The Institute of Museum and Library Services-sponsored National Forum, Data Speculations, seeks to advance the development of infrastructure, policies, expertise, and collections that enable computational research on copyrighted contemporary culture materials.

The National Forum, taking place in 2025, is led by a team of digital humanities and copyright experts, Alex Wermer-Colan, Sarah Potvin, Peter Jaszi, Brandon Butler, and Rachael Samberg, and will bring together specialists in digital humanities research, collections, and library data services.

By convening a dedicated community of practice at a National Forum, hosting public talks, and producing findings and guidelines for wider dissemination, Data Speculations will be foundational to the collective work of removing access barriers for sharing copyrighted collections, serving libraries’ core mission to make information, including copyrighted data, available to researchers and teachers to advance teaching and scholarship.

At a time when multinational publishing houses and database vendors increasingly speculate (quite literally) on the landscape of digitized contemporary culture, charging libraries for licensed access to their collections of newspapers and magazines as data, Data Speculations seeks an alternative vision: a future where libraries can steward large collections of copyrighted cultural data.

Data Speculations Program Schedule

Data Speculations: A National Forum will bring together a wide range of scholars and practitioners to discuss the future of computational access to copyrighted data and explore a series of case studies, including the SF Nexus project.

The National Forum’s opening convening will take place in January of 2025, and the project will feature a series of additional events over the 2025 year.

Forum Organizers

• Sarah Potvin, Associate Professor of English, Texas A&M University
• Alex Wermer-Colan, Interim Academic Director, Loretta C. Duckworth Scholars Studio

Legal Team

• Rachael Samberg, Scholarly Communication Officer, Berkeley Library
• Brandon Butler, Director of Intellectual Property and Licensing, University of Virginia Library
• Peter Jaszi, Professor of Law Emeritus, American University Washington College of Law

Practitioners Advisory Board

• Thomas Padilla (Bristlecone Strategy)
• Giulia Osti (University College Dublin)
• Zoe LeBlanc (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
• Grant Wythoff (Princeton University)
• Glen Layne-Worthey (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)
• Melanie Walsh (University of Washington)
• Quinn Dombrowski (Stanford University)
• Devin Becker (University of Idaho Library)
• Jeremy Brett (Cushing Memorial Library & Archives, Texas A&M University)
• Michelle Dalmau (Indiana University Bloomington)
• Jewon Woo (Lorain County Community COllege)
• Dez Miller (Emory University)
• Laure Thompson (Princeton University)
• Ted Underwood (UIUC)
• Phoenix Alexander (University of California, Riverside)
• Elspeth Healey (University of Kansas)
• Nikki Lemire-Garlic (Thomas Jefferson University)
• Jennifer Weintraub (Schlesinger Library, Harvard University)
• Mark Algee-Hewitt (Stanford University)
• Jajwalya Karajgikar (UPenn Libraries)
• Iliana Burgos (Cornell University Library)
• Megan Senseney (University of Arizona)

Copyright Advisory Board

• Matthew Sag, Jonas Robitscher Professor of Law in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Data Science, Emory University
• Laura Quilter, Copyright & Information Policy Librarian, UMass Amherst Libraries
• Guy A. Rub, Vincent J. Marella Professor of Law, Temple University Beasley School of Law
• Melissa Levine, Director, Copyright Office, University of Michigan Library
• Rebecca Tushnet, Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment, Harvard Law School

Temple University Libraries Team

• Joi Waller, Graphic Designer
• Michael Ernst, Graduate Research Assistant

Science Fiction Collecting Libraries Consortium Representatives

• Elspeth Healey, Special Collections, University of Kansas Spencer Library
• Jeremy Brett, Special Collections, Texas A&M Libraries

Partners

Science Fiction Collecting Libraries Consortium

SF Nexus

The SF Nexus comprises a collaborative network of research and public libraries with collections of SF. The SF Nexus aspires to make a comprehensive dataset of science fiction literature.

For more information about the SF Nexus project, visit sfnexus.io. To learn more about SF Nexus’ approach to data curation of literary texts, see Alex Wermer-Colan’s and James Kopaczewski’s article, “The New Wave of Digital Collections: Speculating on the Future of Library Curation”(2022)

Paskow Science Fiction Collection, Temple University Special Collections Research Center

The Loretta C. Duckworth Scholars Studio partnered with Temple University Libraries’ Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) and Digital Library Initiatives (DLI) to build a digitized corpus of copyrighted science fiction literature. Besides its voluminous Urban Archives, the SCRC also houses a significant collection of science-fiction literature. The Paskow Science Fiction Collection was originally established in 1972, when Temple acquired 5,000 science fiction paperbacks from a Temple alumnus, the late David C. Paskow.

For an exhibit of SF book covers from the Paskow collection, visit our companion Omeka site.

Science Fiction Collecting Libraries Consortium (SFCLC)

The SFCLC comprises a series of special collections across North America and England focusing on preserving and expanding access to the history of science fiction publishing. The SF Nexus aspires to leverage the SFCLC’s holdings to create larger science fiction datasets that can be shared through member-supported repositories like HathiTrust Digital Library and through digital scholarship centers at these universities.