As academic libraries purchase more and more digital resources for research and teaching, or wish to surface hidden collections in their repositories, or want to support scholars producing open scholarship, it is imperative to understand how library software makes these resources, collections, or scholarship accessible and discoverable. Algorithms underlying these software tools can in fact hinder access and discovery. Digital literacy is the first step to understanding what is at stake in access and discovery of these resources, collections, and scholarship. This webinar seeks to increase digital literacy as it pertains to these matters.

We invite you to explore this topic through an interactive webinar “Confronting Algorithmic Bias in Open Research Collections” on July 24th from 11am-12pm Central Time.  Please register in advance for the webinar at: https://ala-events.zoom.us/webinar/register/47d2cc5e51501ff1dc2040ba88984b7b  Once registered, you’ll receive a confirmation with the webinar URL.

This webinar will consist of two interactive sessions followed by time for questions and discussion. Kate Dohe, Manager of the Digital Programs & Initiatives department in the University of Maryland Libraries, will lead a discussion entitled “The Digital is Critical: Creating and Maintaining Radical Library Systems.” Jason Clark, Head of Special Collections & Archival Informatics at Montana State University will lead a discussion entitled “Unpacking the Algorithms That Shape Our UW: Algorithmic Awareness as a Form of Digital Literacy.” See below for a short description of each of these sessions.

We look forward to having you join us for the webinar!

Best,

Verletta Kern

Co-convener of the ACRL Open Research Discussion Group

Michelle Urberg

Convener of the ACRL Digital Collections Discussion Group

Session Descriptions:

The Digital is Critical: Creating and Maintaining Radical Library Systems

Kate Dohe

Digital libraries should be one of the most powerful tools available to libraries to reduce economic, geographic, ableist, and political barriers to global open access for scholarly and cultural materials.  But how well are digital library systems delivering on these social justice aspirations? The application landscape has dwindled to a handful of commercial applications owned by businesses with long histories in commodifying content, and an array of open source products with high technological barriers to entry. Inequalities between institutions, communities, and valuation of labor are increasingly apparent within the open source digital library space. This interactive discussion will explore the impacts of stratification on library technologies, and consider critical approaches to create and maintain radical digital projects.

Unpacking the Algorithms That Shape Our UX: Algorithmic Awareness as a Form of Digital Literacy

Jason Clark 

We, and our patrons, routinely engage in systems that predict, recommend, and speculate about our interests based on the digital fingerprint we provide with our link clicks and “likes”, but we all struggle understanding how and why those systems work as they do. Part of this struggle is recognizing how our technological experiences are increasingly mediated by algorithms - the code and computational processes embedded into our software. Recent work by scholars, such as Dr. Safiya Umoja Noble, has shown how algorithms exhibit implicit racial or sexist biases and reify societal prejudices. Moreover, the technical nature of algorithms and the lack of transparency surrounding them can be a challenge for novices. The goal of this session is to create more informed instructors who can teach about the implications of complex formulas

guiding our technological world. Our Montana State University team, with grant funding from