All University of the Arctic Thematic Networks begin with a provisional approval for their first year. DALAM, established in 2022 and led by Polar Libraries Colloquy, was granted the final endorsement at the UArctic Assembly in Quebec in May 2023, along with other three Thematic Networks.
Since the New Year, DALAM has sponsored two educational activities. In January, Sharon Farnel reprised her PLC workshop as an online DALAM workshop. The session was attended by 44 participants, many of whom indicated an interest in attending future workshops.
DALAM’s second learning activity of the year was April 18, with 14 members viewing and discussing the video Transforming Big Data for Indigenous Futures: The CARE Principles of Indigenous Data Governance, which featured Dr. Stephanie Russo Carroll and Talia Anderson of University of Arizona. Participants agreed that this video is a good introduction to questions around Indigenous data sovereignty.
In terms of members teaching activities about decolonization of metadata, Susanne Brillant, of Université Laval, is the DALAM superstar for this quarter, having presented 6 online sessions to various library and librarian groups in Quebec, with a total of 300 attendees. Check out the list of members’ decolonization-related presentations and publications on the DALAM website.
For members who have the opportunity to present DALAM through a poster session, Shannon Christofferson created a generic DALAM poster, which all members can use. Many thanks to Shannon for her work on this. DALAM members wishing to use the poster should contact Shannon (shannonv@ucalgary.ca) for details. The poster has already been proposed to several venues, and Susanna Parikka’s proposal to present it in August at the World Library and Information Congress in Rotterdam has been accepted!
In another area of activity, DALAM members Sandy Campbell, Shannon Christoffersen, Sharon Farnel, and Susanna Parikka have been working with an impact assessment group within University of the Arctic, examining potential visualization software choices. Various software options are available, with the potential to find linkages among researchers (e.g., co-authorships, citation patterns, etc.), using published bibliographic information, and then to create visual representations of those linkages to make them easier to understand. Work on this is ongoing. Most of these kinds of software rely on authors having signed up for ORCiD numbers (a unique author identification number), so that their publication information can be harvested.
Finally, DALAM members have been meeting with the Alaska and Polar Regions Collections and Archives at University of Alaska Fairbanks to create an archival deposit for DALAM’s records. This archive, which has a strength in Arctic materials, also holds the fonds for the Polar Libraries Colloquy.
*The original report has been updated with new information about the approval for the first year.
Campbell, Sandy. Decolonization of Arctic Library and Archives Metadata (DALAM) Thematic Network Update: April 2023. Polar Libraries Bulletin, Spring 2023, Issue 87, p. 4.