British Library is delighted to host its annual Open and Engaged Conference on Monday 21 October, in-person and online, as part of the International Open Access Week. The Conference is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and Research Libraries UK (RLUK).  

Open and Engaged 2024: Empowering Communities to Thrive in Open Scholarship will centre leveraging the power of communities in the axis of open scholarship, open infrastructure, emerging technologies, collections as data, equity and integrity, skills development and sustainable models to elevate research of all kinds for the public good. We take a cross sectoral approach to the conference programme – unifying around shared-values for openness – by reflecting on practices within research libraries both in higher education and GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) sectors as well as the national and public libraries.  

Open and Engaged 2024 is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and Research Libraries UK (RLUK). Everyone interested in the conference topics is welcome to join us on Monday, 21 October! 

This will be a hybrid event taking place at the British Library’s Knowledge Centre in St. Pancras, London, and streamed online for those unable to attend in-person. 

The event will be recorded and recordings made available in the British Library’s Research Repository.

Registration

Registration is closed for in-person and online attendance. Registrants have been contacted with details. Any questions, please contact [email protected].  

Programme 

Slides and recordings of the talks are available as a collection in the British Library’s Research Repository.

09:30  Registration

10:00  Welcome remarks

10:10  Opening keynote panel: Cross disciplinary approach to open scholarship

Chaired by Sally Chambers, Head of Research Infrastructure Services at the British Library.

• Paola Castano, Research Fellow at the University of Exeter
• Hugh Shanahan, Professor of Open Science at the Royal Holloway University of London
• Jane Winters, Professor of Digital Humanities & Director of the Digital Humanities Research Hub at the University of London

10:50    Empowering communities through equity, inclusivity, and ethics

Chaired by Beth Montague-Hellen, Head of Library and Information Services at the Francis Crick Institute.

This session addresses the role of the communities in governance, explores the ethical implications of AI for citizens and highlights the value of public engagement, and discusses the central importance of equity, inclusivity, and integrity in scholarly communications.

• Community Power in AI. Jeni Tennison, Executive Director of Connected by Data
• Delivering a Community-led Open Infrastructure. Gillian Daly, Executive Officer, at the Scottish Confederation of University and Research Libraries (SCURL)
• Advancing Equity and Inclusivity through AI Ethics and Governance. Ann Borda, Ethics Fellow in the Public Policy Programme at The Alan Turing Institute. (recorded presentation)

11:40  Break

12:10    Deepening partnership in skills development through shared values

Chaired by Kirsty Wallis, Head of Research Liaison at UCL.

This session explores initiatives that foster skills development in libraries with a cross sectoral approach and dives into the role of libraries to support communities in building resilience.

• Co-delivery: working with partners to create transformational services. Ed Jewel, President of Libraries Connected
• Digital Skills in Arts and Humanities (DISKAH): Deepening Skills and Engagement with Digital Infrastructures. Karina Rodriguez Echavarria, Reader at the University of Brighton
• Training & Skills Development at the DCC. Dominique Green, Research Data Specialist  (Training Lead) at the Digital Curation Centre, The University of Edinburgh

13:00  Lunch

13:45   Open repositories for research of all kinds

This session addresses the role of infrastructure to carry out open scholarship practices, explores the practice as research in the axis of diverse outputs and infrastructure, discusses institutional resilience in digital strategies. 

Chaired by William J Nixon, Deputy Executive Director at Research Libraries UK (RLUK).

• Connecting Art, Science, and Open Repositories @ The National Gallery​. Joseph Padfield, Principal Scientist at the National Gallery
• Back to the Future: European Repositories for the Era of Open Science. Eloy Rodrigues, Director at the University of Minho Libraries and Executive Board member at OpenAIRE
• COAR Notify: Supporting Next Generation Repositories. Paul Walk, Director at Antleaf Ltd

14:45  Break

15:15   Enabling collections as data: from policy to practice  

Chaired by Jez Cope, Data Services Lead at the British Library.

This session dives into the digital collections as data by exploring policies and practices across different sectors, public-private partnerships in making collections publicly available, dynamics in preservation versus access approach in national libraries whilst underlining the public good. 

• Developing Workflows to Publish Collections as Data. Gustavo Candela Romero, Assistant Professor at the University of Alicante
• Enabling collections as data: the Museum Data Service. Kevin Gosling, Chief Executive at the Collections Trust
• Exploring Collections as Data in the European context: current initiatives, future prospects. Sally Chambers, Head of Research Infrastructure Services at the British Library and Director of DARIAH-EU based at the Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities, Ghent University

16:15   Closing keynote: Stories Change Lives

Chaired by Liz White, Director of Library Partnerships at the British Library. 

• Erik Boekesteijn, Member of Board of Directors at the Storyhouse and Senior Advisor at the National Library of the Netherlands

16:45 Closing remarks

17:00 Networking session

19:00  End

The hashtag for the event is #OpenEngaged on social media platform of your choice. If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected].