This post was written by Cláudia De Souza, who attended the 2025 DLF Forum as the Grassroots Archives and Cultural Heritage Workers Fellow. The views and opinions expressed in this blog post are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Digital Library Federation or CLIR.
Cláudia De Souza is an associate professor at the College of Communication and Information at the University of Puerto Rico. She teaches in the Graduate Program in Information Science, focusing on information organization and retrieval, with particular emphasis on the analysis, evaluation, and design of digital libraries and archives. She is also the academic coordinator of the UPR Caribe Digital project, an initiative dedicated to advancing Digital Humanities research and scholarship in and for the Caribbean. She advocates for and fosters open access to knowledge, supports digital preservation, and promotes the dissemination of documentary heritage. Her work is driven by a commitment to enhancing the visibility and accessibility of information resources across the Insular Caribbean.
Attending the 2025 DLF Forum for the first time was an exceptional experience, especially as the sole fellow selected for the Grassroots Archives and Cultural Heritage Workers program. I arrived with high expectations, and the event exceeded them, offering a rich environment for learning, collaboration, and professional growth. I had the chance to meet and engage with attendees from a wide range of institutions and backgrounds, including students, emerging professionals, librarians, and archivists. I am especially grateful to the selection committee for choosing such a diverse group of fellows, which I truly appreciate. This experience of connection and dialogue with new voices gave me the opportunity to interact with a diversity of approaches in professional and academic practice, as well as the value of building collaborative networks.
One of the challenges was choosing among the multiple sessions happening simultaneously over the three days. I decided to focus on the topics most closely related to my work at the University of Puerto Rico and that I am most passionate about in library and information science: open access, metadata, information organization and retrieval, community archives, and the visibility of digital collections.
Among the new tools and approaches I explored, the Marriott Reparative Metadata Assessment Tool (MaRMAT) stood out, an open-source application designed to support reparative metadata evaluations and processes of repair and justice in information. It allows librarians to identify harmful, outdated, or otherwise problematic language in tabular metadata using pre-curated or custom lexicons. I definitely plan to explore its use in the work we are developing with community groups in Puerto Rico, as part of the UPR Caribe Digital project. I was also inspired by the presentation of Krystyna Matusiak, which demonstrated how digital collections can be expanded through exhibits that highlight the stories of underrepresented communities. Digital curation not only extends the reach of archives but also provides new opportunities to tell stories in an inclusive and meaningful way, showing how information organization can impact representation and access to collective memory. I leave the Forum inspired and motivated to apply these insights as part of the Digital Humanities initiatives we are planning at my institution, and it will serve as a model to follow.
I am grateful for the opportunity to participate and look forward to continuing these conversations and collaborations. I also hope that next year I will have the chance to submit a presentation to share with others all that I have put into practice. See you at DLF 2026!