From July 25-28 2023, UTSC Library was a proud host and sponsor (with Carnegie Mellon University Libraries and the University of Prince Edward Island’s Robertson Library) of IslandoraCon 2023.
This conference brings together an international community of librarians and technologists that contribute to the Software Project “Islandora,” an open-source digital asset management system used by galleries, libraries, archives and museums to support digital asset management and preservation.
Islandora powers the digital scholarship projects of the library such as the Memory project, community-partnership initiatives such as the Digital Tamil Studies project and Faculty research projects such as Arab Women’s Writing and Scarborough Oral Histories.
“Publishing open-source software tools allows other institutions to benefit from the work that is done locally to support collections, digital scholarship, and research data management,” notes Chief Librarian Angela Hamilton.
“Our collaborations with the Islandora community are part of the way the library fosters Inclusive Excellence. Among other things, students working through the library’s Emerging Professionals program benefit from Islandora’s network of international memory institutions and service providers.”
Over four days of training and programming, forty developers, librarians, Faculty members and service providers gathered to share software tools and strategize for the future of Islandora.
Associate Dean of Libraries of Digital Strategy at Simon Fraser University and Islandora Foundation Board chair, Mark Jordan, says:
“We are grateful to the University of Toronto Scarborough for hosting us this week. By working together across institutional borders, we can support our individual institution’s commitments to making the research produced at our institutions accessible.”