Submit to the Virtual DLF Forum!

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Virtual Event Call for Proposals

The submission deadline is Wednesday, May 15, 11:59pm ET USA. 

Submit Your Work

Please feel free to reach out with any questions: forum@diglib.org. 

Looking for the now closed CFP released earlier this year for our in-person event at Michigan State University? You can find it here. 

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 DLF Forum and session types for our virtual event. Register in advance.

CLIR’s Digital Library Federation (DLF) invites proposals for the virtual 2024 DLF Forum, which will be held online, October 22-23, 2024. Learn more about who we are and who attends the DLF Forum. 

Please note: This Call for Proposals (CFP) is for the October virtual event only. The CFP for our in-person event in July at Michigan State University opened and closed earlier this year, and the program is forthcoming.

The submission deadline is Wednesday, May 15 at 11:59pm ET.

We invite proposals for live virtual presentations on all topics related to digital libraries, encompassing case studies, “show and fails,” practical application, methods, projects, ethics, research, and learning in any area, including, but not limited to: 

  • Digital humanities
  • Digital scholarship
  • Digital pedagogy
  • Digital collections and digital asset management systems (DAMS)
  • Digitization, digital preservation, and reformatting analog to digital format(s)
  • Born-digital materials
  • Art information
  • Community archives
  • Machine learning / artificial intelligence
  • Project management
  • Partnerships, advocacy, and outreach
  • Race and technology
  • Accessibility
  • Copyright
  • Assessment
  • Climate change

Session Formats

All sessions will take place live in a meeting-style or webinar-style Zoom room, and breakout rooms will be available upon request for all formats except lightning talks. Sessions are invited in the following lengths and formats:

  • 90-minute Workshops: Guided training sessions on a specific tool, technique, workflow, or concept. Up to five (5) facilitators are allowed per submission. 
  • 50-minute Working Sessions: Open sessions for community organizers, creative problem solvers, and existing or prospective DLF working groups to begin or get feedback on in-progress projects, collaborate on addressing challenges, and discuss thought-provoking questions. Up to five (5) facilitators are allowed per submission.
  • 40-minute Panels: A discussion of up to five (5) presenters on a unified topic, with an emphasis on community discussion. Proposals with diverse and inclusive speaker involvement will be favored by the committee. Panels will be slotted into 50-minute sessions, leaving a minimum of 10 minutes for Q&A and discussion at the end of each session. 
  • 40-minute Presentations: A single topic or project presented by up to three (3) presenters. Presentations will be slotted into 50-minute sessions, leaving a minimum of 10 minutes for Q&A and discussion at the end of each session. 
  • 5-minute Lightning Talks: High-energy talks on any topic held in succession in a single session, presented by up to two (2) presenters. There is no formal Q&A for lightning talks, but we encourage presenters to share contact information with attendees for follow-up conversations after the session.

Proposal Requirements

  • Proposal title and submission format.
  • Author information: full names, organizational affiliations, and email addresses for all presenters and authors.
  • Brief abstract – limited to 50 words. This abstract is what will appear in Community Voting and in the conference program.
  • Full proposal – limited to 250 words for all formats except for panels, which are limited to 500 words. This full proposal will only be seen by reviewers and the Program Committee.
  • Five keywords for your proposal.
  • Breakout room request – there will be an option in the submission form to indicate a request for breakout rooms.
  • Workshops Only: Learning objectives (limited to 50 words; brief, clear statements about what attendees will be able to do as a result of taking your proposed workshop); technology needed; participant proficiency level; how your workshop will be interactive.
  • All submissions are under a CC-BY 4.0 license, which allows for sharing and adaptation of content but which requires appropriate credit and an indication of any changes made by others. Presenters must agree to share their work under this license in the submission form.

Submission and Evaluation

Based on community feedback and the work of our Program Committee, we welcome submissions geared toward a practitioner audience that:

  • Clearly engage with DLF’s mission;
  • Activate and inspire participants to think, make, and do;
  • Engage people from different backgrounds, experience levels, and disciplines; and/or
  • Include clear takeaways that participants can integrate and implement in their own work.


All submissions will be peer-reviewed. Reviewers will use this rubric to rate each proposal based on the values listed above. They may also recommend the proposal for a different format. Broader DLF community input will also be solicited through an open community voting process, which will inform the Program Committee’s final decisions.

We especially welcome proposals from individuals who bring diverse professional and life experiences to the conference, including those from underrepresented or historically excluded racial, ethnic, or religious backgrounds, immigrants, veterans, those with disabilities, and people of all sexual orientations or gender identities. As we have done in the past, the Program Committee will prioritize submissions from individuals who identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), individuals working at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), and other libraries, archives, museums, and organizations that center BIPOC to promote inclusivity to the greatest extent possible. Self-identification options will be provided in the proposal submission form but are not required.  

Schedule

  • Call for Proposals opens: Thursday, April 11
  • CFP Office Hours: Tuesday, April 30, 1pm ET USA; register here.
  • Call for Proposals closes: Wednesday, May 15
  • Notification of final decisions: On or around Thursday, June 27
  • Program released: On or around Monday, July 8


Read more about the DLF Forum.

Please feel free to reach out with any questions: forum@diglib.org.

Submit Your Work

Frequently Asked Questions

DLF programs stretch year-round, but we are perhaps best known for our signature event, the DLF Forum. 

For 2024, in addition to hosting a smaller in-person event held this summer in partnership with member organization Michigan State University (MSU) Libraries and the College of Arts and Letters (CAL), we are excited to expand our conference to include a larger virtual audience. Read more about the changes to the DLF Forum in 2024 here. 

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. As a meeting place, the DLF Forum provides an opportunity for our working groups and community members to conduct their business and present their work. As a marketplace, the Forum provides an opportunity for community members to share experiences and practices with one another and support a broader level of information sharing among professional staff. As a congress, the Forum provides an opportunity for the DLF to continually review and assess its programs and its progress with input from the community at large.

Here, the DLF community celebrates successes, learns from mistakes, sets grassroots agendas, and organizes for action.

We encourage proposals from:

  • DLF members and non-members;
  • Regulars and newcomers;
  • Digital library practitioners from all sectors (higher education, museums and cultural heritage, public libraries, archives, etc.) and those in adjacent fields such as institutional research and educational technology;
  • Students, early- and mid-career professionals, and senior staff alike.

All submissions will be peer reviewed. Reviewers will use this rubric to rate each proposal. They may also recommend the proposal for a different format. Broader DLF community input will also be solicited through an open community voting process, which will inform the Program Committee’s final decisions.

Each session type has a maximum number of presenters per submission:

  • 90-minute Workshops: Up to 5 facilitators
  • 50-minute Working Sessions: Up to 5 facilitators
  • 40-minute Panels: Up to 5 presenters
  • 40-minute Presentations: Up to 3 presenters
  • 5-minute Lightning Talks: Up to 2 presenters

 

There is no limit to the number of non-presenting authors listed on a proposal.

The DLF Forum attendees are a multi-disciplinary cross-sector audience of people who work in the digital library, museum, archives, and cultural heritage fields, from librarians, project managers, curators, technologists, and developers to administrators and service providers. The Forum welcomes practitioners from academic, art and cultural heritage, and non-profit organizations, government agencies, and more. They come from all over the country and world and represent all levels of professional experience. Forum attendees are inquisitive, engaged, and action-oriented with a focus on learning new skills and solving problems together. When offered in a virtual format, the DLF Forum may reach a wider and larger audience than in-person events.

Based on community feedback and the work of our Program Committee, we welcome submissions geared toward a practitioner audience that:

  • Clearly engage with DLF’s mission;
  • Activate and inspire participants to think, make, and do;
  • Engage people from different backgrounds, experience levels, and disciplines; and/or
  • Include clear takeaways that participants can integrate and implement in their own work.


We strongly encourage prospective presenters to review our Resources for Forum Presenters page, rubric, and past DLF Forum programs (from 2023 and 2022) to understand what makes a successful DLF Forum proposal. Strong proposals will demonstrate how presenters intend to design their proposed sessions to be interactive, inclusive, and action-oriented and will also outline clear learning objectives.

We especially welcome proposals from individuals who bring diverse professional and life experiences to the conference, including those from underrepresented or historically excluded racial, ethnic, or religious backgrounds, immigrants, veterans, those with disabilities, and people of all sexual orientations or gender identities. As we have done in the past, the Program Committee will prioritize submissions from individuals who identify as Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), individuals working at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), and other libraries, archives, museums, and organizations that center BIPOC to promote inclusivity to the greatest extent possible. Self-identification options will be provided in the proposal submission form but are not required. 

Looking for co-presenters on a particular topic? Try using our 2024 DLF Forum Unofficial Program Sessions and Connections spreadsheet for connecting with other prospective presenters. Note that the Program Committee and CLIR+DLF Staff do not monitor the document and it is not part of the official submission process.

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