I had the pleasure of keynoting the 20th Annual Information Literacy Summit on April 29th. The symposium theme, "Expanding the Conversation: Digital, Media, and Civic Literacies In and Out of the Library" was really generative and drew out an amazing group of attendees (over 500 registrants) from all over the country. The abstract for my keynote, "Facing Your Computers: Algorithmic Literacy as Praxis" is below- I will post the link to the recorded talk when it is available for the organizers. The recorded talk and transcript are now available on the conference website.

Big thank you to the organizers for this event- they were some of the kindest folks I've worked with. 

I was so pleased to be an invited speaker as a part of the Voices for Information Equity webinar series put together by my esteemed colleague Dr. Melissa Villa-Nicholas and hosted by the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Rhode Island. 

My talk, Listening at the Library: Surveillance in the Stacks Gets Smart, discussed key privacy issues associated with integrating smart voice speakers and digital assistant technologies into library services and programming:

This webinar explores key privacy issues associated with emerging technologies in library services and programming. Building on a recent study about smart voice assistant integration in libraries, Sweeney identifies important questions about patron data collection, management, and use across the lifecycle of smart technologies. Tracing these concerns raises important questions for libraries about the need for pro-active engagement with data privacy in advance of technology adoption, and lays the ground work for libraries to set a broader professional agenda for data privacy that places community safety and tech accountability at the center of library services.*

We had a wonderful turnout of about 70 attendees; my MANY thanks to those who came, participated, and asked wonderful questions. I had a ton fun talking to everyone.



*You can read more about these issues in my related publications:

Sweeney, M.E. (2021). Digital Assistants. In Agostinho, D., D’Ignazio, C., Ring, A., Thylstrup, N.B., & Veel, K. (Eds.), Uncertain Archives. Baltimore, Maryland: MIT Press. (Pre-print available at ir.ua.edu/handle/123456789/6348.)

Sweeney, M.E. & Davis, E. (2020). Alexa, are you listening? An exploration of smart voice assistant use and privacy in libraries. Information Technology and Libraries, 39(4). https://doi.org/10.6017/ital.v39i4.12363. (Pre-print available at http://ir.ua.edu/handle/123456789/6783)

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It was my pleasure to give a keynote at the Library Research Seminar VII event last week in Columbia, South Carolina. This event is sponsored by the American Library Association's Library Research Roundtable (LRRT), and was a really generative and generous space to brainstorm about research with LIS students, practitioners, and scholars of all kinds.
A big thank you to all who planned and executed this event, and much gratitude for inviting me to come share ideas with this warm community!

November is coming to a close (rapidly!), and I wanted to take a moment to reflect on some of the wonderful opportunities that I had this month.

Firstly, ​I was so pleased to be invited to Texas State University to participate in the Philosophy Dialogues hosted by the Department of Philosophy.  I had a wonderful time meeting everyone and presenting my talk, "Encoding race, decoding culture: Emoji as technoculture." I can't say enough about the generosity of my hosts and the welcoming nature of the department and campus community.  

Secondly, I attended the 2018 annual meeting of the Southern Historical Society in Birmingham, Alabama. I was invited to respond to a panel on Segregation and Public Libraries.  Akilah Nosakhere presided, with excellent presentations from Steven Knowlton, Matthew Griffis, and Shane Hand.  Fellow responder, Kerrie Cotten Williams, and I offered some comments and provocations to close the panel.  The panelists presented really thoughtful historical projects, generating interesting conversation from the crowd and fellow participants. It was a pleasure to be invited to take part in this event. My full response, "Segregated Libraries, Then and Now," is now available online. 

I just returned from the 2018 annual meeting of the Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) in Montréal, Québec. I believe this was the largest AoIR conference yet, and it was exciting to see so many new faces join the ranks of folks researching the internet and the digital. 

It was a real pleasure to be a part of the Experimental Session, Digital Critical Race Mixtape with Catherine Knight Steele, Sarah Florini, Kishonna Gray, and André Brock (who couldn't be there with us, but was there in spirit!). We appreciated the support,  attendance, and participation of the audience who came to collaborate with us! (Shout out to Adam J. Banks for his book Digital Griots: African American Rhetoric in a Multimedia Age that inspired the theoretical framework for our session.) This session was a highlight for me and really captured the joy of thinking with/in community with fellow scholars whom I respect so much. 

It was a wonderful conference, and I look forward to catching up with everyone again soon!