DLM Forum 2025 webinars
DLM Forum's upcoming and past webinars for 2025 (click to scroll)
February 27th - "Systems Thinking in Digital Preservation Part 2: The Viable System Model"
March 12th - "RDF and the future of Large Language Models (TBC)"
Webinars are open to DLM Forum community members.
"Experimenting with AI: Containerized Simple and Effective ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition) Solution"
Presented by Anssi Jääskeläinen, Xamk Digitalia Research Center (Finland)
Date: January 30, 2025. Time: 09:00–10:00 CET.
Short introduction: Are you facing challenges with converting speech to text? Do you have numerous old movies in your archives without transcripts? Join us for an exciting webinar where Ph.D, research manager, Anssi Jääskeläinen from Xamk Digitalia Research Center will demonstrate how to get started with openly available AI models and build a simple Gradio UI on top of the existing ASR AI solution.
- The Difference Between Virtual Machines and Containers: Understand what they are and when to use each.
- How to Utilize Models from Hugging Face: Discover how to leverage existing AI models from Hugging Face with minimal technical skills.
- Using the Whisper-Large-V3-Turbo Model: Gain insights on how to use and retrain this model.
- Combining AI Models with Gradio UI: Learn how to pair Gradio UI with the Whisper-large-v3-turbo model from Hugging Face.
The speaker strongly encourages you to experiment with the provided dockerized solution before the webinar. This will make it much easier for you to follow along during the session. Registered participants will receive a link to the dockerized solution a few days before the event.
Registration for the webinar is CLOSED. Video presentation now available (members only).
"AI and Increasing Collaboration, Transparency, and Access at the US National Archives and Records Administration"
Presented by Carol Lagundo and Leslie Johnston, National Archives and Records Administration, US
Date: February 12, 2025. Time: 15:00–16:00 CET
Short introduction: NARA's Director of Digital Partnerships and Outreach Carol Lagundo and Director of Digital Preservation Leslie Johnston will discuss the US federal framework for responsible use of artificial intelligence and how they are applying it through their strategies at NARA. They will share insights from NARA's AI testing and evaluation projects, a groundbreaking initiative that uses AI to assist in archival discovery and access, including enhanced metadata and AI-driven semantic search. They will also discuss how NARA is using AI to pivot its community engagement strategies, particularly through partner collaborations. NARA is building on the success of user-contributed metadata, leveraging ground truth datasets, introducing AI enhancements transparently, and boosting crowdsourcing efforts for records like the 1950 Census and the Revolutionary War Pension Files.
About the speakers: Carol Lagundo started her career at the National Archives and Records Administration in 1993 and currently serves as the Director of Digital Partnerships and Outreach within the Office of Innovation. She has spent most of her NARA career managing IT software development projects to describe and provide online access to NARA’s holdings. She currently manages NARA’s digital partnerships and NARA’s digital reference platform, History Hub. She holds a FAC-PPM Level 3 certification. Leslie Johnston is the Director of Digital Preservation for the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), responsible for developing and executing their digital preservation strategy. Ms. Johnston has over 30 years of experience in the cultural heritage, higher education, and federal communities; her expertise includes system design and implementation, setting and applying content and metadata standards, digitization, web archiving, and the preservation of born-digital and digitized collections. She has a B.A. and an M.A., both from UCLA.
Registration for the webinar is CLOSED.
"Systems Thinking in Digital Preservation Part 2: The Viable System Model"
Presented by Justin Simpson, Artefactual Systems Inc, Canada
Date: February 27, 2025. Time: 13:00–14:00 CET.
Short introduction: Following an in person presentation at the last members meeting in Budapest, Artefactual Systems Managing Director Justin Simpson will continue to explore the application of systems thinking models to digital preservation. This webinar will introduce the Viable System Model. Created by Stafford Beer, the Viable Systems Model describes the necessary organizational structure for a system to be viable (i.e., capable of independent existence). It is often used to model organisations and complex systems, helping to identify areas for improvement and ensure long-term sustainability. Key concepts common to the Pace Layer Model described in Budapest and the Viable System Model will be outlined and explained in the context of the OAIS reference model.
The presentation emphasizes the necessity of systems thinking and provides new perspectives on the development of more resilient and sustainable digital preservation practices. Audience members will come away with a better understanding of both the Pace Layer and Viable System Models, and the benefits of systems thinking in efforts to care for cultural memory.
Registration for the webinar is OPEN.
"RDF and the future of Large Language Models (TBC)"
Presented by Luke VanderHart, a Clojure/ClojureScript developer, author and consultant with an emphasis on system design, data ontologies and functional programming.
Date: March 12, 2025. Time: 15:00–16:00 CET.
More information will be available soon.
Registration for the webinar is OPEN.
