Jenna Hartel, University of Toronto
Jenna Hartel (Associate Professor, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto) earned a Doctoral of Philosophy in Information Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is a theorist, methodologist, historian, and educator of Information Science. Her lifelong motivating question has been: What is the nature of information in the pleasures of life? To that end, Jenna has championed information research into “higher things in life,” especially information-rich domains of serious leisure, like hobbies. An enthusiast of multimodality and creative expression, she has introduced visual, photographic, and arts-informed methods into Information Science. Jenna’s latest adventure, the YouTube channel INFIDEOS, features 100+ original, outrageously playful, educational videos about Information Science. She is the recipient of SIG-USE’s Innovation Award (2013) and Outstanding Information Behaviour Research Award (2022); ALISE’s Excellence in Teaching Award (2016) and Pratt-Severn Faculty Innovation Award (2022); and the ASIS&T Outstanding Information Science Teacher Award (2023).
Dr Toma Tasovac, DARIAH and Belgrade Centre for Digital Humanities.
Imprisoned by the Print Mind? Rethinking Libraries for the 21st Century
Despite substantial investments in digitization, library-curated datasets remain conspicuously underrepresented in the landscape of research infrastructures and the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). This keynote will trace the conceptual inertia, rooted in centuries-old notions of the book as a physical object and the library as a temple of knowledge, as one possible way of understanding the persistent disconnect between the resource-rich platforms libraries produce and the evolving methodologies that define today’s digital humanities. By identifying the conceptual and operational barriers that hinder alignment, the talk will explore how we could reimagine library practices, expand digital services, and ultimately forge stronger collaborations with scholars. Can we shed the atavistic baggage of print culture and embrace the library’s potential as a dynamic, data-driven engine for 21st-century research?
Toma Tasovac is Director of the Belgrade Center for Digital Humanities (BCDH) and Director of the pan-European Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities (DARIAH-EU). With an academic background in Comparative Literature and degrees from Harvard, Princeton and Trinity College Dublin, Toma’s areas of scholarly expertise include historical lexicography and the development of language resources, data modeling, digital editions and research infrastructures. He is the co-editor, together with Sally Chambers, of the forthcoming book Digital Humanities: An Introduction for Librarians. Toma has served on a number of major bodies such as the European Research Council (ERC), Europeana Research and JPI Cultural Heritage. He has played leadership roles in numerous DH projects funded by national and international agencies, including Erasmus+, Horizon 2020 and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Dr Adele Patrick, Glasgow Women’s Library
‘You Opened my Eyes’; what artists can add to library spaces, library leadership approaches and addressing unfinished business of equality
Glasgow Women’s Library (GWL) has been developing ground breaking work with communities since 1991. The Library’s co-founder and current co-director, Adele Patrick will share her reflections on how the agency of art has (at GWL and elsewhere) unleashed collections for the ‘easiest to ignore’ users, informed approaches to values-led leadership and can provide a powerful antidote to the digital. In this keynote presentation Adele will respond to recent research findings on how library spaces (and strategy) conceived, remodelled and influenced by artmaking and led by creative thinking can be ‘transformational’.
Adele Patrick has been developing innovative cultural projects rooted in equalities and in academic research and community learning and teaching for over 30 years. In 1991 she co-founded Glasgow Women’s Library (GWL) and is currently a Co-Director. Adele has had a key leadership role in GWL which has grown from a grassroots project led by volunteers into a Recognised Collection of National Significance, the sole accredited museum dedicated to women’s history in the UK and an influential, change making organisation in the Library, Museums and wider cultural sectors. Adele has been active in many projects as a curator, programmer, co-producer at GWL and in independent work as a facilitator, writer, coach, and trainer on EDI. Following a Clore Leadership Fellowship in 2018/2019 Adele’s research focus has been on feminist leadership and what can be learnt from leading as modelled in counter cultural collections. She currently sits on the Board of V&A Dundee.