The DLF Forum is a multi-day experience for learning, networking, and skill building

Join us at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan, USA, July 29-31 and virtually October 22-23, 2024.

Join us in person This Summer

We're excited to partner with member organization Michigan State University (MSU) Libraries and the College of Arts and Letters (CAL) to host DLF Forum's in person summer event happening July 29-31, 2024.

join us virtually This Fall

The DLF community has expressed a desire for a virtual event and we're excited to deliver this year. Offering a virtual conference in the fall will enhance flexibility, accessibility, affordability, and a reduced environmental impact. Join us online October 22-23, 2024.

Call for Proposals Office Hours

Office Hours for the Virtual DLF Forum

The Virtual DLF Forum Call for Proposals is now open! Curious about submitting but not sure where to start? Join us for our next CFP Office Hours on Tuesday, April 30 at 1pm ET USA to learn more about the virtual event and session types.

About our event

Defining tomorrow's frontiers

The DLF Forum welcomes digital library, archives, and museum practitioners from member institutions and beyond—for whom it serves as a meeting place, marketplace, and congress. Here, the DLF community celebrates successes, learns from mistakes, sets grassroots agendas, and organizes for action.

Interactive

Forum presenters typically actively engage with the audience in a two-way communication or participation.

Creative

Presenters have the freedom to utilize unconventional and imaginative methods to capture the audience's attention and community key information.

Practical

An overwhelming amount of attendees prefer practical sessions that focus on providing useful, actionable information that attendees can apply in their professional lives.

Inventive

We encourage inventive sessions, where presentations aim to captivate the audience through originality, out-of-the-box thinking, and a fresh perspective, including methods such as creativity in content delivery.

partner with us

Opportunities for sponsorship

Partner with us to connect your brand to a multi-disciplinary cross-sector audience of professionals in the digital library, museum, archives, and cultural heritage fields, from project managers, technologists, and developers to administrators, archivists, and service providers.

GET INSPIRED

See Past Submissions

Browse the diverse portfolio of presentations from the 2023 CLIR events. Because submission to our repository, OSF, is optional, be sure to browse the 2023 Schedule for all presentation titles and abstracts.

The Holy Grail of Inventorying: Expediting Spreadsheet Workflow through Python Scripts

Sophia Francis
Brianna Jacobi
Dan Zellner
Nicole Finzer

Expanding a Model for Collections as Data Work to Identify Jim Crow Laws Across Multiple Southern States

Kate Boyd
Loren Moulds
Tolu Odukoya
Rolando Rodriguez

Defining Digital Library Anxiety

Marissa Caico

Participant feedback

Hear from community members

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As a first-time attendee, I found DLF to be a welcoming environment and filled with relevant information for my work. It’s the most comfortable I’ve ever felt at a professional conference, and I think the focus on inclusion and accessibility is a large part of that. The conference culture is excellent -- people were attentive in sessions, asked good questions, and seemed overall supportive rather than competitive or critical of each other’s work. I really appreciated that.

Hearing how other people tackled the task of migrating repository platforms was very helpful. Also just meeting new people in the field and learning about what they do. It’s very easy to feel like you don’t really know if you’re doing enough, or doing too much, or not doing the work correctly, and so these once-a-year (or more) opportunities to meet up with other professionals and be reminded that you’re all basically in the same boat is very reassuring.

This was my first DLF and honestly it helped me feel so much more confident in my new role. It felt like I wasn’t the only person with questions or hesitations about some of the issues we are having. A lot of the programming directly spoke to projects or initiatives I am working on day-to-day so it was very practical.

It’s great to see what everyone is working on, and this conference has a really wide range of presentations from theory to execution and different types of skills for different interests...DLF is by far my favorite conference, partly because I feel so cared for by the way the planning committee clearly focuses on fitting everyone’s diverse needs and partly because the sessions are always so good!