Call for Proposals
BitCurator Users Forum 2020: Evolving Landscape



The BitCurator Consortium (BCC) invites proposals for the 2020 BitCurator
Users Forum
<https://www.bitcuratorconsortium.org/bitcurator-users-forum-2020>, to be
held October 12-13, on the campus of Arizona State University—a member of
the BCC through the Arizona Universities Library Consortium. An
international, community-led organization with 34 member institutions, the
BCC promotes and supports the application of digital forensics tools and
practices in libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage
organizations.

In previous years, the BitCurator Users Forum has focused on sharing
strategies, approaches, and best practices for using digital forensics
tools and methods within processing workflows in archives, libraries, and
museums. We still encourage proposals in these topic areas, but amidst an
evolving digital archives landscape, we also invite community members to
explore themes that focus on areas that haven’t been widely discussed
before, such as rethinking standard or best practices, hearing from new
voices, issues pertaining to access and discovery, and scalability.

The Program Committee welcomes participation from organizations and
individuals working outside of academic and special collections libraries,
students, and new professionals. See more details on our Call for Proposals
page: https://bitcuratorconsortium.org/buf20-cfp.

The BitCurator Users Forum is open to all. You do not need to be a BCC
member or user to submit a proposal and/or attend the event.


Please note: We’re monitoring the current CDC guidelines about COVID-19,
and our current intention is to hold the BitCurator Users Forum as
scheduled this fall. We’re hopeful that the virus will be contained by then
and there will be no restrictions on large gatherings, and that we’ll be
able to continue the event as planned. However, if we are not able to meet
in-person, there are contingency plans in place to convert the Forum to an
online event. We’re committed to keeping the community informed as the
situation and the responses to it evolve.


Submission Information

Deadlines

Submission Deadline: April 24

Acceptance Notification: June 1

Speaker confirmation/changes: June 12

Program Posted: June 19

Workshops and participant-focused session formats

Sessions facilitated by individuals or groups welcome. 60 minutes - 4 hours

Please submit a 250-word (maximum) abstract describing the session format
and topic(s), as well as learning objectives if applicable.



The Program Committee particularly encourages participant-focused session
formats that incorporate interactivity. This can include any type of
non-traditional session format, such as peer-to-peer learning sessions,
collaborative working sessions, roundtables, goal-oriented hack-a-thons,
etc.

These sessions will take place on the first day of the BitCurator Users
Forum and will run concurrently with an introduction to digital forensics
workshop aimed at practitioners who are just getting started working with
digital forensics tools and methods. This workshop will include an overview
of digital forensics concepts, and will mostly focus on hands-on exercises
and activities.

Presentations

Individual or group submissions welcome. 30 - 60 minutes

Please submit a 250-word (maximum) abstract. If submitting as a solo
speaker, individual panelists may be matched by the BCC Program Committee
based on the complementarity of subjects or overarching themes.

We encourage presentations to move beyond the case study and address
pressing issues, best practices, opportunities for collaboration, visions,
and expanded uses for digital forensics in libraries, archives, museums,
and beyond. The Program Committee strongly encourages proposals from
underrepresented groups, and/or those that feature the perspectives of a
variety of roles, organizations, or fields. We particularly welcome
alternative panel formats (pecha kucha, group discussions, or others) that
will facilitate dialogue and enlarge participation.

Lightning Talks

1 presenter, 5-12 minutes

Please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words.

Lightning talks are a great format for case studies, digital forensics
“success stories” or “tales of woe,” research updates, and short demos or
how-tos.

Themes

The BCC Program Committee recognizes that the field of digital forensics is
broad and diverse, and accepts proposals that focus on any related topic
from any field. We particularly encourage proposals to consider areas of
interest such as:


   -

   Hearing from new voices
   -

      What strides can digital archives practitioners make toward
      dismantling white supremacy?
      -

      What role do (or can) students play in processing born-digital
      materials? Are there certain aspects of this work that may not be
      appropriate for them to undertake?
      -

      How do practitioners make the labor involved in accessioning,
      processing, and describing born-digital visible to the selectors of the
      material being processed? Are there examples of collaborations between
      digital archives practitioners and curators that seek to bridge
the divide?

      -

   Scalability
   -

      How are you scaling up solutions and experiments for processing and
      preserving specific types of content to addressing full collections?
      -

      What types of workflows could be automated and how do we automate
      them? When workflows are automated, what is gained and what is lost?
      -

      How are you working to set realistic expectations -- internally
      and/or externally -- about the longevity of our infrastructure, the
      viability of our
      practices at scale, and the impermanence/obsolescence inherent to
      technology?
      -

      How can we scale up the BitCurator Consortium to hear from new
      voices, rethink and expand our practices, and make our work more visible
      while preserving the intimacy that our small community has cultivated?

      -

   Rethinking standard or best practices
   -

      What are the implications of moving away from creating disk images
      and toward logical file transfers as a matter of course? What is
gained and
      what is lost? Are there alternative formats, models, or
assessment rubrics
      that could guide decision making in this area?
      -

      What are some examples of best practices or standards that you have
      chosen not to follow, and why? What obstacles did you encounter?
      -

      How do we address the fact that doing one’s work often means relying
      on tools and techniques that were originally developed for law
enforcement?
      -

      How are you building capacity for acceptance of constant change and
      uncertainty? What does successful education and cross-training
around this
      subject look like? What constitutes acceptable loss?

      -

   Access and discovery
   -

      How are you balancing the goal of efficient aggregate description
      with the reality of item-level metadata generated during processing?
      -

      How are your access methods addressing accessibility guidelines and
      accommodating researchers with disabilities?
      -

      How do privacy and security, donor relations, institutional risk
      tolerance, and other ethical issues affect your work with
digital archives?


How to Submit

Submit proposals here <https://forms.gle/1nrFLQiSWydcxkocA>.

How Proposals will be Evaluated

The BCC Program Committee will review all 2020 BitCurator Users Forum
proposals. To see the criteria used to evaluate proposals, click here
<https://drive.google.com/file/d/1d4snMHPHNFQo4Dpq9EXJTDYsJiSQqIwd/view?usp=sharing>
.

We welcome proposals from archivists, librarians, digital forensics
software and systems providers (vendors), scholars, students, and other
individuals working with digital archives or forensics on a regular basis,
regardless of BCC membership or organization size. We particularly welcome
submissions from individuals working outside of the United States and/or
outside of academic and special collections libraries.

The Program Committee strongly encourages proposals including a diversity
of views, including BIPOC, new professionals, and first-time attendees.

Eligibility & Requirements

Presenters must register for and attend the conference. The anticipated
cost of attending BUF20, including a modest registration fee, travel,
lodging, and per diem, is approximately $1,000. Presenters must also
designate their permission in the submission form related to livestreaming
their presentation during the event, making a recording of their
presentation available online, and posting their presentation slides
online.

BitCurator Consortium

The BitCurator Consortium <https://bitcuratorconsortium.org/> (BCC) is an
independent, community-led membership association that supports
born-digital archives in libraries, archives, and museums in order to help
ensure the longevity and reliability of the cultural, scientific, and
historical record. We strive to address the needs of the BCC community
through training, collaboration, research, software development,
documentation, integration, and scripts, while also advocating for the
expansion of born-digital archives practice worldwide.

For more information on how to get involved, visit
https://bitcuratorconsortium.org/join