BETH 2024

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This talk is going to tackle techno-epistemological configurations of postprint technologies and automation of cognitive labour within the computational-media ecology. Excessive consumption of digital technologies becomes a key driver of the climate crisis, ecological breakdown and ongoing societal instability. On the other side, a set of concepts and practices named “critical information and media literacy”, “digital commons”, and “postdigital research” are (still) not recognized in library and information science discourses. Since the implosion of neo-liberal globalization reveals datafication as a new paradigm of power it is becoming increasingly important to understand how algorithmic systems work and how they are trained to perform in specific situations, while at the same time, they are becoming ever more elusive and embedded in society and everyday life at all levels. Aside from technological nihilism and the technocratic (and anti-democratic) argument that “there is no alternative” (a fallacious idea that the informational environment in which we operate must be optimized through control mechanisms alien to us) librarians could demystify performative invisibility of current hegemony by introducing a critical attitude towards monopolistic hold on our imagination brought by adherence to techno-solutionism and the post-democratic turn normalized by data scientists, IT experts, tech entrepreneurs, designers, marketers etc.

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Relindial is an acronym for “Religions: Libraries and Dialogue,” a Special Interest Group dedicated to libraries serving as places of dialogue between cultures through a better knowledge of religions. Libraries that follow Relindial are not only Libraries specialising in religion (theology libraries, religious science libraries) but also libraries with specialised collections on religious issues, (history, theology, anthropology, etc) or faced with questions involving religious aspects. Associations of Libraries can follow RELINDIAL also. Libraries are places of dialogue, openness, and tolerance, and they offer food for thought. Religious libraries or libraries with religious interests often host documents to preserve and protect them. Within IFLA, libraries that house religious collections – whatever the religion represented – have a common place where they can: • share their experiences, • increase global awareness of the messages of peace of their collections, • provide better access to the tools designed to help people learn about the religious roots of culture. As theology libraries play an important role in advancing sustainability and social responsibility within their communities, in 2024, the Relindial SIG in collaboration with other IFLA study groups organised the IFLA Midterm Meeting in Rome. The first day, hosted by the Vatican Library, had this title: Digital preservation and a sustainable future. This day brings together researchers and practitioners, teachers, librarians, students and representatives of library associations to focus on the challenges of sustainable digital preservation and reuse. This conference aimed to provide a platform for sharing best practices, innovative ideas, and collaborative initiatives that align with the UN SDGs, with a special emphasis on Goal 17.

Libraries play a leading role in an ongoing dialogue with educating communities: through community engagement and sustainable initiatives, librarians collaborate with schools and experiment with new strategies for teaching and learning religious history that are more engaging and effective even in restoring, in a usable mode for all, events that are as important as they are forgotten. The experience of the General Library of the PP. Barnabiti Center for Historical Studies is presented, which, in collaboration with local institutions and professional associations, organizes educational activities and research and experiential workshops each year that can bring different audiences closer to the history of its Institute and the precious documentary funds preserved in its library and archives. Special attention is paid to the involvement of schools of all levels to counter educational poverty and broaden the horizons of children and youth, to universities and the local community. A strategic tool, which allows a wider sharing of these activities is the portal offered to ecclesiastical institutions BeWeb (Beni Ecclesiastici in Web). The BeWeb portal aims to become a useful tool for facilitating historical dissemination, giving ecclesiastical institutes the opportunity to share their historical research, communication and enhancement activities with different audiences. Among the successful examples of the various activities shared on the BeWeb portal was the show Giovanni Alighieri, of the late Dante, produced on the occasion of the celebrations for the 700th anniversary of Dante's death, for which the Biblioteca Generalizia of the Centro Studi Storici PP. Barnabiti hosted and supported the video filming of the show produced in collaboration with the Cultural Association Xenia. In particular, the research librarian suggested and inspired the very layout of the script and filming by highlighting the Library's evocative seventeenth-century hall - the Sala dei Venti - which thus became a theatre of books, voices, sounds, lights and colours to pay homage to the Poet.

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Theological old prints and archival collections are the pride and joy of every monastic and state library. They are of interest primarily to professional theologians, book and church historians, bibliologists, and museologists, but also amateur bibliophiles. Due to their uniqueness and importance for human culture, they are priceless and closely guarded in the mentioned libraries. Therefore, access to them has so far been quite limited and expensive: mainly the costs of travel to libraries, and not all libraries were willing to share original copies of old prints with readers, even professionals, not to mention amateur bibliophiles. If scholars obtained permission to use these valuable collections, they usually obtained money for research, unlike other readers who sometimes could not afford to travel to the library and look through old prints and archival collections. A huge opportunity to solve the above-mentioned problems is the digitization of historic collections, either in monastic or state libraries, for which more and more funding is being granted (situation in Poland). Thanks to the digitization of old prints and archival collections, it is possible to study and view them without leaving home or the workplace. Currently, libraries make digital copies of the originals available on the Internet or order scans on request and deliver them to the reader's e-mail box. In my presentation, I would like to discuss the above-mentioned problems in access to old prints and archival collections in monastic and state libraries from before the "digital age" and then show how the digitization of historical collections in these libraries affects the chance for sustainable access to knowledge – sustainable development.

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Gazi Husrev-bey Library is a library almost five centuries old, and throughout its turbulent history, it has gone through many difficult moments - wars, fires, and suffering. Thanks to the hardworking librarians, its collections have been preserved until today and it possesses exceptional treasures of the cultural history of Bosnia and Herzegovina. During the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992-1995), the employees of Gazi Husrev-bey Library started new activities to protect books and manuscripts from decay. The first step was microfilm. After a few years, the digitization process was started, so today this library has an extremely rich digital repository.

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The dominant patterns of librarianship were shaped decades ago, before the widespread adoption of the great two innovations of the 21st century: the Internet and Artificial Intelligence (AI). The old patterns were all based on two (now dated) ideas: local holdings and third-party indexing. Librarians would collect as much content as possible and would rely upon third parties to provide indexing for their journal and multi-authored works. That work was then stored on a shelf somewhere until a library patron stumbled upon a reference to a chapter or article of interest through a scholarly citation, a printed index or a pay-walled digital index. Once the patron identified a chapter or article that interested them, the patron would go to the library to retrieve the content, or if the content was not in the library's local holdings, the patron would submit an InterLibrary loan (ILL) request. These processes were slow, inefficient, expensive and resource-intensive. At the Digital Theological Library, a library co-owned by over 80 institutions across the globe, we are trying to rethink every piece of these familiar processes. In a multi-year project, we and our third-party partners are using Artificial Intelligence to modernize the delightfully 20th-century approach outlined in the previous paragraph. Our project, which relies upon generous third-party funding, is proceeding in three stages:

1.  We are using AI to index our vast collection of journals and multi-authored books (the DTL owns over 1,000,000 print volumes);
2. we plan to use AI to create abstracts of all of our already digitized content (currently nearly 100,000 individual volumes, and growing quickly); 
3. we hope to eventually create an ILL system which makes requesting chapters and articles both quick and easy; and
4. depending upon how future legislation and/or legal decisions turn out, we hope to create a scholarly AI inquiry site for religious studies.

At present, we plan to make the metadata created in the first part of the project freely available to any interested party; we likewise plan to make the abstracts available via a free public website at no cost to users (thanks again to external funders). Since the first two parts of our four-part project are standard and long-established academic practices (indexing and abstracting), we foresee no copyright concerns. Although we would love to provide the chapters and articles to the public without costs, copyright concerns will require us to limit access to our content to libraries through InterLibrary Loan (which is, of course, another standard and well-established library practice). As further concessions to copyright concerns, we are concentrating our attention on content which cannot be licensed electronically and content which is out of commerce. The development of an AI-powered inquiry system is dependent upon future legal restrictions around training a Large Language Model with copyrighted material. In terms of sustainability, after digitization, we are able to store print volumes in extremely high-density conditions, averaging about 30 volumes per cubic foot. We preserve up to three print copies of each work, freeing small libraries of the need to preserve content which is low use. We believe that we are helping libraries engage in the one key practice which will reduce their carbon footprint more dramatically than any other single practice; we are helping libraries to reduce their physical footprint.

The role of libraries as gateways to knowledge and centres of learning is paramount. Unlike information from the internet, books offer in-depth and verified content. Libraries serve as spaces where anyone can access such knowledge, contributing to cultivating ethical and useful citizens. LIBERTREE's e-CIP Contents Solution serves as a bridge connecting individuals with the world's knowledge, contributing to this goal.

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Board members only with invited guests