Call for Proposals
BitCurator Users Forum 2020: Evolving Landscape
The BitCurator Consortium (BCC) invites proposals for the
2020
BitCurator Users Forum, 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 BitCurator Consortium member or BitCurator 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 response 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:
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Hearing from new voices
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What strides can digital archives practitioners make toward dismantling white supremacy?
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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?
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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?
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Scalability
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How are you scaling up solutions and experiments for processing and preserving specific types of content to addressing full collections?
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What types of workflows could be automated and how do we automate them? When workflows are automated, what is gained and what is lost?
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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?
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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?
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Rethinking standard or best practices
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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?
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What are some examples of best practices or standards that you have chosen not to follow, and why? What obstacles did you encounter?
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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?
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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?
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Access and discovery
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How are you balancing the goal of efficient aggregate description with the reality of item-level metadata generated during processing?
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How are your access methods addressing accessibility guidelines and accommodating researchers with disabilities?
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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.
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.
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.
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