Lightning Talk Descriptions
Wednesday, May 1
Actionable AI
Andrea Mills (Internet Archive Canada)
Metadata can be a major roadblock and investment ahead of embarking on a digitization project. It can also cause delays in starting a project. This talk will cover some new thinking and pilot projects to find ways to improve metadata using AI to analyze both digitized text and traditional cataloging methods.
Jason Friedman (CRKN)
In 2023, the Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN) and Library and Archives Canada (LAC) launched a pilot project to improve digital access to materials available in the Héritage collection using Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR) software. Héritage contains 42 million pages of digitized microfilm archival records from LAC’s collections, the majority of which are handwritten and incompatible to process with traditional Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology. This poses a major challenge for researchers consulting these materials, as detailed finding aids and accurate or relevant metadata to assist searching are not always available.
CRKN and LAC selected READ-COOP’s Transkribus ICR software for the pilot project and have s begun with 2 million images of digitized text from the RG 10 fonds, Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. Transkribus uses large language models (LLMs) to identify characters in digitized handwritten and printed text with an error rate of just 5-7%, and it can be trained on specific materials to improve its accuracy. The RG 10 materials were chosen for their relevance and importance to Indigenous land claims researchers and Indigenous history.
The first batch of records submitted to READ-COOP was the Department of Indian Affairs: Departmental letterbooks, selected due to its relatively consistent handwriting, breadth of content, research potential, and low risk of particularly sensitive content. A finalized test reel was provided to CRKN in November 2023, and has been tested with very positive results. To date, over 280,000 transcribed images are online.
This presentation will describe CRKN’s experience with Transkribus to date, present examples, and describe our next steps for the RG10 materials and long-term aspirations to make the Héritage collection full-text searchable
Amber Leahey (Scholars Portal/Borealis)
TurboCurator is an AI assisted tool built into Dataverse that allows curators and depositors to create descriptive metadata for research datasets. It was developed by ICPSR - a US social science data archive - and the tool's back-end uses ChatGPT. This lightning talk will provide an overview of TurboCurator and potential use cases for Borealis.
AI Concepts & Conversations
John Fink (McMaster University)
Everyone's familiar with ChatGPT, but they may be less familiar with other AI/LLM models, particularly those that are freely distributable and able to be run on modest hardware. This lightning talk will briefly introduce the concept of locally hosted large language models, and the methods in which they could be altered or trained with additional data.
Lisl Schoner-Saunders (Algoma University)
Academic libraries are masters of curating and cataloguing digital spaces. In the current climate of Google and ChatGPT, we have been finding our users increasingly lack the needed critical analysis and research skills required to navigate library resources. Together, the access to vast digital resources and the expectation of instantaneous results raises questions of how we foster critical research skills in our users.
Focus on physical library spaces has been shifting away from stacks of books into creating innovative learning spaces that are welcoming, inclusive, and adaptable for all users. This discussion will explore ways of applying this same approach in our digital spaces, using Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithms as introducers/welcomers. Some questions this discussion will consider are:
- How to bridge the human with the digital? What works, what fails and what falls in between? How to value the human element in a digital world?
- What role can AI play in augmenting students’ interactions with the library? What will be lost? What will be gained?
- As students become more reliant on ChatGPT & Google style of “searching,” how does this change the way we teach research skills?
The purpose of this talk is to encourage an insightful discussion to evaluate our teaching and reference services and ways to provide students with the best access and introduction to all of the digital spaces the library has to offer.
Bobby Glushko (Western University)
This lightning talk will discuss how AI is a modern aspect of the Trickster archetype and how we as a profession can benefit from embracing the emergent chaos it is and will continue to create. In a profession sometimes burdened with process, documents, and categories, the Trickster can serve as an alternative to our established ways of being.
Thursday, May 2
Collaboration for Research & Impact
Francine Berish (Queen’s University) and Laura Jean Cameron (Belle Park Project)
Since the passing of Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s Bill 23, More Homes Built Faster Act and the vast overhaul of the Ontario Wetland Evaluation System (OWES), which came into effect in January 2023, it has become increasingly difficult to protect wetlands in Ontario. A PSW (Provincially Significant Wetland) is a wetland that the province considers most valuable using a science-based ranking system called the OWES. In the past, a PSW designation meant that the wetland was protected from development.
This talk will provide an overview of the research process of a recent piece that Laura Cameron and Francine Berish wrote for NiCHE (Network in Canadian History & Environment | Nouvelle initiative Canadienne en histoire de l'environnement), a Canadian-based confederation of researchers and educators who work at the intersection of nature and history. We are writing from the frontlines of an ongoing Ontario Land Tribunal case in which the fate of part of the Greater Cataraqui Marsh PSW is at stake and describe the frustrating experience of seeking to find out, as concerned citizens, what PSW boundaries have been changed, by how much and by whom. This story underlines the critical importance of repositories of geospatial information (in this case, the Scholars Geoportal), libraries, and librarians in the fight to protect wetlands in Ontario.
Mary Ochana, Laura Bredahl, and Ian Milligan (University of Waterloo)
The University of Waterloo is currently implementing ORCID across its campus. The implementation of a persistent researcher identifier is an important part of ensuring consistent data workflows and can help with reliably matching authors to their institutions and their research outputs across systems, all of which allows us to more holistically understand the research impact ecosystem at Waterloo, and more broadly, is a huge opportunity for research offices and libraries to collaborate and gain benefits for the whole institution. This talk will discuss the current project stage and goals for the future.
Enhancing Scholars Portal Services
Guinsly Mondésir (Scholars Portal)
In Ask a Librarian, our library chat reference service, the exchange of feedback between users and operators holds significant importance in shaping the community's dynamics and fostering a culture of appreciation. As someone deeply involved in Virtual Reference, I've witnessed firsthand how positive feedback can profoundly impact operator morale and overall service quality. In this lightning talk, I intend to explore the symbiotic relationship between positive feedback and the systemic dynamics of virtual reference services, drawing insights from System Theory.
System Theory offers a valuable framework for understanding organizations as interconnected systems composed of interrelated components. According to this theory, feedback loops are fundamental mechanisms for information exchange and adaptation within systems. Positive feedback, in particular, serves as a catalyst for reinforcing desired behaviors and strengthening system resilience.
Ask a Librarian offers an Exit Survey to provide channels for guests (patrons) to share their experiences and provide feedback. As a coordinator of this feedback form, I often relay "Thank you feedback" from patrons to operators, fostering a sense of community appreciation.
This lightning talk will illustrate how positive feedback acts as a dynamic force within virtual reference ecosystems, influencing operator motivation, morale, and ultimately, service quality.
Ravit David, Siena Smith, and Milica Ivetic (Scholars Portal)
The Accessible Content ePortal (ACE) is a growing repository of accessible format texts available to users with print disabilities at participating institutions in Ontario.This lightning talk will provide an overview of a newly developed tool that will allow the ACE team at Scholars Portal to edit the auto-generated Table of Contents files for digitized books, allowing for much neater chapter splitting.