Please join us for the opening plenary for the 2019 DLF Forum.
Please join us for the opening plenary for the 2019 DLF Forum. After brief welcome and logistical remarks, we will enjoy a keynote talk by Dr. Marisa Duarte, entitled "Beautiful Data: Justice, Code, and Architectures of the Sublime." If library and information science has an aesthetic it might manifest in the precision and orderliness of clean, appropriately labeled data. The more seamless our systems are, the less likely the user is to need us at every turn. She will have the freedom to effectively navigate the systems we build as she searches for the documents that, we hope, will relieve cognitive dissonance, satisfy a need to know, and inspire an unencumbered intellectual drive. Yet social changes in the US relating to race and surveillance, algorithmic discrimination, loss of privacy, and hate speech online is showing us that beautiful data is perhaps more of a mirage than a reality. Understanding the relationship between data and justice also helps us understand the role of digital libraries as institutions for change, and teaches us about the radical serenity of librarianship.
