Featured Blog Post by 2019 DLF Forum Sponsor Data Curation Experts (DCE)
This year, as part of our conference sponsorship, three of my DCE colleagues and I will be attending DLF in Tampa. I’m personally excited for the opening keynote “Beautiful Data: Justice, Code, and Architectures of the Sublime”by Dr. Marisa Duarte. At DCE, we have strongly held opinions about the aesthetics of well constructed data and transparent interfaces, so any talk that promises an exploration of how to make navigation seamless and unencumbered gets us hooked. I expect that Dr. Durate’s talk will set the stage for many more discussions over the week about how we all can help support the role of digital libraries as institutions for change. As people who care about social justice, we try to be intentional about DCE’s duty to build repositories for the future that don’t just unthinkingly perpetuate the patterns (and potential problems) of the past.
We’re excited to be supporting DLF this year, because this is the conference where we can have conversations about these kinds of ideas -not just in abstract visionary terms, but in how we do our day-to-day work and how we collaborate with our colleagues across the community. DLF is where researchers, librarians, and coders talk to each other about how to build digital libraries and digital humanities projects.
In particular, my DCE colleagues and I want to thank the staff and leadership at DLF for the way they have worked to broaden the conversation to include more participants every year: DLF’s fellowship programs provide travel funding for underrepresented groups, students and new professionals; DLF’s commitment to providing childcare makes the conference more accessible for people with childcare responsibilities; and the DLF Organizers’ Toolkit provides a space and a framework for taking action. DCE is proud to support DLF and we are excited for the 2019 Forum! Please stop by our table sometime during the conference -Rachel, Jamie, Mark, and I would love to say hello.
–Bess Sadler on behalf of the DCE Team
