BitCurator Forum 2024 – 10 Years of BCC
Please note that the 2024 Forum will be virtual. We encourage in-person satellite events to be organized in conjunction with the virtual forum, see below for more information. We will be adding information to the Event page as it becomes available. We hope to see you there!
The BitCurator Consortium (BCC) invites proposals for the 2024 BitCurator Forum to be held virtually the week of March 18-22, 2024 (final dates TBD). An international, community-led organization with 39 member organizations representing 53 institutions, the BCC promotes and supports the application of free and open-source digital archives tools and practices in libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage organizations.
2024 marks the 10th anniversary of the BitCurator Consortium. As we take a moment to celebrate our achievements from the past 10 years, we also take a step back to reflect on our journey so far.
How have things changed?
- How has your practice changed? (i.e., shifting away from digital forensics to other methods of transfer and acquisition)
- How have you faced the challenges of working with born-digital material in the cloud?
- How do you make the decision to use AI and machine learning in your work?
- How have the existential issues facing digital archives changed and how has that changed your work?
Lessons learned?
- How are you working to reevaluate past work and reflect on your failures and successes?
- How do you measure your successes and failures?
- How are you incorporating changes into your existing workflows?
Where do we go from here?
- How do we sustain and foster a healthy community of practice?
- How do you achieve buy-in and support for your work?
- How to onboard folks new to the field of digital archives?
The BCC Forum Committee recognizes that the field of digital archives is broad and diverse, and accepts proposals that focus on any related topic from any areas of interest. We particularly encourage proposals to consider the themes mentioned above.
The Forum Committee welcomes participation from organizations and individuals working outside of academic and special collections libraries and archives, members from BIPOC communities, students, and new professionals.
The BitCurator Forum is open to all. You do not need to be a BCC member or BitCurator user to submit a proposal and/or attend the event. See examples of past Forum presentations here.
Deadlines
- Submission Deadline: Friday, November 17
- Acceptance Notification: Friday, December 8
- Speaker confirmation/changes: Friday, December 22
- Program Posted: Week of January 8
Session Types
The Forum Committee 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
Demos / How-to’s
Sessions facilitated by individuals or groups are welcome. 60 minutes
Please submit a 250-word (maximum) abstract describing the session format and topic(s), as well as learning objectives if applicable.
These sessions are intended to replace workshops and have a broad audience, but serve as an opportunity to share workflows or demonstrate a new tool or process you are working on or have used at your institution.
To encourage participation and access for all attendees, these sessions will not have registration limits.
Panels Presentations or Short Papers
Panel: 40 minutes
Short Papers: 20 minutes
Please submit a 250-word (maximum) abstract. If submitting a short paper, individual panelists may be matched by the BCC Forum Committee based on the complementarity of subjects or overarching themes.
We encourage presentations to move beyond the case study (see Lightning Talks for this format) and address pressing issues, best practices, opportunities for collaboration, visions, and expanded uses for digital archives in libraries, archives, museums, and beyond. The Forum Committee strongly encourages proposals from underrepresented groups, and/or those that feature the perspectives of a variety of roles — including students — organizations, or fields. For group presentations, we strongly discourage proposals from all white male presenters. We particularly welcome alternative panel formats that will facilitate engagement, including group discussions.
Lightning Talks
1 presenter, 5 minutes
Please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words.
Lightning talks are a great format for case studies, digital archives “success stories” or “tales of woe,” research updates, and short demos or how-tos.
BitCurator Satellites and Other Formats
Other types of formats can be proposed, and we welcome formats that incorporate in-person elements.
This year we again encourage community members to host BitCurator Satellites, local on-site events held in conjunction with the online BitCurator Forum. This is an experimental hybrid conference model, intended to complement the online BitCurator Forum by supporting partners and friends so they can host sessions, workshops and talks for a local audience. Here are some examples of events from 2023.
A call for satellite hosts will be sent out later this fall.
All sessions will be hosted live on Zoom. Final time length of sessions may be adjusted in the final program. The Forum Committee will communicate any changes about this with speakers as early as possible.
Publishing in the Archives Profession 